Behavioural Program - Essay Example

Operant conditioning is founded on the premise that behavior can either be reinforced or eliminated by introducing or removing a certain commodity or thing that the subject is used to. Operant conditioning among children is usually done by eliminating the thing that they love the most such as attention. Many people have asserted that this is an authoritarian approach to raising children. However, what most of them do not realize is that the method actually works. Operant conditioning has caused behavioral transformations among various cases and the same can occur to Claire.

(Dennis & Pennce, 2008) This behavioral program will be created by manipulation of Claire’s consequences so as to attain the desired result; in this case it will be to deal with Claire’s tantrum issues and her behavior which is verbally and socially inappropriate. The method will combine the efforts of Claires parents and external behavioral experts such as a child psychotherapist. The reason for choosing an external party is that Claire will have time away from her parents where she can learn appropriate behavior without interruptions from her parents.

The program is a combination of extinction and mild punishment where extinction refers to the complete elimination of temper tantrums; an issuer that is very possible as asserted by some behavioral experts. Claire will be taken into a room where she will stay there for a certain amounts of weeks. Consequently, this program will involve some kind of social contact that may eventually lead to positive reinforcements at the beginning of the session. However, with the continual application of the program, social contacts will be reduced to a bear minimum where Claire will not get a chance to interact with other persons after she begins exhibiting undesirable behavior.

The program will also allow differential reinforcement in that when Claire