Counterconditioning

Description of the Strategy

Counterconditioning, as a behavioral intervention for emotional or behavioral problems in children, involves the reduction of a target behavior (CR1) through the introduction competing response (CR2). This may be accomplished by presenting a conditioned stimulus (CS2) for the competing response at the same time as the previously conditioned stimulus (CS1) for the target behavior. Alternatively, the target behavior may be ignored while the competing response is reinforced. In other words, an undesired emotional response or behavior is reduced over time by the repeated practice of an incompatible emotion or behavior. For example, it has been demonstrated that anger can be eliminated with the use of humor, presumably because humor induces an incompatible emotion state to that of anger. Unwanted ...