Kenneth Silverman, John M. Roll, & Stephen T. Higgins. (2008)
Introduction to the special issue on the behavior analysis and treatment of drug addiction.
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis,
41, 471-480.
Extensive evidence from the laboratory and the clinic suggests that drug
addiction can be viewed as operant behavior and effectively treated through
the application of principles of operant conditioning. Contingency
management interventions that arrange for the direct reinforcement of drug
abstinence or of other therapeutically important target behaviors (e.g., regular
use of drug abuse treatment medications) are among the most studied type of
operant treatments. Behavior analysts have contributed to the substantial and
rapidly growing literature on operant treatments for drug addiction, but the
publications of this work usually appear in medical, clinical psychology, or
drug abuse journals. This special issue of the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis
represents an effort to bring this important work to the attention of the
behavior-analytic community. The articles in this special issue illustrate both
the enormous potential of contingency management interventions to address the
serious and seemingly intractable problem of drug addiction as well as the real
challenges involved in attempting to develop and disseminate treatments that will
produce substantial and lasting changes in the lives of individuals plagued
by the chronic problem of drug addiction.
DESCRIPTORS: abstinence reinforcement, contingency management, drug abuse, drug addiction, operant conditioning