Which term best describes rewarding successive approximations of a target behavior?

shaping

Explanation:

Psychology broadly includes the scientific study of the mind and human behavior and contains many subspecialties which include: clinical human development, social behavior, and the human cognitive process. Shaping is used in the experimental analysis of behavior in human psychology.

It cements behavior an individual is not already learning or exhibiting. Successive approximations involve progressive trials in which the individual's response is altered over time to a specific behavior. This is often used to train lab animals' operant responses, where the behavior is modified via punishment and reward; or humans' applied behavioral analysis where social behaviors are changed or modified to more desirable ones.