Problem 1: How could classical conditioning have contributed to the development of these disorders for Jessica?
Problem 2: How could modeling have contributed to the development of these disorders for Jessica?
Problem 3: How could operant conditioning maintain the symptoms of these disorders for Jessica?
Jessica was a 15-year-old girl whose mother brought her to a psychologist to help with her long-standing shyness.
Although Jessica was initially reluctant to say much about herself, she said she felt tense. She added that the anxiety had been "horrible" for several years and was often accompanied by episodes of dizziness and crying. She was generally unable to speak in any situation outside of her home or school classes. She refused to leave her house alone for fear of being forced to interact with someone. She was incredibly anxious around other teenagers, but she has also become "too nervous" to speak to adult neighbors she had known for years. She said it felt impossible to walk into a restaurant and order from " a stranger at the counter" due to fear of being humiliated. She also felt constantly on her guard, needing to avoid the possibility of getting attacked, a strategy that only worked when she was alone in her home.
Jessica tried to conceal her crippling anxiety from her parents, typically telling them that she "just didn't feel like" going out. Feeling trapped and incompetent, Jessica said she contemplated suicide "all the time."
Jessica had always been "shy" and had been teased at recess since she started kindergarten. The teasing had escalated to outright bullying by the time she was in seventh grade. For two years, day after harrowing day, Jessica's peers turned on her "like snarling wolf pack," calling her "stupid," "ugly," and "crazy." Not infrequently, one of them would stare at her and tell her she would be better off committing suicide. One girl (the ringleader, a former elementary school chum) hit Jessica on one occasion, giving her a black eye. Jessica did not fight back. This event was witnessed by an adult neighbor, who told Jessica's mother. When Jessica's mother asked by about the incident, Jessica denied it, saying she had "fallen" on the street. She did, however, mention to her mother "in passing" that she wanted to switch schools, but her delivery was so offhand that at the time, her mother casually advised against the switch. Jessica suffered on, sobbing herself to sleep most nights.
Full of hope, Jessica transferred to a specialty arts high school for ninth grade. Although the bullying ceased, her anxiety symptoms worsened. She felt even more unable to venture into public spaces and felt increasingly embarrassed by her inability to develop the sort of independence typical of a 15-year-old. She said she had begun to spend whole weekends "trapped" in her home and had become scared to even read by herself in the local park. She had nightly nightmares about the bullies in her old school. Her preoccupation with suicide grew.
Her parents thought she would outgrow being shy and sought psychological help for her only after a teacher remarked that her anxiety and social isolation kept her from making the sort of grades and doing the kind of extracurricular activities necessary to get into a good college.
Jessica described her mother as loud, excitable, aggressive, and "a little frightening." Her father was a successful attorney who worked long hours. Jessica described him as shy in social situations ("He's more like me"). Jessica said she and her father sometimes joked that the evening's goal was to avoid tipping the mother into a rage. Jessica added that she "never wanted to be anything like her mother."