Behavior modification
Behavior modification is a treatment approach that uses respondent and operant conditioning to change behavior. Based on methodological behaviorism,[1] overt behavior is modified with (antecedent) stimulus control and consequences, including positive and negative reinforcement contingencies to increase desirable behavior, administering positive and negative punishment, and extinction to reduce problematic behavior.[2][3][4]
For the journal, see Behavior Modification (journal).Applied behavior analysis (ABA), behavior therapy, and cognitive-behavioral therapy are more modern-day terms for what used to be called behavior modification.
The first use of the term behavior modification appears to have been by Edward Thorndike in 1911. His article Provisional Laws of Acquired Behavior or Learning makes frequent use of the term "modifying behavior".[5] Through early research in the 1940s and the 1950s the term was used by Joseph Wolpe's research group.[6] The experimental tradition in clinical psychology used it to refer to psycho-therapeutic techniques derived from empirical research.[7] In the 1960s, behavior modification operated on stimulus-response-reinforcement framework (S-R-SR), emphasizing the concept of 'transactional' explanations of behavior.[8] It has since come to refer mainly to techniques for increasing adaptive behavior through reinforcement and decreasing maladaptive behavior through extinction or punishment (with emphasis on the former).
In recent years, the concept of punishment has had many critics, though these criticisms tend not to apply to negative punishment (time-outs) and usually apply to the addition of some aversive event. The use of positive punishment by board certified behavior analysts is restricted to extreme circumstances when all other forms of treatment have failed and when the behavior to be modified is a danger to the person or to others (see professional practice of behavior analysis). In clinical settings positive punishment is usually restricted to using a spray bottle filled with water as an aversive event. When misused, more aversive punishment can lead to affective (emotional) disorders, as well as to the receiver of the punishment increasingly trying to avoid the punishment (i.e., "not get caught")..
Behavior modification relies on the following:
