Abstract
1) From the behavioural point of view, the bronchial asthma is considered to become protracted or aggravated through the mechanism of classical conditioning and/or operant conditioning.2) The newly-designed procedure of in vivo desensitizaton of acetylcholine-induced attacks was very effective to extinguish the anxiety which was conditioned to the asthmatic attacks.3) It was suggested that the operant conditioning mechanism was the most important factor in protraction and aggravation of asthma. At the same time, therapeutic procedure of anxiety reduction and of reinforcer-blocking are necessary in the case of this type of asthma, but it is very difficult to put it into practice. Only the application of modified time-out procedure was demonstrated to show a possibility for solving this problem.
