Behavioral Frame of Reference

3268 Words14 Pages
Behavioral Frame of Reference Introduction and Personal Psychology of Human Nature Behavior encompasses everything an individual does and is therefore integral to one’s performance patterns, client factors, performance skills, areas of occupations, context, and activity demands. When people are raised in safe, supportive, positive, and both mentally and physically healthy environments, they tend to exhibit adaptive behaviors in the aforementioned areas and lead fulfilling and successful lives. However, if individuals are raised in an environment that lacks one or more of the above prerequisites, it is possible that these individuals develop maladaptive behaviors. These maladaptive behaviors, acquired via faulty learning, create obstacles in the individuals’ learning environment and decrease quality of life. Behaviorally based occupational therapy can extinguish maladaptive behaviors while building skills that contribute to occupational performance via numerous assessments and interventions. Theorists and Major Concepts of the Behavioral FOR Numerous psychologists, counselors, and behavioral scientists such as Pavlov, Bower, Hilgard, Clayton, Tolman, Bandura, Skinner, Dollard, and more have made significant contributions to the behavioral frame of reference. When one thinks of behaviorism, it is common to first think about Pavlov’s classical conditioning. Pavlov stumbled upon classical conditioning while studying the digestion of dogs. Classical conditioning occurs when a new stimulus becomes capable of evoking a given response when that new stimulus is presented together with a stimulus that already evokes that response. How this occurred with Pavlov’s dogs is that when Pavlov or his assistants (dressed in white coats), would place food in front of the dogs, they would start salivating. What started to happen was that the dogs would begin to

More about Behavioral Frame of Reference

Open Document