This is where you can relate some things you were thinking about during
spring break that relates to what we are learning in class. This is an
extra credit assignment so you don't have to think during spring break,
but if you do : -)
Also I was going to put up a picture of spring break, but when I googled spring break for images I realized that I it might not be a good idea to post any of the ones that came up...wow!
Also I was going to put up a picture of spring break, but when I googled spring break for images I realized that I it might not be a good idea to post any of the ones that came up...wow!
I will continue to post onto this current post, but prior to emitting to relax for spring break I found a post on my brother's facebook page that I thought was a great example of positive reinforcement.
My brother is the plant manager of a business. One of his employees and his wife gave birth to their twins 9 weeks early, they were only about 1 lb a piece.
With that being said, he was unable to emit working and also had to take no pay, which obviously will elicit aversive feelings and struggle to make ends meet.
My brother contacted the headquarter office in New York and emit explaining that this will be a real hardship. So, the 2 companies decided to emit a 50/50 donation, whatever an employee donated, the company would donate the same.
What I see here, is although it is kind hearted, it shows positive reinforcement by him giving the funds to the employee, he would obviously want to return back to the same job as soon as he could.
The main thing i have realized so far during spring break it that my roommate's girlfriend has him under stimulus control.
My roommates girlfriend has him under stimulus control, pathetically. While emitting a prodictive behavior during spring break i was cleaning my chinchilla's cage in the bathroom tub. Only to hear my roommate, Ben, eliciting yelling at his girlfriend. Apparently she tried giving him a compliment but failed. He aversively punished her by yelling and getting extremely upset with him.
The compliment was that it had been a month and she hadn't cheated on him yet, therefore, she probably wasn't going to. Expectedly, he didn't take this as a compliment, emitting the averse punishement.
There is something about her that Ben finds truly invigorating that he will continue the relationship, give such a "compliment." He does not trust her at all. He even bet her, $60, that their relationship would end because she cheats on him. I believe that she is keeping him under stimulus control becuase she is younger and more nieve than his previous girlfriend.
best B Mod post. ever.
Over my spring break I emitted the behavior of going to Costa Rica. On the plane, a small child sat behind us with his parents. The child was engaging in the behavior of screaming his head off. The antecedent was probably the change in pressure, but could have been the requirement of sitting still. The consequence of his behavior was that his parents fought over the best reinforcement - should he be given coke or milk if he stopped crying? The coke seemed to be a more effective positive reinforcement for being quiet. However, the child had an extinction burst when the parents stopped allowing him to drink coke, and screamed some more.
A manipulation that we are all forced to obey is to turn off our cell phones before the flight takes off and until it lands. A lot of us now do this automatically before we are told to do it, because we have been conditioned to expect the requirement and so respond to the stimulus of sitting in our seats by fastening our seat belts and turning off our cell phones.
During spring break I had to opportunity to visit my boyfriend's family. While there I was watching their dog Chip emit the behavior of push her toy around. The toy was full of dog food and had a small hole on one side of it. The toy elicited a rolling behavior because when she rolled it she would be reinforced by pieces of food falling out of the opening and onto the floor. She was rewarded using a variable ratio, sometimes receiving no food and other times received several pieces at once.
I really wasn't going to spend spring break thinking about school but after watching a preseason baseball game between the Mets and Tigers I had no choice. During the game the announcers were talking about strawberry cheesecake that the concession stand sold. One of the announcers mentioned about how it reminded him of the Pavlov dog experiment in that it elicited drooling. I was surprised about how a baseball announcer was able to bring behavior modification language into a baseball game and I started thinking about how much people really know about behavior modification. I asked my relatives about certain topics that we discussed in class and I was surprised by how much people actually knew. I also knew that parents know how to use behavior modification on their children but my mother seemed to know the reasons behind each concept of behavior modification that she used on me.
Over spring break I went to New York City! New York was a ton of fun, I was able to see things that I didn't even know existed! Even though break was a lot of fun, it did have its reinforcements and punishments, behavior modification came into play a lot when it came to my boy friend Alec, his brother Jacob, and I.
For example, we did a lot of walking when we were in New York City. We obviously got tired of walking and just were plain bored with walking. As a reward of walking, we would either get the reward of getting to our destination or my boyfriends parents would bribe us with food, treats, and fun things to do if we walked with out complaining!
We also got punished. For example, there were five people that had to get ready in the morning in the hotel room, if you were last to get out of bed, you probably were not going to get a full sized towel to shower with and if you are last to get up and get ready, you are most likely to be rushed and yelled at more.
As you can see, although my vacation was very pleasurable, it had some undesirable behaviors (rewards and punishments). Alec's parents elicited our behavior to be happy and have fun on the vacation. Our emitted behavior determined whether we were rewarded or punished.
