Behavioral Psychology - Topics

Applied behavior analysis for autistic children: what does a session look like? How do you break a phone-checking habit that is rewarded every few minutes? Watson and Rayner's Little Albert and the ethics nobody asked about Habit reversal training for tics and nail biting: how does it work? Behaviorism's claim that there is no inner life worth studying Classical conditioning: why the smell of a dentist's office starts the fear Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity and why the title still annoys people Token economies in classrooms: do they still work once the tokens stop? Punishment suppresses behavior without teaching the alternative Extinction bursts: why does a behavior get worse before it fades? Chaining and task analysis: teaching a morning routine step by step Skinner's operant chamber and the schedules behind slot machines The debate over applied behavior analysis from the adults who went through it Extinction bursts: behavior gets worse right before it stops Shaping: how do you teach a multi-step skill one approximation at a time? Fear returns after it is supposedly cured — renewal and reinstatement explained Corvid delayed gratification: what does the marshmallow test look like in birds? Why apps reward you like a pigeon Chomsky vs Skinner: the review that dismantled behaviorism's account of language Token economies in hospitals and prisons: what happened when the tokens stopped Context matters: why habits form faster in stable environments Why punishment rarely removes a behavior while reinforcement does How do you build a habit when the reward is weeks away? Can you train yourself out of freezing in an emergency? Cue routine reward: what the habit loop gets right and wrong The cognitive revolution buried behaviorism and kept its methods Drive reduction theory: why eating when hungry feels rewarding Systematic desensitization: fear built by conditioning and dismantled the same way What breaks the loop first: poor monitoring or impossible standards? Why removing the cue beats relying on willpower to stop Exposure therapy works by extinction not forgetting — what that means for relapse Breaking a habit loop: changing the routine but keeping the cue