Introduction

Covert conditioning is an approach to mental health treatment that utilises the principles of applied behaviour analysis, or cognitive-behaviour therapies (CBTs) to help individuals improve their behaviour or inner experience. This method relies on the individual’s ability to use imagery for purposes such as mental rehearsal. In some populations, it has been found that an imaginary reward can be as effective as a real one. The effectiveness of covert conditioning is believed to depend on the careful application of behavioural treatment principles, including a comprehensive behavioural analysis.

Some clinicians include the mind’s ability to spontaneously generate imagery that can provide intuitive solutions or even reprocessing that improves people’s typical reactions to situations or inner material. However, this goes beyond the behaviouristic principles on which covert conditioning is based.

Therapies and self-help methods have aspects of covert conditioning. This can be seen in focusing, some neuro-linguistic programming methods such as future pacing, and various visualisation or imaginal processes used in behaviour therapies, such as CBTs or clinical behaviour analysis.

Therapeutic Interventions

“Systematic desensitisation” associates an aversive stimulus with a behaviour that the client wishes to reduce or eliminate. This is achieved by imagining the target behaviour followed by imagining an aversive consequence. “Covert extinction” attempts to reduce a behaviour by imagining the target behaviour while imagining that the reinforcer does not occur. “Covert response cost” seeks to reduce a behaviour by associating the loss of a reinforcer with the target behaviour that is to be decreased.

“Contact desensitisation” intends to increase a behaviour by imagining a reinforcing experience in connection with modelling the correct behaviour. “Covert negative reinforcement” attempts to increase a behaviour by connecting the termination of an aversive stimulus with increased production of a target behaviour.

“Dialectical behaviour therapy” (DBT) and “Acceptance and commitment therapy” (ACT) uses positive reinforcement and covert conditioning through mindfulness.

Effectiveness

Previous research in the early 1990s has shown covert conditioning to be effective with sex offenders as part of a behaviour modification treatment package. Clinical studies continue to find it effective with some generalisation from office to natural environment with this population.

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_conditioning >; it is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License (CC-BY-SA). You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the CC-BY-SA.