Orval Mowrer's Theory Of Phobias

A phobia is defined in the dictionary as ‘a persistent, irrational fear of a specific object, activity, or situation that leads to a compelling desire to avoid it.’ In psychology, there is a theory that was proposed by Orval Mowrer, called the two-factor theory of learning, which seeks to explain how anxiety, fears and phobias develop within individuals. Mowrer’s theory attempted to use both of the classical and operant conditioning principles to explain the avoidance behaviours that are such prominent symptoms and characteristics of majority of the anxiety disorders. All behaviours, adaptive and maladaptive, have been viewed by behaviourists in accordance with the same principles of classical and operant conditioning.

Watson & Raynor conducted

Exposure is defined as the repeated engagement with a feared object, person, place or thing until it is no longer distress eliciting. Exposure therapy is the opposite of operant conditioning (negative reinforcement), whereby instead of the avoidance of the fear and unpleasant consequence, the person is engaging with the fear to help overcome it. Exposure Therapy typically uses the method of a graded exposure hierarchy, that could be either standardised or idiosyncratically developed. This is where, the patient is initially exposed to a stimulus that is least feared, and as the sessions progress, the person progresses through a hierarchy of situations that evoke greater anxiety. There are also different methods of exposure, one of which has been quite popular over the past few decades. This treatment is called Virtual Reality exposure. Virtual reality exposure has been popular as it integrates real-time computer graphics, body tracking devices and visual displays to gives the patient and the therapist the ability to control the feared object through simulation. Virtual reality exposure gives the therapist the control over how frightening the simulation will appear and it can also give the patient the opportunity to confront fears and situations that are not easily

(1996) and Garcia-Palacios et al., (2002). Rothbaum et al. (1996) examined the efficacy of virtual reality exposure therapy for the fear of flying. In this study, the subject was a 42-year-old female, who had a debilitating and enfeebling fear of flying. Her treatment involved six sessions of graded virtual reality exposure to flying in a virtual airplane. The results showed that all self report measure of the patients fear of flying decreased significantly after the virtual reality exposure. She attended a planned post treatment flight and returned with anxiety measures indicating a comfortable flight. Although this case study is only subjective to one patient we can still begin to understand that virtual reality exposure treatment is successful and effective in treating phobias. In the study of Garcia Palacios et al., (2002), they investigated whether virtual reality exposure therapy was successful in the treatment of spider phobia. To do this, Garcia-Palacios and his team, compared a VR exposure (treatment) condition group to a waiting list (control) group. There were 23 participants altogether, that were randomly assigned to each group. The participants in the treatment group underwent and average of four, one-hour exposure therapy sessions. The experiment was measured with a Fear of Spiders questionnaire, a Behavioural Avoidance Test (BAT), and