"...a significant proportion, about 15 percent, reported they shopped in corner stores both before and after school, five days a week, consuming up to 3,560 calories per week in junk food and soft drinks. For these children, the corner store is a potential health threat."
http://www.miller-mccune.com/business-economics/little-stores-and-fatter-kids-6818/
What are the ABCs related to this story? In behavioral terms what are people try to do about it?
This story reminded me of a video I posted for Motivation and Emotion so I thought I would post it here as well: http://www.ted.com/talks/jamie_oliver.html
A:Children walk to school in the morning
B: the children food elicited a positive reaction from the children because it was inexpensive, which emitted a purchasing and consumption behavior
C: increase in corner stores due to positive reinforcement of obtaining many patrons. As well as an increase in weight gain and decrease in health of those many patrons.
A: Children solicit corner stores frequently
B: Adults elicits a positive reinforcer by creating the Healthy Corner Store initiative, which emits the behavior of bringing healthy foods to corner stores
C: healthy foods are at an easy access to children
Terms: Positive reinforcement, emit, elicit,
This was a very interesting story to me, as I grew up in an area without corner stores like those described. The ABCs of the children's behavior:
A=Children walk past corner stores.
B=Children purchase junk food at corner stores.
C=Children's health is compromised.
The article indicates that the children emit this behavior of buying lots of junk food because of a lack of promotion of healthy foods. The article describes several possible discriminative stimuli, such as the fact that children are not eating their healthy lunches at school, and the fact that the stores do not tend to carry healthy food. These children are being positively reinforced for not eating their lunch at school too, because if they don't then they will be hungry for the tastier food from the corner store. What they don't realize is that they will likely be punished for their behavior in the future with heart attacks and failed health. However, since this positive punishment is not enforced very quickly, it loses its effectiveness as a behavior modification motivator. The authors of this article hope it use intervention and make it so the corner stores elicit different behaviors. They hope to achieve the following behavior:
A=Children walk past corner store.
B=Children buy healthier foods to eat.
C=Children's health is improved.
Terms: Emit, elicit, intervention, discriminative stimulus, positive reinforcement, positive punishment
The number of terms used is six.
This article has many overlapping factors affecting the overall environment of both the consumer and the corner store. First, the corner stores are playing to the physiological and psychological needs of the kids. Physiologically, the kids need to satisfy their hunger. Combine that with the perception that it's "uncool" to eat in the cafeteria under the watchful eyes of adults and you end up with the situation at hand. If it was healthy food as the initiative is trying to institute in the corner stores, it wouldn't be near the problem it is now. Instead, it's junk food, filled with calories, which quickly satisfies their behavioral cravings they emit before and after school. Thus, the kids are being reinforced when they shop at these corner stores. Stay at school and eat in the cafeteria and you're punished as your "rep" goes down the drain. This, alongside other antecedents (such as the kids being allowed to roam free during lunch), leads to this unhealthy behavior. Unless their behavior is modified, their actions will not change.
Even if they do institute healthier options at the store, what is going to motivate these kids to choose that food over their normal junk food? The price of junk food is cheap and these healthier options will elicit negative reactions among the core group of kids who are financially challenged. I think health awareness would need to be raised within the school to have a truly successful intervention.
From the businesses perspective, what is the corner store's motivation to do this? If they are positively reinforced with profits, the change will occur. But if they try this change and the kids resist the healthier options, they will find other corner stores who refuse to follow this health initiative (probably in order to maintain business).
Terms: Behavior, Consequence, Antecedent, Intervention, physiological, psychological, motivation, Elicit, Emit, Positive Reinforcment, Punishment, Envirionment, Needs (13)
The ideas for revamping corner stores to be more healthy and nutritional for their frequent after-school shoppers are related to bmod in several aspects.
A= not cool to eat in cafeteria elicits hunger which sets the occasion for
B= emitting the behavior of buying snacks at the corner store, which results in
C= satisfying hunger and increasing the company's business.
The desired target behavior, however, is to get children to emit the behavior of buying more healthier and nutritional food products.
