Areas of Application: An Overview

1. Areas of Application: An Overview Chapter 2

2. Parenting and Child Management • Behavioral techniques have been applied to help parents more effectively teach their children to walk, develop initial language skills, provide effective toilet training, and influence their children to do household chores (Kendall, 2000; Meadows, 1996). • Behavioral strategies can decrease problem behaviors, such as nail biting, temper tantrums, aggressive behaviors, ignoring of rules, failure to comply with parents’ requests, and frequent arguing (Christopherson & Mortweet, 2001; Schaefer & Briesmeister, 1998; Serketich & Dumas, 1996). • Allen and Warzak (2000) provides a useful analysis of conditions that strengthen or weaken adherence by parents to effective behavioral programs with their children.

3. Education: From Preschool to University • The PSI, also known as the Keller plan, is a behavior modification approach to university teaching that has a number of distinctive characteristics making it possible for teachers to use principles of behavior modification effectively to improve classroom instruction (Keller, 1968). The PSI: 1. identifies the target behaviors or learning requirements for a course in the form of study questions, such as the questions at the end of each chapter in this book; 2. requires students to study only a small amount of material before demonstrating mastery, such as the amount of material in one or two chapters that might be studied in a week or two; 3. has frequent tests (at least once every week or two) in which students demonstrate their knowledge of the answers to the study questions; 4. has mastery criteria so that students must demonstrate mastery at a particular level before going on to the next level; 5. is nonpunitive, in that students are not penalized for failing to demonstrate mastery on a test but simply restudy and try again; 6. uses a number of student assistants (called proctors) to score tests immediately and provide feedback to students concerning test performance; 7. incorporates a “go-at-your-own-pace” feature in which students are allowed to proceed through the course material at rates that suit their own particular abilities and time demands; 8. uses lectures primarily for motivation and demonstration, rather than as a major means of presenting new information.

4. Severe Problems: Developmental Disabilities, Childhood Autism, & Schizophrenia • Developmental Disabilities: • Developmental disability has replaced the term mental retardation among most professionals who treat this type of problem • Childhood Autism: • Children diagnosed with autism often show some behaviors similar to children diagnosed with developmental disabilities, however, they are also likely to show some combination of impaired social behavior, impaired communication, abnormal play behaviors, and repetitive self-stimulatory behaviors. • Schizophrenia: • Behavior therapy can make a significant contribution to the treatment, management, and rehabilitation of persons with schizophrenia (McKinney & Fiedler, 2004; Wong & Liberman, 1996).

5. Clinical Behavior Therapy • Behavioral treatment of such clinical problems as anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorders, stress-related problems, depression, obesity, marital problems, sexual dysfunction, and habit disorders has steadily increased since the 1970s. • How effective is behavior therapy with clinical populations? • Many studies have demonstrated that there are clear problem areas (e.g., phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorders) in which specific behavior therapy procedures are demonstrably superior to existing psychotherapeutic alternatives. • In some cases, the treatment of choice may be a combination of behavior therapy and medical treatments (such as drugs).

6. Self-Management of Personal Problems • Many people would like to change something about themselves. How about you? • A great deal of progress has been made in the area referred to as self-management, self-control, self-adjustment, self-modification, or self-direction. • Successful self-modification requires a set of skills that can be learned; these skills involve ways of rearranging your environment to control your subsequent behavior.

7. Medical and Health Care • Health psychologists have applied behavioral principles in five major areas: 1. Direct Treatment of Medical Problems. 2. Establishing Treatment Compliance. 3. Promotion of Healthy Living. 4. Management of Caregivers. 5. Stress Management.

8. Gerontology • Want to know what it’s like to be old? • “You should smear dirt on your glasses, stuff cotton in your ears, put on heavy shoes that are too big for you, and wear gloves, and then try to spend the day in a normal way” (Skinner & Vaughan, 1983, p. 38). • Elderly individuals must deal on a daily basis with the loss of skills and ability to function independently that occurs with old age or with chronic illness. • Behavior modification can make a positive contribution.

9. Community Behavioral Analysis • By the 1970s, the scope of behavior modification had expanded from individual problems to community concerns (e.g., increasing recycling of returnable soft drink containers, promoting energy conservation by increasing bus ridership, helping college students live together in a cooperative housing project, etc.). • Glenwick (1990) identified five trends in behavioral community applications: 1. Greater involvement of the target populations in all aspects of the intervention process. 2. Increased fostering of the target individual’s personal control (vs. control by professionals). 3. Increased inclusion of subjective assessments when evaluating treatment outcomes. 4. Increased emphasis on antecedent events (the intervention with the nurses might rely on posted reminders and the example of senior staff wearing their gloves) versus consequent events (such as praising the nurses for wearing their gloves). 5. Greater interdisciplinary collaboration among professionals.

10. Business, Industry, and Government • Organizational behavior management (OBM) is defined as the application of behavioral principles and methods to the study and control of individual or group behavior within organizational settings (Frederiksen & Lovett, 1980). • Other labels used interchangeably with organizational behavior management include: • performance management. • industrial behavior modification. • organizational behavior modification. • organizational behavior technology. • organizational behavior analysis.

11. Sport Psychology “Applied sport psychologyinvolves the use of psychological knowledge to enhance athletic performance and the satisfaction of athletes and others associated with sports (Blimke, Gowan, Patterson, & Wood, 1984).” • Techniques for Improving Skills of Athletes • Strategies for Motivating Practice and Endurance Training • Changing the Behavior of Coaches • “Sports Psyching” to Prepare for Competition

12. Behavior Modification with Culturally Diverse Individuals • Behavior modifiers have begun to pay more attention to issues of race, gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation as variables that can influence the effectiveness of treatment. • Although such information can be helpful for therapists, we must also be sensitive to the dangers of overgeneralizing about any particular cultural group.

13. Looking Ahead • Behavioral modification has been used both with persons with profound handicaps and with gifted students, for self-improvement, and to preserve the environment in which we live. • Several thousand books have been published concerning basic, applied, and theoretical issues in behavior modification.