Contingency Management

Description of the Strategy

The origins of contingency management lie within the work of B. F. Skinner, the pioneer of behavior analysis. In the early 1950s, Skinner proposed that the same learning principles used as a paradigm for animal research could be adapted to human applications. By the mid 1960s, behavior modification was applied to children with mental retardation, hyperactive behavior, delinquency, and autism. These populations previously were thought of as “resistant” to treatment, and the use of behavior modification greatly improved the quality of care for these children. By the late 1960s, several texts regarding the application of contingency management to education and parenting applications were published, and contingency management has been a key feature of behavioral treatments targeting childhood disorders since ...