Brianna Sandoval from the Food Trust in Philadelphia would like to recruit these corner stores to sell more nutritional and healthy products for the children and teens that frequently shop there to curb obesity and unhealthy eating habits. Through social marketing, Sandoval is trying to incorporate kids in the promotion of healthier food items in corner stores. The students came up with the logo "Snackin' Fresh." In order to make this effort successful, Sandoval has to win over the trust of business owners and motivate children to emit in buying more healthy products from corner stores. This could be an example of shaping. Sandoval works her way up, first by incorporating kids to come up with catchy, "cool" logos and slogans that appeal to children. Then she encourages children to try those products with labels of those logos and slogans. Hopefully the children will be reinforced by the products so they buy them in the future over less nutritional products. She is also shaping the corner stores. First, by making them aware of the health risks of their frequent customers. Then by trying to recruit them to sell healthier products and gain their trust. Then building them up to sell even perishable items such as fruit.
Terms: shaping, bmod, ABCs, elicits, sets the occasion for, emitting, desired, target behavior, reinforced (9)
I think this article shows just how convenient it is to purchase junk food and how reinforcing or punishing it is, depending on a child, business owner, or health educator's perspective. The corner stores elicit the children to emitt a purchase and consumption behavior as they walk past them before and after school.
Thus,
A= Kids walking to and from school
B= Kids purchase cheap junk food and consume unhealthy calories
C= Vendors maintain steady business, obesity among children
This article indicates that children emit the behavior of buying lots of junk food before and after school for several reasons. Thus, there are several factors that serve as discriminative stimuli; these include: lack of transportation, living in a poor neighborhood, having little money, unavailability of nutritious food, and being looked down upon for eating in the cafeteria. The children are positively reinforced for eating unhealthy food because its cheaper to get full on junk food than it is healthy foods like fruits and vegetables. However, many children dont realize or take into account that the eating behaviors they are emitting now, will most likely punish them in the future, as obesity often leads to heart disease, diabetes and many other major health problems. The business owners are also being reinforced because they have consistent customers and their sales are good.
In order to modify childrens unhealthy eating behaviors and fight obesity, the authors offer intervention ideas. The desired target behavior is to recruit corner stores to carry and sell more nutritional food. Hopefully having more nutritious food available will elicit the children to emit healthier eating behaviors.
In order for this to happen, both the business owners and childrens behaviors need to be shaped so that stores will offer healthier options and children will buy them. The intervention includes health awareness about obesity, active participation among students to promote nutrition and vendor cooperation.
Terms: bmod, ABCs, elicit, emit, target behavior, reinforcement, punishment, discriminative stimulus
A=Children walking to school in the morning, lack of time to eat at home, and it is not desireable to eat at school
B=Children stop at the corner store and buy cheap junk food
C=Children are putting their health at risk.
In this article I think there are many Antecedents that factor into the resulting behavior of these children. In order to solve this problem Sandoval had developed some desired targets behaaviors. Some of these target behaviors are educate the children on the unhealthy food and how to change their relationship with the food. Sandoval has placed signs reading "Snack Fresh" and "Fresh is Best" as a way to get the message accorss to the 4-6th graders as a wau to attemped to counter act the reinforcement the children recieve when purchasing the junkfood. The junk food has slowly been used as a shaping behavior for both the children and the store owners. By putting some candy for sale, or placing it in the window the children are drawn in. After a while the store tends to advertise and make more junkfood readily available for the children, elicting the children to buy more reinforcing the store owner by coming back for more. If this situation were reverse, and the store owners put bananas, apples, and oranges for sale at a cheaper price than the candy, along with juice and water then the shaping could be reversed.
Terms: Antecedent, Behavior, Consequence, Shaping
A-Kids don't like the lunches the school is serving them so they don't eat them.
B-Kids are going to this corner schools and buying unhealthy food to eat.
C-Kids stop eating school lunches all together and only eat at the corner stores. Kids are now becoming obese because of this.
Schools need to obviously change their meal plans to not only be healthy and but appealing to kids so that they will eat them instead of going to the corner market. Also, the corner markets have to do a better job of incorporating healthy food in their stores. The way things are now kids are being reinforced by the corner stores because they have food they want to eat and the kids are being punished at school because they are served food that is adverse to them. Another thing corner stores can do is make health foods cheaper for kids to buy after school. You can reinforce the eating of healthy food by making it cheaper so kids can buy more of the healthy food and less of the unhealthy food which costs more.