BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION

Pre s ented By :

W ajeeha I qba l
BS in P s y chology , MS (S LP /T )
w aj ee ha. i qbal @riphah. edu. pk
RIP H AH C O LLEG E O F RE H ABI LITA T IO N S CI EN CE S
“A technique whose goal is to increase the frequency of desirable behaviors and decrease
the incidence of unwanted ones.”
• Using the basic principles of learning theory, behavior-modification techniques have proved to be helpful
in a variety of situations. People with severe intellectual disability have, for the first time in their lives,
started dressing and feeding themselves. Behavior modification has also helped people lose weight, give
up smoking, and behave more safely
Steps to Behavior Modification
The techniques used by behavior analysts are as varied as the list of
processes that modify behavior. It typically follow a series of similar
basic steps that include the following:
1. Identifying goals and target behaviors.
• The first step is to define desired behavior.
• Is it an increase in time spent studying? A decrease in weight? An
increase in the use of language? A reduction in the amount of
aggression displayed by a child? The goals must be stated in observable
terms and must lead to specific targets.
• For instance, a goal might be “to increase study time,” whereas the
target behavior would be “to study at least 2 hours per day on weekdays
and an hour on Saturdays.”
Step2) Designing a data-recording system and recording
preliminary data.
• To determine whether behavior has changed, it is necessary to collect
data before any changes are made in the situation.
• This information provides a baseline against which future changes
can be measured.

Step 3) Selecting a behavior-change strategy.

• The crucial step is to choose an appropriate strategy.
• Typically, a variety of treatments is used.
• This might include the systematic use of positive reinforcement for
desired behavior (verbal praise or something more tangible, such as
food), as well as a program of extinction for undesirable behavior
(ignoring a child who throws a tantrum).
• Selecting the right reinforces is critical, and it may be necessary to
experiment a bit to find out what is important to a particular
individual
Step 4) Implementing the program.
• Probably the most important aspect of program implementation is
consistency.
• It is also important to reinforce the intended behavior.
For example
Suppose a mother wants her son to spend more time on his
homework, but as soon as he sits down to study, he asks for a snack.
If the mother gets a snack for him, she is likely to be reinforcing her
son’s delaying tactic, not his studying.
Step 5) Keeping careful records after the program is
implemented.
• Another crucial task is record keeping.
• If the target behaviors are not monitored, there is no way of
knowing whether the program has actually been successful
• Step 6) Evaluating and altering the ongoing
program.
• Finally, the results of the program should be
compared with baseline, pre-implementation data to
determine its effectiveness. If the program has been
successful, the procedures employed can be phased
out gradually.
• For instance, if the program called for reinforcing
every instance of picking up one’s clothes from the
bedroom floor, the reinforcement schedule could be
modified to a fixed-ratio schedule in which every
third instance was reinforced.
• However, if the program has not been successful in
bringing about the desired behavior change,
consideration of other approaches might be
advisable.
Techniques of Behavior Modification
Initiating behavior
1. Shaping
2. Modelling
3. Fading
4. Punishment (not recommendable)
5. Reinforcement
6. Guidance
 Shaping
• Shaping, also called successive approximation, is the reinforcing of behaviors that gradually approximate the desired behavior.
• Shaping involves starting where the client is; taking small enough steps so the client’s behavior smoothly changes, providing
reinforcement and support for the changes, and catching mistakes or problems early because of the small steps.
• Practitioners often also need to use shaping when trying to change the philosophy or programs of the agency or organization
where they work
Example:
If one is cultivating the ability to meditate for long periods of time, it may not be desirable to start trying to meditate for an hour.
An alternative would be to begin at ten minutes and add one minute every other day, gradually shaping meditation for longer
periods of time
 Modeling
Modeling, involves a change in a person’s behavior as a result of
observing the behavior of another person, the model.
• Thus a way of initiating a behavior, particularly with a child, is to
have the person observe someone doing the desired behavior and
encourage imitation of the behavior.
Example:
A client who is learning how to interview for a job may first watch the
practitioner model appropriate behaviors in a simulated job interview.
Or a teacher who praises one student for good behavior may find other
students imitating this behavior.
 Fading
• Fading involves taking a behavior that occurs in one situation and getting it to occur in a second
situation by gradually changing the first situation into the second.
• A small child might be relaxed and cooperative at home, but frightened and withdrawn if suddenly
put into a strange classroom. This fear can be avoided if the child is gradually introduced to
situations that approximate the classroom.
• Fading is particularly important when a client learns new behaviors in a restricted environment, such
as a clinic, hospital, or half-way house.
 Punishment

