Behavior modification is a set of psychological methods for the treatment of adjustment disorders and for changing the types of observable behavior.
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Behavior modification, in the strict sense, began to be considered at the beginning of the 20th century in the laboratory of the Russian physiologist Ivan P. Pavlov, who trained a dog to salivate when he heard a bell or saw a circle projected on the wall and not to do so. when he saw an ellipse (in the first cases he was given food afterwards and in the case of the ellipse an electric shock). By changing the shape of the ellipse and making it more and more like a circle, the dog's reaction changed: it was agitated and it was not possible to elicit the previously conditioned response in it. This type of disturbance generated in the laboratory has since been called 'experimental neurosis'.
A second fundamental milestone for behavior modification occurred when Pavlovian conditioning principles became generalized to humans. In 1920, the American behavioral psychologist John B. Watson and his assistant Rosalie Rayner published an experimental study in which an 11-month-old baby who had previously played with a white laboratory rat was conditioned to fear it by associating its presence with a loud and loud noise. unpleasant, in what is called stimulus pairing. The psychologist Mary Cover Jones carried out similar experiments but designed to reduce the fears already established in children, discovering two particularly effective methods: the first, the association of the feared stimulus with another different stimulus capable of eliciting a positive reaction, and the second, the placement of a child who is afraid of a certain object with others who do not (beginning of experimentation on learning by imitation of models or vicarious conditioning).
English, South African and American psychologists used behavior modification techniques in the 1940s and 1950s for clinical purposes, notably in this area the South African physician Joseph P. Wolpe, who questioned the efficacy of traditional psychotherapy for the treatment of adults young people, especially those who had disabling fear reactions (such as phobias). To treat anxiety disorders, Wolpe designed therapeutic procedures based on the classical Pavlovian conditioning model..
Around the same time, a group of London psychologists, led by Hans Jurgen Eysenck, launched a new research program on the development of treatment techniques based on the learning theory of American behaviorists Clark L. Hull and Kenneth W. Spence..
In the United States, two types of research were carried out that helped determine the field of behavior modification: the generalization of the principles of classical conditioning to clinical problems such as nocturnal enuresis or alcoholism, and the application of the principles of conditioning operant or instrumental developed by BF Skinner aimed at the education and treatment of disabled children in schools and institutions and the treatment of adults in psychiatric hospitals.
By the early 1960s, behavior modification had become an applied specialty of psychology in its two branches: behavior therapy and applied behavior analysis..
Certain techniques used in behavior therapy became relevant enough to acquire specific names: systematic desensitization, aversion therapy, bio-feed-back ('biofeedback') and applied behavior analysis..
Systematic desensitization, the most widely used technique in behavior therapy, attempts to treat disorders that have a known origin, such as phobias of animals, airplanes, social phobias or claustrophobia. The method generally consists of training the patient to relax in the presence of the unpleasant stimulus, which begins with the distant presence or mere mention of the object and gradually moves closer. The therapy assumes that the anxiety reaction is gradually replaced by the new relaxation response, a process known as reciprocal inhibition (between the conditioned phobic response in the patient and the relaxation response induced in the treatment).
Aversion therapy is often used to eliminate harmful habits. The unpleasant stimulus, such as an electric shock (small and controlled), occurs at the same time as the 'negative habit' occurs. The repeated series of the unpleasant stimulus and the negative habit claim that the stimulus triggers repulsion, not positive attraction. This form of therapy has been quite controversial, since its effectiveness is questioned, probably because it does not even adhere to the paradigm of operant behaviorism defended by Skinner who, as illustrated in his fictional utopia Walden II, distrusts the ability of negative reinforcements to extinguish an answer.
'Biofeedback' is used primarily in the treatment of behavioral disturbances that have a physical basis. Provides the patient with information on physiological processes such as blood pressure or heart rate. With the help of mechanical devices, point variations in the functioning of the human body can be observed. The therapist will be able to compensate for the changes that he deems appropriate, such as the drop in blood pressure.
Applied behavior analysis is used to fine-tune educational and therapeutic techniques in a consistent but customizable format. Five essential stages characterize this approach:
Finally, it should be noted that the axis of behavioral therapy does not focus on the analysis of the underlying causes of behavioral disturbances, but only on the disturbances themselves, and that today there are many who reject it in the field of psychology.
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