Modification of My Behavior - Assignment Example

Behavior modification assignment I have had this behavior of chewing my tongue for a long time. This happens most of the time especially when I am anxious about something or stressed.it is a bad habit that I want to eliminate since my friends keep complaining to me about how much it irritates them. Sometimes I don’t even realize that I am doing it and it is worse since I also produce some sound that may interfere with people’s peace. Eliminating this behavior would be the best thing that can happen to me, but even decreasing how much I do it would not such a bad achievement. When with my friends they keep complaining that I chew my tongue continuously and they get distracted when discussing and besides they don’t like this habit. I am therefore going to work to eliminate this bad habit in any way possible. I am going to change this habit not only because of my friends complaints but because it embarrasses me and when I start doing it I get lost in it and stops performing anything and this affects my class work. I started observing this behavior closely and after four days of this I noted that I do it especially when anxious about something or is stressed. I must confess this is not something that started recently but has been a habit from before. Whenever I’m in class or with friends or anywhere I chew my tongue.to put this in classical conditioning terms: the unconditioned stimulus(UCS) is chewing tongue, the conditioned stimulus (CS) is when with friends or in class and the conditioned response is chewing tongue in response to being in class and around friends. After observing the data I collected during the first four days of this assignment there is some sort of a correlation between the numbers of instances I chewed my tongue and the days. On the first day I chewed my tongue a lot during class, but as the days went on the instances observed started to decrease. On the fourth day my numbers of the instances observed reduced. It’s only at one time between 10:15 to 11:30 that I noticed that the number of times I chewed my tongue did not decrease; it was almost the same as day two. I feel that the number of instances Observed became small because I actually started to realize when I was chewing my tongue. Since I have been chewing my tongue, I have never been conscious of this habit and became more aware of it since this assignment was issued. Since I Had to be aware and record how many times I chewed my tongue during class and with friends I did it less. The next 4 days I needed to try and change my behavior of chewing my tongue, which I kind of started to do during the first four days. For me to achieve this I had to figure out rewards and punishments. In my situation the target Behavior is chewing my tongue, and my objective was to decrease it. According to operant conditioning, in order to decrease this unwanted behavior of mine I need to use punishment. For this situation, I’m going to use negative punishment (the removal of something I want) as a way to help stop chewing my tongue. I decided I was not going to get myself a bar of candy at the end of the day if I chew my tongue in class or when with friends. Elimination of getting a bar of candy was my punishment, since I thought missing out on something I really wanted would be effective in changing my behavior and I really like bars of candy. If I could get through all of my classes for the day without chewing my tongue I could get myself a bar of candy. If I chewed my tongue in one of my classes I would not be able to have a bar of candy that day. I must confess I was successful in changing this behavior. I noticed positive change, I was able to not chew my tongue in over half of my classes in the four days I tried to change my behavior. This is the best thing, the achievement compared to in the past when I could chew my tongue more than 3 times in class. I want to completely eliminate this behavior so I’m going to continue work on it as I believe I can do it.this form of negative punishment is definitely helpful as it helped me change my behavior in those four days. Modifying my behavior willingly would not happen if not for the punishment. During the four days I avoided the behavior because I wanted my bar of candy. I looked up to the bar of candy and that kept me working harder to change my behavior. I kept myself busy discussing with friends in class and studying to avoid practicing the habit. The classical conditioning approach was more useful for understanding my behavior of chewing my tongue. I had never noticed I was chewing my tongue until recently but it’s something that happened. The first four days of this assignment is when I started to realize that I was chewing my tongue in class every time I was feeling anxious and stressed. So classical conditioning helped me recognize the reason for why I crack my knuckles. This type of Operant conditioning was very useful in modifying my behavior. This is because of negative punishment, which is a part of operant conditioning.one other way of behavior modification could have been positive approach,rewarding.i could have rewarded myself with candies after every class and also participated in group discussions. Rewarding myself could not have reduced the number of times I chewed my tongue but also increased the number of group discussions I attended. Behavior modification data sheet: Date Time Interval (e.g., 12:30-1:00pm) Instances observed OR Duration of behavior during self-observation period Situational factors (e.g., work, stress, class) 12/1 10:15-11:30 12 Very anxious in this class 12/2 10:30-11:45 9 12/2 1:30-2:45 5 12/2 3:15-4:30 8 12/3 10:15-11:30 11 Very anxious in this class 12/4 10:30-11:45 6 12/4 1:30-2:45 4 12/4 3:15-4:30 5 Behavior modification worksheet: Date Time interval (e.g., 12:30-1:00) Successful modification session? (check or no check) 12/8 10:15-11:30 12/9 10:30-11:45 12/9 1:30-2:45 12/9 3:15-4.30 12/10 10:15-11:30 12/11 10:30-11:45 12/11 1:30-2:45 12/11 3:15-4:30 Work citations Krumboltz,j and krumboltz,h;changing children’s behavior(1972) Read More