Saavedra and Silverman review

A phobia is a fear that is

• about something life threatening.

• easy to overcome.

• out of proportion to the danger

• only mildly upsetting.

The sample in this study is

• 47 young adults with a phobia of buttons

• A 9 year old Hispanic boy

• A 12 year old white girl with fear of buttons

• 72 children aged 9-12

What research method is used in this study?

• Lab experiment

• Independent measures

• Case Study

• Field Experiment

• Naturalistic Observation

The phobia began when

• The child got hurt by a button on their shirt

• The child was hurt by someone wearing a lot of buttons

• The children were annoyed by the buttons in their uniform

• A bowl of buttons fell on the child

Which did not happen in the Positive Reinforcement Therapy / Behavioural exposure stage of treatment

• Treatment sessions lasted for 30 mins with the boy

• A hierarchy of fear was followed during exposure

• Subjective ratings were noted about the buttons he feared

• He imagined buttons falling on him

The following finding is incorrect

• His ratings of distress were decreasing, not increasing during in-vivo exposures to buttons

• Subjective ratings of distress increased dramatically from session 2 to session 3 and continued to rise from session 3 to session 4

• There was success observed in the number of buttons the boy manipulated

• At the post-treatment assessment the boy no longer met DSM-IV criteria for specific phobia of buttons.

The DSM-IV diagnosis concluded that he had which type of abnormality?

• Specific Phobia

• Agoraphobia

• Obsessive-compulsive disorder

• Arachnophobia

Which of the following is not a weakness of the study

• Low population validity

• Low ecological validity

• Low generalisability

• Low applicability

The distress rating for hugging mum when she wears large plastic buttons was...

• 3

• 7

• 4

• 5

Which is not true of case studies such as the one used in the Saav and Silverman study?

• the results are very generalizable to other populations

• they can provide much deep and qualitative data

• they usually involve studying one participant

• they are used to study people with rare disorders