Behavioral and Family Intervention Techniques: A Complete Guide to Modification Methods

Behavioral and Cognitive Intervention Techniques

Cognitive behavioral techniques focus on changing self-instructions, thoughts, verbalizations and internal processes, as well as the conduct a person displays toward others. Changing these internal instructions can help solve problems and accompany actions. Self-instructions are often given to children who start activities, especially in children with impulsive and hyperactive behaviors, learning difficulties and behaviors that are difficult to control.

Informal Family Support and Caregiving

Informal support is received within the family, where members understand the interactions among themselves and help one another regulate behaviors. Sports activities and the first steps toward an independent life are also part of this support. Caregiving is often called a burden with social, emotional, economic and psychological dimensions.

Contingency Contracts

A contingency contract is a technique to increase desirable behaviors that are absent or infrequent, based on the principle that increasing the positive behaviors that already exist in the subject's repertoire is more effective. A contract is an agreement in positive terms in which the parties commit to comply with the stipulations and respect one another. Contracts are based on equity and shared responsibility and are most useful in close interpersonal relationships.

Response Cost

The response cost technique is a Reduced-Flow Series of inappropriate behaviors or behaviors to be extinguished. It is a variant of fixed-ratio techniques: an economy of tokens is removed as reinforcers when the person displays the behavior to be extinguished. The tokens are removed immediately after the behavior is emitted. It is useful for controlling behavior in school, family and group settings, and is not useful or dangerous for people who obtain reinforcers easily or who have a history of punishment.

Ecomaps and Genograms

Ecograms are instruments that graphically describe the established relationships of effect and the agents that subsist alongside the family. They represent family members and the relationships among them, including the work, friends and community. Lines of varying thickness indicate the intensity of the established relationship. A genogram is an instrument that records information about family members, their dynamics and their relationships over generations, using different symbols for different situations.

Fixed Economy

A fixed economy is a versatile technique used in the health field, family therapy and orientation. It administers immediate reinforcement through fixed tokens that can be exchanged for valuable rewards. These tokens can take the form of any manipulable object, and their application is similar to response cost.

Guided Interviews

Guided interviews are applied in schools, workplaces and other settings to establish relationships that consolidate mutual understanding and promote the involvement and cooperation of families in students' educational processes.

Technical Interview Skills

Interview techniques are indicated for structuring a direct interview and progressively reaching the final objective. Active listening techniques facilitate understanding, encourage people to express their feelings and opinions, show empathy, and demonstrate neutrality toward views that coincide or differ with those of the interviewer.

Family Structure and Types

Anthropologically, the family is a structure of roles and ties based on blood (consanguinity) or marriage (affinity) that binds men and women and their children together. Family types include:

• Nuclear: father, mother and children who share a physical space. Subtypes include conjugal (the couple who share interests and aspirations), parental (the parent-child relationship), filial (the child's relationship with the parents) and fraternal (the relationships among siblings).
• Stem or multiple: multiple generations living under one roof (parents, children, grandparents).
• Extended: formed by parents and collateral relatives across generations (grandparents, uncles, parents, nephews, etc.).
• Single-parent: formed by one parent and minor children, due to separation, divorce, death or the spouse's absence.
• Reconstituted: a parent with a child from a previous household who forms a new family with another partner or spouse.
• Blended: members living in the same household without a legal contract certifying the union.
• Polygamous: a family in which a person maintains simultaneous conjugal relationships with two or more people of the opposite sex, recognized as spouses. These include polygyny (one man with several women) and polyandry (one woman with several men), the latter being less frequent.
• Individual households: formed by a single person for various reasons, such as separation, death or children's independence.
• Cohabiting or non-marital families: couples who live together without marriage.

Adoptive and Substitute Families

An adoptive family assumes the raising and non-biological development of children, who have the same legal consideration. A substitute family takes in a child temporarily when, for certain circumstances, the family environment of origin is inadequate for the child's development.

Familiograms and Discussion Groups

A familiogram is an instrument that records information about family members and their stable relationships and dynamics. Discussion groups are an instrument that allows small groups to exchange information on a topic and reach conclusions and consensus.

Systematic Desensitization and Reciprocal Inhibition

Systematic desensitization, or reciprocal inhibition, is a technique to eliminate anxiety by presenting stimuli that cause responses incompatible with anxiety, such as relaxation, in place of the anxious response.

Principles of Intervention

• Anthropological principle: the individual is free, unique and responsible for their actions, able to assume responsibilities, and subject to experiences and beliefs that cannot be transferred. Change requires attitudinal change.
• Evaluative principle: diagnosis is considered a scientific process that supports guidance.
• Prevention principle: prevention is classified as primary, secondary and tertiary.
• Development principle: human change is a continuous growth process in which quantitative changes eventually become qualitative changes that make each person more complex.

Mediation and Family Mediation

Mediation is a formal technique for the peaceful resolution of conflicts and disputes involving two or more people through a third party, the mediator. The mediator is impartial and neutral and does not make decisions for the participants, who retain responsibility. It helps the parties understand the underlying causes of conflict and is most useful when a total solution cannot be reached.

