Behaviour Therapy - Scientific Basis

Scientific Basis

Behaviour therapy is based upon the principles of classical conditioning developed by Ivan Pavlov and operant conditioning developed by B.F. Skinner. There has been a good deal of confusion on how these two conditionings differ and whether the various techniques of behaviour therapy have any common scientific base.

Contingency management programs are a direct product of research from operant conditioning. These programs have been highly successful with those suffering from panic disorders, anxiety disorders, and phobias.

Systematic desensitisation and exposure and response prevention both evolved from respondent conditioning and have also received considerable research.

Behavior avoidance test (BAT) is a behavioral procedure in which the therapist measures how long the client can tolerate an anxiety-inducing stimulus. The BAT falls under the exposure-based methods of Behavior Therapy. Exposure-based methods of behavioral therapy are well suited to the treatment of phobias, which include intense and unreasonable fears (e.g., of spiders, blood, public speaking). The therapist needs some type of behavioral assessment to record the continuing progress of a client undergoing an exposure-based treatment for phobia. The simplest possible assessment approach for this is the BAT. The BAT approach is predicted on the reasonable assumption that the client’s fear is the main determinant of behavior in the testing situation. BAT can be conducted visual, virtually, or physically, depending on the clients’ maladaptive behavior. Its application is not limited to phobias, it is applied to various disorders such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD).

Social skills training teaches clients skills to access reinforcers and lessen life punishment. Operant conditioning procedures in meta-analysis had the largest effect size for training social skills, followed by modelling, coaching, and social cognitive techniques in that order. Social skills training has some empirical support particularly for schizophrenia. However, with schizophrenia, behavioural programs have generally lost favour.