| Abstract: | Reviews the book, Behavior Modification: What It Is And How To Do It (Second Edition) by Garry Martin and Joseph Pear. Behavior Modification: What It Is And How To Do It is a very accurate title. The text is not a survey of the many different kinds of problems to which behavioural technology has been applied. Rather, it teaches the basic concepts of operant and respondent behaviour within the confines of specific areas of application with children and adults. The reviewer highly recommends Behavior Modification: What It Is And How To Do It as an excellent, rigorous, flexible, and reportedly very readable text for both undergraduate and graduate student courses for which the content is appropriate. I would hope, however, that the authors would consider offering a test bank of multiple-choice questions (preferably on microcomputer diskettes, which are becoming increasingly common) so that the text could be more easily adapted to Mastery Learning techniques which do require very frequent examinations. An already excellent textbook, with this additional capability, could make what is now a significant contribution into a classic contribution to the teaching of the concepts and techniques of behaviour analysis! (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
