behavioral therapy is a type of Psychotherapy aiming to reinforce desirable behaviors and eliminate unwanted ones. It's different from other therapies like psychoanalysis, as it focuses on observable behaviors and environmental factors rather than underlying psychological causes.

1. BEHAVIORAL PSYCHOTHERAPY
Behavioral Psychotherapy

2. DEFINING BEHAVIOR
What we do…Outward manifestation of our inner selves
Communication (to others) of how we feel and think and who we are
Tool we use to accomplish goals, but…may also prevent us from reaching
goals
In psychology, behavior consists of an organism's external reactions to its
environment.

3. BEHAVIORIST MANIFESTO
•Psychology as the behaviorist views it is a purely objective
experimental branch of natural science.
•Its theoretical goal is the prediction and control of behavior.
•Introspection forms no essential part of its methods, nor is the
scientific value of its data dependent upon the readiness with which
they lend themselves to interpretation in terms of consciousness.
•Behaviorist is theory of learning which states all behaviours are
learned through interaction with the environment through a process
called conditioning. Thus, behaviour is simply a response to
environmental stimuli.
•The behavioural approach emphasizes the scientific study of
observable behavioural responses and their environmental
determinants. In other words its the study of the connection between
our minds and behavioural.

4. COMMON CHARACTERISTICS
1. Abnormal behaviors are non-pathological “problems of living”
2. Abnormal behavior assumed to be acquired and maintained in the same
manner as normal behavior
3. Behavior assessment focuses on current determinants rather than on the
analysis of possible historical antecedents
4. Specificity is vital. Person is best understood by what he/she does in a
particular situation
5. Treatment is individually tailored to different problems in different
individuals
6. Understanding origins of problem NOT essential for producing change
7. Basic assumption is that the maladaptive behaviour can be corrected
through the provision of adequate learning experiences.

5. BASIC CONCEPTS
• Behaviourism see psychological disorders as the result of maladaptive
learning, as people are born tabula rasa (a blank slate).
• Pathological behaviours emphasize learning, rather than internal,
cognitive, or motivational models.
•Basic assumption is that the maladaptive behaviour can be corrected
through the provision of adequate learning experiences.
•Behaviour Therapy: A form of psychotherapy, the goal of which is to
modify maladaptive behaviour patterns by reinforcing more adaptive
behaviours.
•Principles of Behavioural Therapies
• Theory of Classical conditioning: involves learning by association and is
usually the cause of most phobias.
• Theory of Operant conditioning: involves learning by reinforcement
(e.g. rewards) and punishment, and can explain abnormal behaviour
should as eating disorders.

6. BASIC CONCEPTS
Three main approaches
 Applied Behavior analysis (the focus on today)
 Based on Skinner’s radical behaviorism
 Behavior is considered to be a function of its consequences
 Cognitions are considered private events and not proper subjects for
scientific study
 Makes use of reinforcement, punishment, and other operant
conditioning principles
 Focuses on teaching skills and modifying behaviors.
 ABA therapists use behaviorist learning principles, such as operant
conditioning or classical conditioning, to direct an individual's actions.
 With practice, an individual will replace undesired behaviors with
desirable ones.

7. BASIC CONCEPTS
 Stimulus-Response (S-R) model
Proposes that all learning consists primarily of the strengthening of the
relationship between the stimulus and the response.
Stimulus Response Theory is a concept in psychology that refers to the
belief that behavior manifests as a result of the interplay between
stimulus and response.
Stimulus-response theory that a stimulus will cause a response either by
pairing a response with a reflective trigger (e.g., salivating to a bell that
was paired with food); or rewarding a response in the presence of a
stimulus (e.g., pressing a bar that releases a pellet of food).
 Social-cognitive theory
Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) describes the influence of individual
experiences, the actions of others, and environmental factors on
individual health behaviors.
Person is his/her own agent of change
It is not the experience, but person’s interpretation of the experience.
Social cognitive theory gives prominence to a self-system that enables
individuals to exercise a measure of control over their thoughts, feelings,
and actions.

8. BASIC ASSUMPTIONS
 Based on principles & procedures of scientific method.
 Deals with client’s current problems (as opposed to analysis
of historical determinants) & factors influencing them &
factors that can be used to modify performance.
 Clients expected to assume an active role by engaging
specific actions to deal with their problems
 Emphasizes teaching clients skills of self-management, with
expectation they’re responsible for transferring what’s
learned in office to everyday lives.
 Focus on assessing overt & covert behaviours directly,
identifying problem, & evaluating change.
 Emphasizes a self-control approach in which clients learn
self-management strategies

10. ASSESSMENT METHODS
History taking (face to face)
Interview
Behavioural therapist strives to quantify the problem behaviour and
collect sufficient information so that he can build an etiological model
that can then form the foundation for developing a therapy program
(referred to as a functional analysis ).
A Functional Behavior Assessment (FBA) is a systematic procedure that
is used to identify problem behaviors and the specific circumstances
under which the behaviors are more likely and less likely to occur.
Functional Behavior Assessments are based on the principles of
Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA).

