Questions to Guide your Thinking about Behavior Therapy
- What are the philosophical underpinnings (such as they may be) of behavior therapy? What is seen as causing problematic (and normal) behavior? How?
- How might behavior therapists assess the problem in ways that are similar to the actions of other therapists? How is their assessment different? Why?
- We think about operational definitions as a part of experimental psychology, but it is also used by behavior therapists (and others). How? Why? We talked about it earlier in the semester in terms of one of the microskills. Which?
- Behavior therapists describe behavior in terms of their antecedents and consequences. What does this mean? Practice thinking about your own behavior in this way.
- What things do behavior therapists do to modify behavior? What are their goals in doing so?
- Describe systematic desensitization and think about what makes it work.
- What is assertiveness? When are we least likely to behave assertively? Why?
- When we talked about the structure of an interview we talked about the last stage as generalization. Behavior therapists focus on preventing relapse as part of this process. How do they do this? Why?
- We tend not to associate behavior therapists and empathy. What is the research on this relationship?