Behavior therapy techniques applied to eating, exercise, and diet modification in childhood obesity.

Behavior therapy techniques are receiving increasing attention in the treatment of childhood obesity. This paper provides a selective review of experimental studies of childhood obesity that have utilized behavior therapy techniques with preadolescent populations. It further defines and describes specific behavior therapy techniques utilized in the modification of eating, exercise, and diet patterns in childhood obesity, including stimulus control, stimulus and response generalization, prompting, positive reinforcement, shaping, contingency contracting, and generalization and maintenance strategies.