Our Behavioral Story
Recall the other week we had an assignment to work on a behavioral story as a class. It worked out pretty good, actually it is pretty funny - clearly this class has a great sense of humor which makes this fun to read.
You might want to go back and see how we did and see if there is anything you/we can do to make it evolve and grow with the class and with our understanding of the material.
http://www.psychologicalscience.com/bmod/2010/09/behavioral-story.html#comments
What I would like this time is to make the story a little more challenging and to try to get you to use more of the terms and terminology that we have learned so far in class.
When you write your section of the story, you can use any of the terms we have learned so far BUT one term has to be an original term to the entire story so far - inother wordsw it can't have been used already in the story.
So that we know what your original word is please write that one original word in CAPS. Just so it makes it easier on the rest of us.
We will start the story by picking up near where the last story left off.
"My counselor decided that the most obvious targeted behavior that needed to be controlled was the obnoxious screaming that was emitted whenever the counselor began to talk."
My counselor decided that the most obvious TARGET BEHAVIOR that needed to be controlled was the obnoxious screaming that was emitted whenever the counselor began to talk."
(Note to Class): Notice how only on word is in CAPS even though other words such as emitted is used. This means that target behavior can't be used again, but emitted can.
My counselor had a few different ideas. First, I taped my mouth shut. My counselor thought that DEPRIVATION of my own voice would make the privilege of talking more reinforcing, but this idea backfired because I found that emitting a screaming behavior was reinforcing.
In order to make the punishment of adding tape to avoid the obnoxious screaming, the counselor made an unethical decision to staple the tape to my mouth. This was the counselor's clever application of positive punishment.
KEYWORD: POSITIVE PUNISHMENT
Unfortunately when my counselor emitted the behavior of stapling the tape to my mouth, it ELICITED a screaming behavior from behind the tape, which forced him to remove it, externally reinforcing the screaming behavior, which was already self reinforced anyway.
Upon the removal of the staple-ridden tape from my fast-swelling lips, the holes in my face in which the staples had once been housed began to EMIT a river of blood, staining my face as a result. While these events could easily be seen to have blown up in my counselor's face, he is a witty chap and decided to hold a mirror in front of my face. I am deathly afraid of blood and, at the sight of my own on my face, a internal punishment was taking place and I continued to scream no more.
Wow, this is getting gruesome!
Anyway,
Not only was stapling the tape to my mouth aversive, being forced to see my own bloody face in the mirror served as an ESTABLISHING OPERATION causing the already horrible and unethical punishment to be even more punishing.
Because the counselor used my blood as an establishing operation I did decrease the screaming behavior. However I then saw a snake on my walk home which served as a DISCRIMINATIVE STIMULUS causing me to emit the screaming behavior once again.
The reaction to the snake was a CONDITIONED RESPONSE. Years prior, my brother decided it would be a good idea to unleash his python in my room while I was sleeping. The scales of its skin elicited me to jump up and emit my now world-famous screaming behavior.
My friend was walking with me when I emitted the screaming behavior and due to my roommates high sensitivity to sound, this behavior was extremely AVERSIVE. This was clearly a form of positive punishment for my roommate and she decided to emit a form of positive punishment to me by punching me in the mouth.
it was at this time that i had a sudden rush of masochistic behavior, screaming more and more as every punch to my face POSTIVELY REINFORCED my already existent screams. I couldn't help but laugh in glee as for the second time that day, blood began to emit from my mouth and flow down my face.
Then my friend started to get really freaked out and decided that to hopefully decrease my masochistic behavior, that he would NEGATIVELY REINFORCE my weird behavior by walking away and leaving me all alone with no friends.
Clearly, my emitting screaming behaviors had turned into an OPERANT BEHAVIOR and my roommate walking out leaving me friend-less disrupted my screaming behavior by changing my focus and I realize no one was there to hear me.
After realizing I had no friends, I emitted a friend finding behavior. I hopped on facebook and started adding everyone I could. The behavior I was emitting was finding friend behavior. I was rewarded for this behavior when other people accepted my friend requests. This was a CONSEQUENCE that I found pleasurable. And now I had friends :)
Unfortunately I became SATIATED with the repeated finding of friends on Facebook. It was no longer rewarding for me to be on there so I switched to finding friends in night clubs and rest homes.
My counselor was very annoyed by my talking behavior. So he decided to make me put super glue on my lips and hold them shut! He decided to use POSITIVE PUNISHMENT so I can finally shut up. He boldly came up with a very aversive, unethical solution, but it worked.
My counselor was very annoyed by my talking behavior. So he decided to make me put super glue on my lips and hold them shut! He decided to use POSITIVE PUNISHMENT so I can finally shut up. He boldly came up with a very aversive, unethical solution, but it worked.
As I became more familiar with the night club scene I began to think that everyone in the club was my friend. At first they were UNCONDITIONED STIMULI. After spending so much time around the night club friendship became a conditioned response.
By removing myself from the previously aversive situations and engaging in a friend emitting behavior, I had completely forgotten about my previous screaming behavior and in fact had EXTINGUISHED it as a result.
Just as I thought my behavior had been successfully extinguished, my behavior modification class started talking about SPONTANEOUS RECOVERY. Hopefully I'm not affected by it.