What is a phobia? What type of phobia did 3-year-old Peter have before Mary Cover Jones was able to eliminate it?
Describe her counterconditioning technique and then explain how a variation of this procedure, systematic desensitization, is used for treating phobias in adults.
What will be an ideal response?
Answer: A good answer will include the following key points.
• A phobia is an exaggerated fear of a specific situation, activity, or thing. Mary Cover Jones used counterconditioning to help Peter get over his fear of rabbits.
• Counterconditioning involves pairing the conditioned stimulus with a stimulus that elicits a response incompatible with the unwanted response.
• In this case, a snack of crackers and milk was paired with presentation of the rabbit (CS).
• The snack produced pleasant feelings incompatible with fear (US).
• To prevent fear of the rabbit from generalizing to the snack, the rabbit was initially kept at a distance and only gradually moved closer to Peter.
• Systematic desensitization is a variation of this procedure, and is sometimes used for treating phobias in adults.
• Systematic desensitization uses relaxation as a response incompatible with anxiety and fear.
• A person imagines or looks at a sequence of feared stimuli arranged in a hierarchy from least frightening to most frightening while, at the same time, maintaining a relaxed state.
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