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Academic Catalog
College Catalog 2024-2025 
    
    Jul 12, 2025  
College Catalog 2024-2025 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

PSY 3800 - Behavior Modification


Credit(s) 3

The principles and techniques of Behavior Modification enable us to understand better and change our own behavior, as well as the behavior of others. The course teaches students how conditioning and self-management techniques can be used to change behavior in “real world” settings, e.g. in home or institutions like schools, hospitals, prisons, or various work places. Specific techniques and principles, like Positive and Negative Reinforcement, Factors Influencing, Premack Principle are introduced for increasing desirable behaviors (e.g., working out regularly, or following a diet). Others, like Extinction, Differential Reinforcement, Response Cost and Time Out are offered for decreasing undesirable behaviors (e.g., over eating, or bed wetting in children), while Modeling, Prompting, and Fading, Successive Approximations and Shaping are useful in developing new behaviors. Finally, students are taught how targeted behaviors can be maintained and generalized.

Prerequisites
PSY 1100  
Course Frequency:
Intermittently