children her own age, you can watch the child on the playground during
several recesses. However, the therapist can ’t be everywhere. The therapist
probably won ’t be around when a socially phobic person goes on a job inter-
view or a married couple has an argument. In these cases, the psychologist
might rely on analogue behavioral observation (Haynes, 2001). That is, the
therapist creates a situation that resembles the real-world setting in which the
problem behavior is likely to occur. For example, a therapist might stage a
dance for clients suffering from acute shyness or ask a couple to enter into adiscussion that recently sparked a disagreement. Occasionally behavior thera-
pists ask clients to role-play. A therapist helping a man to be more assertive
might ask the client to imagine that someone just cut in front of him in line.
The client then acts out what he would do in that situation. In this case, the
way the client acts in the role-playing exercise is probably similar to the way
he acts when confronting real-life situations.
However, good behavioral assessment requires more than simply observ-
ing a person. The behaviors to be observed must first be defined as precisely
as possible. This is fairly simple when talking about the number of cigarettessmoked, but what if the target behavior is “appropriate classroom responses ”?
In this case the therapist might define appropriate responses as those relevant
to the topic being discussed or those in which the child waits for recognition
before speaking. But even these definitions leave considerable room for ob-
server interpretation. A good definition includes examples of behaviors to be
counted and rules for dealing with borderline cases.
One way to improve the accuracy of behavior observation is to have two or
more observers independently code the same behaviors. For example, twojudges can watch the same child during the same set of recesses. If the two
largely agree on how often they count the target behavior, we can be confident
that the number is fairly accurate. However, if one coder sees few behaviors and
a second coder sees many, we have no idea how often the target behavior actu-ally occurs. One solution is to videotape the behavior so that many different
judges can be used and disagreements can be resolved by replaying the tape.
Behavior therapists must also be concerned about bias. Sometimes observersunintentionally see what they want or what they expect to see. To guard against
this problem, therapists should define behaviors in a manner that minimizes
subjective judgment. If possible, they can use observers who don’ t know what
the therapist expects to find.
Self-Monitoring
Although direct observation provides a relatively accurate assessment of behavior
frequency, it is often too costly and time consuming to be useful. An alternative isself-monitoring —clients observing themselves. However, simply asking clients
how often they engage in a certain act may be of little help. Clients frequently
have a distorted idea about how often a behavior occurs. In addition, it is usually
important to understand the circumstan ces surrounding the behavior. Are there
places the client is particularly likely t o smoke, such as with certain friends or at
a party? Is the smoking associated with a certain time of day, a certain type ofactivity, or a certain mood?366 CHAPTER 13 The Behavioral/Social Learning Approach