Behavior modification: what it is and how to do it

Behavior Modification: What It Is and How to Do It is a comprehensive, practical presentation of the principles of behavior modification and guidelines for their application. Appropriate for university students and for the general reader, it teaches forms of behavior modification ranging from helping children learn necessary life skills to training pets, to solving personal behavior problems. It teaches practical "how-to" skills, including: discerning long-term effects; designing, implementing, and evaluating behavioral programs; interpreting behavioral episodes; observing and recording behaviors; and recognizing instances of reinforcement, extinction, and punishment. Behavior Modification is ideal for courses in Behavior Modification, Applied Behavior Analysis, Behavior Therapy, the Psychology of Learning, and related areas; and for students and practitioners of various helping professions (such as clinical psychology, counselling, education, medicine, nursing, occupational therapy, physiotherapy, psychiatric nursing, psychiatry, social work, speech therapy, and sport psychology) who are concerned directly with enhancing various forms of behavior development. The material is presented in an interesting, readable format that assumes no prior knowledge of behavior modification or psychology. Specific cases and examples clarify issues and make the principles real. Guidelines throughout provide a ready source to use as a reference in applying the principles. Online resources, including an instructor's manual, are available at www.routledge.com/9780815366546.-- Provided by Publisher

Part I. Behavior modification approach -- Introduction -- Areas of application: an overview -- Defining, measuring, and recording target behaviour -- Doing behavior modification research -- Part II. Basic behavioral principles and procedures -- Respondent (Classical, Pavlovian) conditioning of reflexive behaviour -- Increasing a behavior with positive reinforcement -- Increasing behavior with conditioned reinforcement -- Decreasing a behavior with operant extinction -- Getting a new behavior to occur with shaping -- Developing behavioral persistence with schedules of reinforcement -- Responding at the right time and place: operant stimulus discrimination and stimulus generalization -- Changing the control of a behavior with fading -- Getting a new sequence of behaviors to occur with behavior chaining -- Differential reinforcement procedures to decrease behaviour -- Decreasing behavior with punishment -- Establishing behavior by escape and avoidance conditioning -- Respondent and operant conditioning together -- Transferring behavior to new settings and making it last: programming of generality of behavior change -- Part III. Capitalizing on operant antecedent control procedures --…