• Punishment of one behavior

suppresses that behavior and
results in other behaviors
occurring. Perhaps one of these
other behaviors is a desirable
behavior that can be reinforced.
This is not a particularly efficient
or desirable approach in most cases
Guidance
• Guidance consists of physically aiding the person to
make some response. Thus as part of contact
desensitization or flooding, the client may be guided to
touch a feared object.
• Guidance may be used to help a client learn a manual
skill or help a child who is learning to talk how to form
his lips to make specific sounds.
Reinforcement
Amount of reinforcement :
• This refers to both the quality and quantity of reinforcement. Within limits,
and with many exceptions, as the amount of reinforcement is increased, the
effect of the reinforcement increases
Delay of reinforcement :
• This refers to the amount of time between the person’s behavior and the
reinforcement for that behavior. As a general rule, you get the best results if
the reinforcement occurs right after the behavior.
Example: Praising a child for sharing with a friend is generally most effective if
the praise occurs right after the sharing than if it is mentioned later in the day.
As the delay of reinforcement increases, the effectiveness of the reinforcement
decreases.
Schedule of reinforcement
• This refers to the pattern by which reinforces are related to responses. The
primary distinction between schedules of reinforcement is based on whether
every correct response is reinforced (continuous reinforcement) or whether
only some correct responses are reinforced (intermittent reinforcement).
 Facilitating Generalization and
Maintenance
• Fading
• Reinforcement
• Token economy
• The behaviors usually will generalize, to some degree, from our specific setting to other settings; but it
is usually desirable to facilitate this carry over.
• Thus we start with a specific set of reinforces and contingencies, as with patients in a hospital or
children in a classroom, and gradually switch to the types of reinforces that should support the
behaviors in the everyday environment.
• This is accomplished by switching from continuous schedules of reinforcement to intermittent
schedules and by gradually helping the clients learn to function under long delays of reinforcement.
Finally, we may wish to reprogram the other environments or enlist the help of others to support the
newly acquired behaviors
Example
a school counselor and a teacher may set up a program in one classroom that helps a child learn social
skills that improve his ability to get along with his peers and experience less conflict in the classroom. To
facilitate these skills occurring in settings other than this one classroom, the counselor may talk with the
child’s parents and his other teachers about ways to support these new behaviors in various settings.
 Token Economy
• The client is reinforced with tokens (e.g., poker chips, stars or marks
on a chart, punch holes in a special card) that can later be exchanged
for a choice of reinforces
• Strength of token systems is that they deal with the issue of delay of
reinforcement discussed earlier. The tokens are often easily
dispensed and can be given fairly immediately after the desired
behavior.
• A child may earn tokens every day, which maintains his behavior,
even though his purchased reinforcement does not come until the
weekend. Or the child may use some of his tokens for small daily
rewards (e.g., staying up an extra half hour) and save others over a
period of time for a larger reward (e.g., a new toy).
Example, a teacher may walk around a classroom putting checks on
each student’s small clipboard for appropriate behavior and
accomplishment. These checks are immediately reinforcing, even
though they will not be cashed in until later.
 DECREASING UNDESIRED
BEHAVIOURS
• Extinction (flooding and systematic desensitization)
• Punishment (positive and negative)
• Overcorrection and Resitutional overcorrection
• Stimulus satiation
 Extinction
There are basically two ways of carrying out extinction:
1. Gradual/ In vitro :The gradual approach consists of moving through a sequence of steps, called a
hierarchy, toward the object or situation that elicits the strongest CR.
2. Not gradual/ In vivo : The alternative is to bypass most of these intermediate steps and confront the
final situation right away.
Example:
• If a child had a fear of water at the beach, a gradual approach would involve slowly approaching the
water, perhaps first playing on the beach 20 feet away from the water, then playing 10 feet away, then at
the edge of the water, then putting feet in the water, and so forth.
• The non-gradual alternative may be to put or carry the child into the water until the fear extinguishes.
Flooding
• A variation of the non gradual
approach involves bombarding
the person with the anxiety
producing stimuli and / or
keeping the person in the anxiety
situation without escape. This
approach is called flooding.
• Also called aversion therapy.
Systematic desensitization
 Steps of Systematic Desensitization

