Current Therapeutic Interventions: When chronic pain can not be fully alleviated, the optimal goal is for the patient to learn effective ways to continue functioning and to self-manage pain; several therapeutic programs have been developed, based on theories of health behavior change, to assist the patient in this process. The earliest of these, the operant learning model developed by Wilbert Fordyce and colleagues in the late 1970s, demonstrated that individuals could be induced to alter their behavior - specifically, to engage in active exercise and limit dependence on medication - in response to social and other forms of positive reinforcement. Fordyce's program proved helpful to many patients, but was criticized for its determinist emphasis on observable behavior and disregard of the fact that patients are "active information processors", and that their behavior is not merely a response to learned cues but shaped by cognitive processes, such as expectations of increasing pain or anxieties about physiological harm.