11. ASSESSMENT METHODS
Operationalization of Behavior: Focuses on the concreteness and
specifics of behavior. Vagueness is transformed into objective,
observable actions.
Functional Analysis: The ABC’s of behavior. An individual's behavior
is directly related to events and stimuli in the environment.
Reinforcement: Behavior develops and maintains itself through a
system of punishments and rewards.
Goals: These are designed to make specific behavioral changes.
 concrete, specific, observable and measurable
 meet biological and social needs; adaptive
 avoid pain and discomfort

12. PROCESS OF PSYCHOTHERAPY
Considerations for starting treatment
 Must identify specific problem (jointly with client, family members or
parents)
 deficit behavior
 excessive behavior
 Does the problem require treatment
 What will happen if nothing is done
 What treatment is likely to be most effective
 Who is the best person to deliver the treatment (e.g., therapist, parents,
teachers)
 Someone present in environment is better
 Someone capable and willing to implement plan
 What is the best context for treatment (e.g., school, home)
Do a thorough assessment (e.g., identify discriminant stimuli for
problematic behavior)

13. PROCESS OF PSYCHOTHERAPY (TREATMENT)
Design an appropriate treatment plan using positive reinforcement, negative
reinforcement, and punishment techniques
 Figure out the most appropriate reinforcers
 a. Resistant to saturation (M&Ms are bad, what’s better?)
 b. Able to be administered in small units (trip to Florida?)
 c. Able to be administered immediately following behavior
 d. Must be in control of agent (e.g., not dependent on weather)
 e. Must be compatible with treatment plan
 f. Must be practical
 g. Conditioned reinforcers work well (token reinforcers that are associated with
other positive reinforcers (points, tokens)
 Establish reinforcement schedule, based on behavior frequency
 a. Low frequency = continuous reinforcement
 b. High frequency = fixed interval, fixed ratio, or variable ratio

14. TREATMENT/INTERVENTION
Flooding:
Goal: Provoke extinction and encourage approach behavior
Description: A method used for anxiety reduction where a phobic client is
exposed to a highly fear-arousing situation and where the therapist provides
ongoing encouragement to assure that the client remains in the situation until
noticeable anxiety habituation has set in.
Systematic desensitization
Goal: Provoke extinction and encourage approach behavior
Description: A method used to treat phobias. Step one is to learn relaxation
and uses a hierarchy of fear-producing situations. An exposure procedure is
used, either in imagination or in the real world, to the feared stimuli. Begins with
the least fear-producing situation and gradually works up to the more fear-
producing situation.

15. TREATMENT/INTERVENTION
Graduated exposure
Goal: Provoke extinction and encourage approach behavior
Description: A method based on the rationale that the avoidance of the feared
stimulus needs to be stopped; very much like systematic desensitization, it
exposes the client to more and more fear-arousing stimuli in a previously
established hierarchy.
Shaping
Goal: Learn a complex behavior
Description: A sequential learning process where individuals learn through
reinforcement procedures to acquire all the skills needed for a relatively
complex behavior (like giving a public speech).

16. TREATMENT/INTERVENTION
Aversion therapy
Goal: Help eliminate an undesired behavior
Description: A method that provides an unpleasant consequence after an undesirable
behavior was shown (e.g., a self-applied fl ip of a rubber band attached to the wrist
after a client noticed that he or she was starting to compulsively ruminate).
Progressive Muscle Relaxation
Exposure and Response Prevention

17. TREATMENT (CONT.)
 Break behavior into components and use shaping techniques
 Reward approximations (homework example)
 Know the assignment
 Bring homework materials home
 Go to study area without prompt
 Remain in study area on task
 Get the work done
 Turn in the assignment
 Use prompting and modeling
 Have a contingency contract (an agreement about what is expected and
the consequences of not doing it)

18. TREATMENT (FOR UNWANTED BEHAVIORS)
For unwanted behaviors
 Extinguish by removing reinforcers that used to follow the unwanted behavior
 Give reinforcers for a competing behavior
 If punishment is used, it should follow these rules
 As intense as possible (start with maximum intensity)
 As frequent as possible
 As immediate as possible
 Relatively brief
 Can’t be a way out of doing something
 Can’t associate w/ positive reinforcers (don’t apologize)