Behavior Modification - Assignment Example

Behavior Modification This is an assignment that will make me try to eliminate a behavior that I have been possessing since the first time I joined school. It is a behavior that I have perfected from the elementary school, which I must admit that it has really affected my performance academically and socially. I am in dire need to change the habit of sleeping in classroom during the afternoon sessions. It has been a mystery how I picked the habit, though I have tried to change the habit to no avail. Sometimes I just attend an afternoon classroom session and vow to myself that I won’t blink even for a single second, but unfortunately it just happens without realizing what has triggered it. I have chosen this behavior since I believe it has affected my academic performance, this is because the instructor could be pinpointing something important while am a sleep. I have also noticed that I feel asleep after I have taken food or snack, it is my usual to take food or even a heavy snack like a huge burger at mid-morning (12:00 pm). After four days of observing the situation and circumstance in which I sleep in classroom, I came to a conclusion that this usually happens when I am full due to taking hefty pizzas or burgers and fresh juice at mid-morning. One afternoon while the instructor came in the classroom and the lecture was prolonged, and had taken large chunk of pizza and juice I dozed off. Explaining this in classical condition terms: the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) is when I have taken a large chunk of snack, the unconditioned response (UCR) is dozing off, the conditioned stimuli (CS) is when am in class in the afternoon, and the conditioned response (CR) is dozing off in class in the afternoon classroom sessions. Examining the data I collected during the first four days of this assignment, I realized that there is a very strong relationship between the intervals that I slept and the amount of snack or food I had taken. As the days progressed there was no observable change regarding my dozing off, but the dozing off would was significantly smaller during the time I had taken small amount of food or snack. After the four days elapsed I decided to change this behavior of dozing off in classroom. The only way I could achieve this is by coming up with rewards and punishments. The main targeted behavior was sleeping in classroom sessions and the goal was to make sure that I don’t sleep in the classroom again. According to operant conditioning, to decrease this kind of behavior would be reduced by use of punishment. This situation requires use of negative punishment (removing unwanted behavior) to make sure that I don’t sleep in the classroom again. The fact that I love grilled chicken, I decided that I won’t take any grilled chicken in the afternoon. The removal of chicken from my evening mill is the punishment that I chose. I managed to attend all the sessions without dozing off, I would make sure that I treat myself with a large junk of grilled chicken. This would mean that I have successfully changed my behavior. Out of the four days that I was in the classroom I managed not to sleep the last two days, this was something that made me flabbergasted as compared to the days that I could doze off in the classroom. Though the behavior didn’t occur during the last days of the experiment, which I think it is because I missed the grilled chicken to a large extent. The negative punishment is helped me to a large extent change this behavior for the past four days. What I think helped me is the reinforcement, if the reinforcement wasn’t there I don’t think I would manage to avoid the behavior. Beside the reinforcement, I tried very hard to minimize the amount of snack I ate during the mid-morning. I noticed that the lesser snacks I took during the mid-morning reduced the probability of dozing off during the classroom. The classical condition approach was very useful to help me understand the behavior of dozing off during classroom more effectively. The behavior I had acquired for almost 13 years now, the first four days of the project made me realize the pattern triggered my dozing off. I was able to know why I used to doze off, and this was because I ate too much snacks during break time and a lot during mid-morning break. I would also have opted to use positive reinforcement for this project, I could decide to reward myself in the afternoon if I did not take the snacks. I chose this reward because it was more practical with me, grilled chicken is the best thing that I love. Operant condition was very useful in modification of my behavior, this was very successful due to application of negative reinforcement which is a constituent of classical conditioning. Positive reinforcement would have been very difficult to apply in my case since I cannot take chicken every time during the school hours that I didn’t sleep, I could have ended taking a full chicken before the day elapsed. As it can been concluded, “Operant conditioning, the antecedent stimulus does not directly elicit the response, as it does in classical conditioning. Instead the stimulus sets the occasion for a response to be reinforced. When an antecedent stimulus influences the likelihood that a response will occur, we call that stimulus a discriminative stimulus…and say that the response is under stimulus control” (Ormrod, 57). Work cited Ormrod, J. E. Human learning (5th Ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill/Prentice Hall. (2008). Print. Read More