During part of spring break I went to Chicago and stayed on Michigan Avenue. Each day we would walk up and down the avenue and would see people on the street asking for money. I decided to think about this in terms of the ABC’s of Behavior
“Panhandling” or “begging” is what the target behavior might be called by others. The behavior is basically standing, sitting, or squatting on the sidewalk and asking for money from the people that walk by you.
I noticed several different Antecedents. For example, some of the panhandlers had a sign, it might just say “homeless,” or it might have a more elaborated message. One said, “Have four children, am homeless, need any help you can give.” Other panhandlers had no sign, but had a cup or large glass that they would hold out; some of them would jingle it to make noise with the coins inside. Some of them would say something to you, “Can you spare any change,’ others would only jingle the cup. Another antecedent was just trying to “strike up a conversation” For example, the pan handler had no cup or sign but might say, “Nice day, can you help me?”
The Behavior = reaching out for coins or holding out the cup so that a person could put coins in it.
The reinforcer was getting the coins. This would be followed also by a reinforcer delivered to the person who gave the coins in the form of a “Thank you.” Or “Thank you very much.”
While I saw many panhandlers, often several per block, I only saw a handful of people that gave them any money. I also saw one guy who was in a wheel chair. I would see him in the morning and late afternoon. He was there all day; someone must drop him off. I also saw that he had a cup with coins in it, but would only keep a few coins in it. I saw that he kept most of the money he got in a bag inside his shirt. I don’t know if this was to keep it more secure, or whether it just works better as an antecedent if the cup only has a few coins in it. I suspect this is why he did it.
Given that I saw so few people give money, the behavior must been on a thin schedule. However they must get enough reinforcement to make it worth their while, but then they may have only a few other alternative behaviors that are available. If you are just going to sit around all day, you might as well do it where you could get some reinforcement for it.
Several of the panhandlers -when you walked by without giving any money -did say hello or “have a nice day”. I didn’t observe any that said unpleasant things to people even if they went by without giving any money. The effect of their saying something nice, another “antecedent”, perhaps was an urge to go back and give them some money.
Terms used: Antecedent, reinforcer, schedule, reinforcement, alternative behaviors, target behavior
Unfortunately, my spring break was spent sitting as a computer at work, editing and categorizing data. So although I wasn't able to really see any behavior modification in "action", I did find that I had to use a bit of BMOD on myself. Working a full, 8 hour day, on a computer with no social interaction to speak of isn't something I particularly enjoy. One perk of my job is that my boss, for the most part, trusts me implicitly and thus rarely checks up on me allowing me the freedom to occasionally check facebook or pin something on pinterest. I found that I had to find a way to reinforce myself for working hard and diligently rather than face a possible punishment from my boss if she isn't pleased with my work pace. Thus I created a systematic plan to complete my work without ripping my hair out. The target behavior was: completing my assigned work. In order to achieve this, I made myself a promise. Of the 50 or so pages I had to complete, I got to take a 10 minute break doing whatever I wanted, but only after I completed 10 pages. Each page took approximately 5 minutes so I was taking a break every 50 minutes. This allowed my brain to unwind and reset so that the next 10 pages had my full attention. Through the use of a ratio reinforcement schedule I was able to complete my work ahead of schedule, even have frequent breaks throughout the day.
Also, as I business major I am required to enroll in a seminar called the business professionals in training. In this seminar we had speaker who's topic was problem solving. In her workshop she walked us through the steps to solve a problem and although she wasn't speaking the language of behavior modification, I found myself making immediate connections. Step one was to define the problem (which I would call the antecedent). Step two was choose a goal (Target behavior). Step three was give 5 ways you can reach that goal (what reinforcements or punishers to use). Step 4, the final step is evaluate the chosen solutions (I couldn't come up with a clear connection for this one but I feel like it fits).
Overall, my spring break was full of working and homework but I did notice a few BMOD connections.
Over Spring break I took on a mission to manipulate my sister into wanting to come and visit me for a week.
At first My sister was reluctant. I began by using a verbal discriminate stimulus, in the form of me telling her about all the great things we could do while up here.I know she places high intrinsic value on cute cupcakes so I told her about scratch bakery. I also promised her shopping trips and candy. These would all be positive reinforcers for her elicitating the behavior of coming to visit me. I also used negative reinforcement by promising to stop nagging her, which was aversive.
I secretly enlisted the help of my other sister to act disinterested in hanging out with her, which was aversive, and punished her wanting to stay home.
Another motive being her manipulation was that she didn't get to see me much so she was going through deprivation and therefore wanted to see me more.
The mission was successful, as she elicited the behavior of coming to visit me.
During my spring break I stayed in Cedar Falls, but still a lot of things made me think of behavior modification. I thought a lot about manipulating behaviors to create my desired target behavior. I waitressed basically all of spring break, so I thought a lot about ways in which I could obtain bigger tips. I decided to start reinforcing my tables with a compliment about them, and they all loved the positive reinforcement. I also learned how to now use punishment as much. When I went home and I saw that my cat had ripped apart things, I decided that punishment wasn't my best option. During spring break I thought mostly about manipulating behaviors, and reinforcement, and I was lucky enough to implement a little big of each of them while I waitressed.
