ures. These conceptual approaches include applied behavior analysis, neobehavioristic stimulus-response, cognitive behavior modification, and social-learning theory. Applied behavior analysis is a direct descendant of Skinner's radical behaviorism and is based on the principles and procedures of operant conditioning. Treatment procedures derived from this approach include the reinforcement of desirable behavior by tokens that can be exchanged for candy, cigarettes, or other items. The neobehavioristic stimulus-response approach is an outgrowth of the early contributions of Wolpe and Eysenck. Systematic desensitization, an example of a treatment procedure derived from this approach, aims directly at decreasing the anxiety mediating or maintaining phobic behavior.The most recent approach, cognitive behavior modification, stresses the importance of symbolic processes in developing, maintaining, and modifying abnormal behavior. Treatment procedures based on this approach typically focus on identifying faulty or irrational thoughts or beliefs and replacing them with more adaptive thought patterns. Albert Ellis's rational emotive therapy and Aaron Beck's cognitive therapy for depression are examples of this approach.Social-learning theory provides the most comprehensive and sophisticated conceptual framework of contemporary behavior modification. Based in large part on Albert Bandura's pioneering text Principles of Behavior Modification (1969), the social-learning approach integrates the three other conceptual approaches summarized above into one theoretically consistent model of human behavior. Specifically, the social-learning approach postulates that learning can occur in three ways: through classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and cognitive mediational processes. In contrast to the passive role of the individual in applied behavior analysis, this theory assumes a reciprocal interaction between a person's actions and environmental...