Step 2 Step 3
Step 1
First, the patient is taught a deep muscle The patient creates a fear hierarchy The patient works their way up the fear
relaxation technique and breathing starting at stimuli that create the least hierarchy, starting at the least unpleasant
exercises. anxiety (fear) and building up in stages stimuli and practicing their relaxation
In the case of phobias, fears involves to the most fear provoking images. technique as they go.
tension and tension is incompatible with The list is crucial as it provides a When they feel comfortable with this
relaxation. structure for the therapy (they are no longer afraid) they move on
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7k to the next stage in the hierarchy.
DAIsSWyQ If the client becomes upset they can
return to an earlier stage and regain their
relaxed state.
The client repeatedly imagines (or is
confronted by) this situation until it fails
to evoke any anxiety at all, indicating
that the therapy has been successful.
This process is repeated while working
through all of the situations in the
anxiety hierarchy until the most anxiety-
provoking.
 Positive Punishment
• Positive punishment is a dependent event whose onset or increase, results in a decrease in the probability
of the behavior it is dependent upon.
Example
If each time Raghu starts eating his mother’s house plants that she shows disapproval and if this
disapproval reduces the probability of Raghu eating the plants in the future, then the disapproval is positive
punishment.
As a behavior change procedure punishment has many disadvantages and possible bad side effects:
• Punishing an undesirable behavior does not necessarily result in desirable behaviors.
• Punishing a child in a classroom for throwing things during self work time does not necessarily result in
the child shifting to working alone
 Negative Punishment
This generally consists of taking away something that is reinforcing from a person when he
misbehaves. The procedure of negative punishment generally also results in positive
punishment and/or extinction.
In behavior modification there are two major forms of negative punishment and these are:

Response cost: Time out (or time out from reinforcement):

This refers to the withdrawal or loss of a reinforcement depending on a This refers to the punishment procedure in which the punishment is a
behavior. This may be the loss or fine of tokens in a token system, such as a period of time during which reinforcement is not available. For
fine for the use of the wrong words. Response cost has been used to suppress example, time out has been an effective punishment procedure in
a variety of behaviors such as smoking, overeating, stuttering, psychotic talk, classrooms. If a child misbehaves, he may be sent to spend ten
aggressiveness, and tardiness. Possible advantages of response cost are that it minutes in a time out area, perhaps a screened off corner in the back of
may have fewer aversive side effects than positive punishment and it leaves the classroom. For time out to be effective the area the client is
the person in the learning situation, which time out does not. removed from must be reinforcing to him
 Over Restitution
overcorrection or
correction Restitution
●
Alternative form of punishment is ●
Clients must correct the results of their
overcorrection. misbehavior to a better than normal state.
●
In positive practice overcorrection the client ●
Example: A child who marks on the wall may
is required to practice correct behaviors be required to erase the marks and wash the
each time an episode of the undesired entire wall as well.
behaviors occurs. ●
A child who turns over chairs may be
●
Example : a child marking on the wall required to set up those chairs and straighten
might be required to copy a set of patterns up the rest of the furniture. Screaming may
with pencil and paper. require a period of exceptional quiet.
Stimulus Satiation
• A third way is to reduce the reinforcing effects of the events supporting the undesired behavior. Aversive
counterconditioning is a way to do this. A related approach is stimulus satiation in which the client is
flooded with the reinforce repeatedly until it loses much or all of its reinforcing effect.
Example
A child who keeps playing with matches might be sat down with a large number of matches to strike and
light. This would be continued until lighting matches lost their reinforcing effect. It is not known how or
why stimulus satiation works, but it seems to contain components of aversive counterconditioning and
respondent extinction of reinforcing effects.