Preparation- Select Option A or Option B below as the focus of your assessment:
Option A
Carrie Ann has a tendency to procrastinate before completing her assignments. Between family, job, and school work, she has a busy schedule and often does not feel up to the task of trying to understand what is expected for assignments. Between her busy schedule and anxiety about doing the tasks required for assignments, she tends to wait until the day before an assignment is due to begin work on it. Because her work is rushed, she ends up not doing her best work. She would very much like to begin her work sooner, but each time she has an assignment due she ends up repeating the procrastination. Carrie Ann has decided to use operant conditioning principles to help her develop better habits in completing assignments. Carrie Ann will need to develop a target goal and plan for herself.
Option B
Identify a goal that you have for yourself. It could be personal, financial, professional, educational, or health related. Think specifically and realistically about the goal. For example, for a person who wanted to lose 25 pounds, it would not be realistic to plan to lose 20 pounds in one week. Once you have identified your specific and realistic goal, think about how operant conditioning behavioral learning principles can be used to help you reach the goal. Create a plan for meeting the goal by applying operant conditioning behavioral learning principles.
Directions
For Both Option A and Option B
Describe a plan for meeting a goal. Include the following elements in the description of your change plan:
• Describe the specific goal.
• Describe how the concept of "shaping" (a behavioral learning theory term) can be employed to help in incremental progress toward the goal. Identify what reinforcers (both primary and secondary) you could apply to make progress toward the goal.
• Describe the schedule of reinforcement for the application of the reinforcers. For example, the person losing weight (described in Option B) might treat himself to a movie for the first week where he exercised for at least 40 minutes each day. In this case, the movie would be a positive primary reinforcer delivered on a fixed ratio schedule.
Behavioral terms to apply in the change plan:
• Shaping.
• Positive Reinforcement (You can also use negative reinforcement if it applies to your goal).
o Use one or both of the following in your plan (at least one must be included):
-Primary reinforcers.
-Secondary reinforcers.
• Schedule of Reinforcement (one or more of the following):
o Fixed ratio.
o Variable ratio.
o Fixed interval.
o Variable interval.
Include the following information:
• Provide an introduction that discusses operant conditioning behavioral learning principles and how they are relevant to changing behavior.
• Identify a specific target goal for a behavior change plan.
• Describe a behavioral plan.
• Describe how the behavior can be shaped through operant conditioning principles.
• Identify and apply specific rein forcers that are part of the plan.
• Apply a schedule of reinforcement that would be used for each reinforcer that is part of the plan.
• Using information from at least two scholarly sources, describe what research shows about how operant conditioning can be used to change behavior.