Family mediation addresses conflicts among family members, parents and children, or divorce. Its goal is to restore communication and relationships among family members and, if this is not possible, to prevent the consequences of possible family dissociation.

The family mediator is an impartial third party who helps two or more parties negotiate and reach a mutually acceptable solution.

Modeling Techniques

Modeling is a behavioral technique to foster the emergence of desirable behaviors. It has a dual purpose: the appearance of new behaviors and increasing the frequency of those that already exist. It consists of having the subject observe a model perform the behavior. Covert modeling is a variant that uses imagination to observe the model. It is used with children and in increasing social interaction in autistic children, among other applications.

Remedial modeling is an assistance-based, clinical approach in which the counselor diagnoses and prognoses the problem from their data and experience, seeking solutions through individualized intervention. Its character is remedial and also preventive.

Counseling modeling is a direct, individualized intervention in which the counselor and client relate through interviews, with the goal of changing behavior and helping the client advance their own evolution.

Shaping

Shaping is a behavioral technique to foster the emergence of desirable behaviors, reinforcing successive approximations toward the final behavior. It is used for family problems and is useful in alcohol consumption and long-term drug use.

Family Counseling

Family counseling aims to provide positive family dynamics, solve problems, make decisions and strengthen the family's own educational resources. It involves providing support, security and affection, transmitting values, facing and solving problems, and multidisciplinary, multiprofessional collaboration. Its objective is a better quality of life for family members.

Prevention

Prevention is a concept applied in education and other social matters. It involves identifying problematic situations and factors that cause them as a prerequisite for planning action. There are three levels:

• Primary prevention: prevents the emergence of problems and risks in family environments. When applied to families without risk, it is called general prevention.
• Secondary prevention: addresses problems once they manifest, alleviating negative effects and resolving the situation.
• Tertiary prevention: focuses on dysfunctions that have been affecting people over time, buffering losses and recovering from negative consequences to prevent further harm.

Reinforcement Techniques

Low-rate differential reinforcement is a technique used to reduce inappropriate behaviors. It reinforces only a predetermined number of responses within a given time, and if that number is not exceeded, reinforcement is not applied. It is useful for reducing excessive talking or getting out of one's seat in class.

Intermittent reinforcement is a technique to maintain modified behaviors. It consists of maintaining reinforcers for only some behaviors, which maintains expectation and motivation and does not induce satiety. It facilitates the emergence of intrinsic motivation and habit formation.

Intermittent fixed-interval reinforcement reinforces a behavior at a fixed time interval, maintaining behavior. Intermittent variable-interval reinforcement reinforces the behavior at variable time intervals, so the reward is always delivered at a different time. Intermittent fixed-ratio reinforcement gives reinforcement after a fixed number of responses; if the ratio is too high, the person may tire and lose motivation. Intermittent variable-ratio reinforcement reinforces variable numbers of responses, and reward is delivered immediately. It is useful for maintaining and learning behaviors.

Negative reinforcement is a technique to increase desirable behaviors that occur infrequently. It increases behaviors that are socially accepted by removing or reducing aversive stimuli. It is not the same as punishment, which eliminates disruptive or socially rejected responses.

Positive reinforcement is a technique to increase desirable behaviors by administering reinforcers or pleasant stimuli. It is applied in many settings and can have long-lasting effects when applied appropriately. Reinforcers can be natural or artificial, primary or secondary.

Problem Solving

Cognitive problem solving combines knowledge of behavioral techniques with previously acquired skills to face situations for which no known procedure exists. A problem is a discrepancy between the current state and the desired objective, with no apparent means of reaching it. A solution is any response that attempts to address the problem; effective solutions minimize negative costs and maximize positive outcomes.

Satiation and Negative Practice

Negative practice is an experience-based technique for reducing inappropriate behaviors. It involves implementing short-duration sessions with reinforcer saturation. It can be counterproductive if abused, as in a child who writes a sentence on the board repeatedly as a punishment. It should be used only after other techniques have failed.

Behavioral Techniques Overview

Behavioral techniques are based on experimental behavior analysis and grounded in classical and operant conditioning. They include:

• Techniques to foster or facilitate the appearance of behaviors: changing the physical environment, positive communication, verbal prompting, modeling, covert modeling, shaping, training through generalization, progressive stimulus fading and chaining.
• Techniques to increase desirable behaviors that are absent or infrequent: positive and negative reinforcement, the Premack principle and contingency contracts.
• Techniques to maintain modified behavior: intermittent reinforcement, intermittent fixed-interval, intermittent variable-interval, intermittent fixed-ratio and intermittent variable-ratio reinforcement.
• Techniques for inappropriate behaviors to be reduced or extinguished: low-rate differential reinforcement, differential reinforcement of other behaviors or omission, response cost, fixed economy, time-out, correction, negative practice, and punishment through application or removal.
• Techniques to eliminate anxiety: reciprocal inhibition or systematic desensitization, emotional imagery and muscle relaxation.
• Cognitive techniques: based on cognitive psychology, highlighting the role of perceptions, thoughts and beliefs in behavior, including self-recording, self-evaluation, self-assessment, self-reinforcement and self-instruction.