Learning Theories and Behavior Modification

Paper Summary:

Learning theory principles can be utilized in deliberate and structured approaches to changing people's behaviour. These approaches are referred to as behaviour modification techniques. This paper discusses behaviour modification and its application to a variety of behaviours within a correctional or special education setting.

From the Paper:

"When an individual demonstrates a lasting change in behaviour, as a result of experience, it is called learning (Laird, 1992; Myers, 2004). Different theories have been proposed in the attempt to explain how learning occurs. The behaviourist school of psychologists insist on a scientific, controlled approach, where each behaviour is seen as a response to a stimulus. According to these theories, we may increase the frequency of a particular behaviour either because it is being triggered by a stimulus that frequently had been associated in time with another stimulus that would more normally have elicited the behaviour (classical conditioning); or because it had been followed by favourable consequences when we did it previously (operant conditioning); or because we had observed favourable consequences occur to someone else after they behaved that way (observational learning). A decrease in the behaviour would be expected to have occurred if the consequences had been adverse. Behavioural therapies assume that psychological disorders are a special form of learned behaviour, feeling or thought. The goal of behaviour modification is to use the principles of learning to replace unwanted behaviours or feelings or thoughts with preferred ones, by a new learning process (Laird, 1992). This essay will examine behaviour modification techniques and their application in the special-education setting."

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