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Cynophia - Sally's Case

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Sally is a 23-year-old woman who has a severe phobia of dogs. She has had this phobia since she had a negative experience with dogs when she was in the second grade. She now goes out of her way to avoid dogs and places that dogs may be. This causes her to experience anxiety when she meets someone new and is invited to an unfamiliar area.

Analyze the three potential ways Sally could have developed this phobia: operational (stimulus-response, consequence), classical (CS-UCS-UCR-CR), and observational.

Discuss how extinction and cognitive learning could help Sally recover from her phobia.

Describe Sally's phobia using inference and research of the development of simple phobias, such as dog phobias.
Describe, in detail, how the phobia could be explained by the following:

o Classical conditioning
o Operant conditioning
o Observational learning

Discuss how the process of extinction could be used to help Sally overcome her phobia.
Discuss how the tenets of cognitive theory could be applied to help Sally overcome her phobia.

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Solution Summary

The solution provides information, assistance and advise in tackling the task (see above) on the topic of cynophobia (fear of dogs). Resources are listed for further exploration of the topic.

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Cynophobia

Phobias are those irrational fears that can be so overwhelming and debilitating that they prevent a person from functioning normally. They can be fears of people, objects, situations, feelings or things. A dog is an animal or thing that based on a number of causes can lead an individual to develop fear, and eventually, phobias of them. While fear is normal, phobias are more pronounced so that it is exaggerated and an unrealistic sense of danger become's that person's 'truth' or view of the matter (NHS, 2014). It's so pronounced that it will restrict one's daily living and lead them to feel anguish, frustration and a sense of helplessness. Phobias are considered to be a kind of anxiety disorder and while in some people the phobia is not there until the subject of the phobia is faced, some people anticipate the phobia even before it is met or experienced so that they develop anticipatory anxiety where the feel panicked, sick to their stomachs, nauseated, dizzy, have shortness of breath, tremble or get upset at the prospect of it. While phobias ...

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