I went to see Radiohead during spring break. At the show I thought about stimulus, response, and reinforcement. Prior to Radiohead coming out to play, there was an opening act. I noticed that the stadium we were in was only about 60% full. I thought that it was odd that the Radiohead concert wasn't sold out. By the time Radiohead had come on to play, the stadium was packed full. This made me think about being in a band. As your music gains popularity, you get more reinforced. Initially bands have very small followings, consisting of family and friends. Eventually they gather a bigger local crowd. Much later they might end up opening a show for Radiohead. The size of the crowd is growing, which reinforces the band to continue to play shows and write music, due to the increase in popularity.
Another thought I had was that Thom Yorke, the singer of Radiohead, is a conditioned stimulus. Upon becoming visible on stage, the crowd erupted in a roar. Whenever Thom Yorke would gesture towards the crowd, any kind of reference that he was interacting with the crowd, and there would be a roar from the crowd. Now, when Thom Yorke was born, I am sure that people did not cheer at the top of their lungs whenever they saw them. This convulsion to do so is a conditioned response. As Radiohead grew in popularity, with Thom Yorke charismatically at front, they eventually have become a conditioned stimulus for cheering.
Wow spring break went by FAST! Anyway, I went to the wisconsin dells for spring break and noticed so many stimulous controls and ways the environment/owners were elicting disciminitive stimulous for tourists to come or spend money at there place rather than the competition. When we first arrived at our hotel I notice the first morning that there was no fruit left at the breakfast meal so I had to go ask for some. the next day it was the same thing. The day after I was conditioned to go ask with out bothering to look since I already knew the staff sucked at refilling the food bar. There were also billboards everywhere adverstising this place or that place for there attractions making people emit the thought of wanting to go there instead of here. Us being college students the coupon books at the hotel were also very positively conditioned to use them and go to this place rather than that place to recieve a reinforcement of getting a discount. At one of water parks there was a tv beside it adverstising one of the extreme slides which succeded in its target behaviro of looring in custoemrs since we did emit the spending of money to go.
During spring break, I went to Washington D.C. to visit family and celebrate my grandparents 60th wedding anniversary. While there, I noticed that my aunt and cousins were using reinforcement on their dog. Every time the dog has to go to the bathroom, she would scratch at the door. After going out and doing her business, she would come back in, she would go to the kitchen so her dirty feet wouldn't leave dirty marks on the carpet. Every time she went to the kitchen, she was reinforced by being given her favorite treat.
During winter break, I started a job at a local gas station in my town. I had only worked there a couple days and had only learned the basics. I couldn't really remember what I had learned while I was back at school, but my boss told me I could work there again while I was back for spring break. I experienced spontaneous recovery when I got back to work because everything I had done while I was at work during winter break had been cleared out of my mind while I was at school, but when I came back to work for spring break, everything returned to me like I had never stopped working there.
I actually didn't go anywhere for spring break, but i encountered two positive reinforcement situations. I had gone home to my hometown to spend time with family during spring break. I had spent a lot of time with my brother and going to be my new sister-in-law. My brother and I were chatting and his boss was out of town, so my brother was in charge of the mechanic shop while he was gone. When the boss got back, he ended up buying my brother eight hundred dollars worth of tools that my brother wanted. Just for watching the shop and keeping things running. Damn he's lucky.
Last week my boss went out of town, so in that same instance I had to watch the salon and keep things running smoothly. Instead of tools though I received a day off. Which of course is also good. So, I guess we both receive our rewards. :)
I actually didn't go anywhere for spring break, but i encountered two positive reinforcement situations. I had gone home to my hometown to spend time with family during spring break. I had spent a lot of time with my brother and going to be my new sister-in-law. My brother and I were chatting and his boss was out of town, so my brother was in charge of the mechanic shop while he was gone. When the boss got back, he ended up buying my brother eight hundred dollars worth of tools that my brother wanted. Just for watching the shop and keeping things running. Damn he's lucky.
Last week my boss went out of town, so in that same instance I had to watch the salon and keep things running smoothly. Instead of tools though I received a day off. Which of course is also good. So, I guess we both receive our rewards. :)
I actually didn't go anywhere for spring break, but i encountered two positive reinforcement situations. I had gone home to my hometown to spend time with family during spring break. I had spent a lot of time with my brother and going to be my new sister-in-law. My brother and I were chatting and his boss was out of town, so my brother was in charge of the mechanic shop while he was gone. When the boss got back, he ended up buying my brother eight hundred dollars worth of tools that my brother wanted. Just for watching the shop and keeping things running. Damn he's lucky.
Last week my boss went out of town, so in that same instance I had to watch the salon and keep things running smoothly. Instead of tools though I received a day off. Which of course is also good. So, I guess we both receive our rewards. :)