Objective Behavior Paper

My target behavior for this assignment was to increase the amount of time I spend studying per week. I operationalized this target behavior by reading my lecture textbooks and rewriting notes from a lecture. I decided to use continuous, real-time recording because studying is a behavior that occurred very minimally throughout the week.

I recorded my data using a simple duration data sheet that was saved on my email. The data sheet had a column for every day of the week and I would record the number of hours I engaged in my target behavior daily. I was planning on engaging in this behavior exclusively in the library, however, I decided to also study in my dorm. I used a stopwatch app on my phone and stored the recordings on my email, since the app saved all recordings and allowed me to access and modify it anywhere. I used arranging reinforcers and punishers as my main self-management strategy. I was going to implement self-praise and instructions, however I …show more content…
Studying has caused my grades and happiness to go up which eventually turned studying into an automatic reinforcer that no longer needs social reinforcement. I still intermittently reinforce my behaviors by allowing myself break time, however I no longer need to implement punishment. I hope to fully get rid of the reinforcement by the end of the semester. The project taught me how to select an objective behavior and modify that behavior by using operational conditioning. I understand how to operationally define, record, and reinforce the behavior. I plan on using this technique in the future to help me increase healthy eating or decrease the amount of time I watch TV. As I stated before, I have learned an ample amount about behavior modification from this project and it really helped me understand the concepts that we read and talked about. This project is an important part of this class and I hope to do more self management in the