This is a behavior assigment, Think of a person (real or hypothetical) who engag

Question

This is a behavior assigment,

Think of a person (real or hypothetical) who engages in (or fails to engage in) a specific behavior. Your assignment is to come up with an operant conditioning plan to change this person’s behavior. In doing so, you should address the following questions:

Describe the behavior you would like to encourage (or discourage).

Describe the operant conditioning plan you will employ to alter the behavior. Will you be using reinforcement, punishment, or both? Positive or negative? Why did you make these choices?

How will you modify your plan if it does not produce sufficient results?

What aspects of your plan will ensure that the behavior change you produce lasts for a long time?

Explanation / Answer

Behavior that Mr. M would like to change is a very common behavior. It is the behavior of smoking, a bad habit that has left Mr. M with many health issues. Due to this Mr. M has been a frequent visitor to hospital due to his bad health, thus, piling on medical bills and causing a small financial problem in his house. Mrs. M has threatened to leave the house if this habit does not stop as more visits to hospital might not only bring debts to house but might also cause Mr. M to die early.

So, to make sure Mr. M stops smoking, Mr. M will need to change his behavior using operant conditioning. Shaping of good behavior is only possible by operant conditioning, as it requires me the client to make the response for it. Mr. M will have to operate on his habit to shape it. At home Mr. M and his wife will be responsible for seeing to it that Mr. M smokes or not. At the work place, Mr. M and his friend who works in same cubicle as him will see to the number of responses of smoking.

Easy way to do this can be by the use of rewarding and punishing of behavior using a Fixed Interval Schedule. So, the Fixed Interval Schedule would require Mr. M to reward or punish himself after a fixed amount of time (here the interval will be taken as the end of the day). Whenever, Mr. M will decide to not smoke, he will reward himself by treating himself to something he likes using that amount of money. Since, Mr. M is fond of cupcakes, he can treat himself to one cupcake at the end of the day for not smoking for one whole day. If, Mr. M slips even once, he will not only have to forgo the cupcake, Mr. M will also have to do the dishes. (Mr. M hates to do the dishes). This will be the punishment that Mr. M will be subjected to if he slips and smokes.

Mr. M seems to be very fond of cupcakes, so using it as reward will help reinforce the behavior of forgoing the temptation to smoke. It is the only reward that seems to have a huge effect on Mr. M, other rewards seem to have less powerful effects as compared to cupcakes. By looking forward to eating cupcake, Mr. M will be able to overcome his temptation to smoke. In the same way, Mr. M hates doing the dishes. He hates scrubbing the grime of the dirty plates, this produces a huge negative effect for Mr. M. The fear of doing the dishes will help reinforce the aversiveness to smoking.

To make sure the plan does not fail and to assure its longevity, use of nicotine patch or chewing of gums can be used to counter the temptation of smoking. Nicotine patch will help ensure that Mr. M does not smoke. As the patches have been seen to be effective on many individuals it might also work on Mr. M. Chewing gum is another effective and less expensive alternative to patch. If Mr. M has already something in his mouth, he will give up the tendency to smoke. According to Freud, orally fixated individuals have tendency to have an active mouth, this might be one of the reason Mr. M smokes. So if it can be replaced with other, less damaging activity of mouth, it might help.

The chances of this treatment being successful is more. Just in case it fails, more stringer aversive techniques can be used to make sure that Mr. M does not smoke. If Mr. M smokes, he will be given a pill or food that makes him vomit. This kind of punishment or aversive technique will completely take Mr. M off the smoking habit. But this will be used as last resort. Currently, the chances of success with previous treatment is high.

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