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.

Table contents:

Part I: The Behavior Modification Approach

1. Introduction

2. Areas of Application: An Overview

3. Defining, Measuring, and Recording Target Behavior

4. Doing Behavior Modification Research

Part II: Basic Behavioral Principles and Procedures

5. Respondent (Classical, Pavlovian) Conditioning of Reflexive Behavior

6. Increasing a Behavior with Positive Reinforcement

7. Increasing Behavior with Conditioned Reinforcement

8. Decreasing a Behavior with Operant Extinction

9. Getting a New Behavior to Occur with Shaping

10. Developing Behavioral Persistence with Schedules of Reinforcement

11. Responding at the Right Time and Place: Operant Stimulus Discrimination and Stimulus Generalization

12. Changing the Control of a Behavior with Fading

13. Getting a New Sequence of Behaviors to Occur with Behavior Chaining

14. Differential Reinforcement Procedures to Decrease Behavior

15. Decreasing Behavior with Punishment

16. Establishing Behavior by Escape and Avoidance Conditioning

17. Respondent and Operant Conditioning Together

18. Transferring Behavior to New Settings and Making It Last: Programming of Generality of Behavior Change

Part III: Capitalizing on Operant Antecedent Control Procedures

19. Antecedent Control: Rules and Goals

20. Antecedent Control: Modeling, Physical Guidance, and Situational Inducement

21. Antecedent Control: Motivation

Part IV: Putting It All Together to Develop Effective Behavioral Programs

22. Functional Assessment of Causes of Problem Behavior

23. Planning, Applying, and Evaluating a Behavioral Program

24. Token Economies

25. Helping an Individual to Develop Self-Control

Part V: Behavior Therapy for Psychological Disorders

26. Behavioral Approaches to Psychotherapy: Cognitive Restructuring, Self-Directed Coping Methods, and Mindfulness and Acceptance Procedures

27. Psychological Disorders Treated by Behavioral and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapies

Part VI: A Historical Perspective and Ethical Issues

28. Giving it All Some Perspective: A Brief History

29. Ethical Issues

Glossary

References

Author Index

Subject Index