the anxiety level goes down and then the fact the client cannot make the usual avoidance response. Wolpe forced a girl with a fear of cars to drive around with him for 4 hours. This method turned out to be very effective with agoraphobics.Aversion therapy is often used on alcoholics and drug abusers, where therapists used emetic drugs such as antabuse or apomorphine. It also used to be used in the 50s and 60s with homosexuals. The pairing of alcohol and sickness became associated so that there becomes an aversion to the alcohol. The emetic by itself has no effect.Operant conditioning can be defined as a type of learning in which voluntary (controllable, non-reflexive) behaviour if it is strengthened or weakened if it is punished (or not reinforced). Thorndike introduced the law of effect. This is where a response that is followed by pleasant consequences becomes more probable and a response that is followed by unfavourable consequences becomes less probable.Skinner based his work on Thorndikes Law of Effect. He developed machines for operant conditioning, which are named Skinner boxes. Rats and pigeons are most often used. In one experiment, when he placed a rat in a Skinner box, it had to press a lever to receive food, and thus obtain reinforcement in the form of food. The rat will then press the lever more often and this has become a conditioned response. Skinner expressed Thorndikes law of effect in different terms involving reinforcement. Behaviour which is reinforced tends to be repeated. Behaviour, which is not reinforced, tends to be extinguished. Punishment is anything that decreases the probability that the event proceeding will occur again. Therefore, punishment is the opposite of reinforcement. The main point to punishment is that all reinforcement increases a behaviour, and all punishment decreases it. Skinners work has revealed that positive reinforcement (e.g. food, warmth, drink...) is far more effective than the punis...
