Behavioral Medicine Glossary
100 terms total — 24 showing — Last updated 15 Sep 2026
Contingency Management
A behavioral intervention that provides tangible rewards for achieving specific behavioral goals or treatment milestones.
Functional Communication Training
An intervention that teaches appropriate communication responses to replace problematic behaviors.
Habit Reversal Training
A behavioral intervention that teaches awareness and competing responses to reduce repetitive problem behaviors.
Health Action Process Approach
Theoretical model distinguishing between motivational and volitional phases of health behavior change.
Health Belief Model
A theoretical framework explaining health behavior based on individual beliefs about health threats and benefits.
Matching Law
A quantitative principle stating that the rate of behavior allocation matches the relative rate of reinforcement.
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction
A structured program that uses mindfulness meditation to reduce stress and improve health outcomes.
Momentary Assessment Protocol
Structured procedure for collecting real-time behavioral and psychological data from participants in their natural envir...
Motivational Interviewing
A collaborative counseling style that strengthens personal motivation for change by exploring and resolving ambivalence.
Multiple Baseline Design
A research methodology that introduces interventions sequentially across different behaviors, participants, or settings.
Operant Conditioning
A learning process where behavior is modified by consequences such as rewards and punishments.
Preference Assessment
Systematic procedures used to identify potentially effective reinforcers for an individual.
Premack Principle
The reinforcement principle that high-probability behaviors can reinforce low-probability behaviors.
Psychoeducation
Educational intervention that provides patients and families with information about mental health conditions, treatments...
Psychophysiology
The study of the relationship between psychological processes and physiological responses in the body.
Relapse Prevention
A cognitive-behavioral approach designed to help patients maintain treatment gains and prevent return to problematic beh...
Response Class
Group of topographically different behaviors that serve the same function or produce similar environmental consequences.
Response Cost
A punishment procedure involving the removal of a specific amount of reinforcer contingent upon inappropriate behavior.
Response Generalization
The spread of training effects to untrained responses that share common features with trained behaviors.
Response Satiation
A procedure where undesired behaviors are reduced by requiring their repetitive performance until they become aversive o...
Resurgence
The reemergence of previously extinguished behavior when alternative behaviors are disrupted.
Schedule-Induced Behavior
Excessive behaviors that emerge as side effects of intermittent reinforcement schedules.
Self-Efficacy Scale
A standardized assessment tool measuring an individual's confidence in their ability to perform specific health-related...
Stimulus Control
A behavioral technique that modifies environmental cues to influence the likelihood of specific behaviors.
SUDS Rating
A subjective numerical scale used to measure the intensity of anxiety, distress, or other emotional states during therap...