I chose to target the behavior of eating after 9pm as I had a highly disorganized eating schedule that led to unhealthy eating habits. The operational definition of my behavior dictates that consuming any food or drink with any caloric value after 9pm will count as my behavior. In order to properly measure this behavior I observed that once any food with a caloric value had been consumed I was required to write down a yes for that day. After collecting my data, I saw that while my program was successful, it was slow to develop.
My program was slow to develop due to a level of satiation found within my program. My selected positive reinforcer was to go to Biggby Coffee with my roommate Haylee on Sunday’s if I followed the current criteria. Given that there have been weeks that I got Biggby Coffee more than on just Sunday, due to the discovery of their Bogo Wednesday’s, the reward was not as desirable as it had originally been as I became satiated. Yet there have been outside benefits that made my program successful in the end. Haylee looked forward to those trips and was disappointed if I did not go every Sunday, which instilled a sense of accountability on my part for our trip to the coffee
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I saw several aspects of behavior modification that we had studied in class, such as behavioral assessment, changing criterion method, rule governed behavior, and positive reinforcement. Each furthered my program to become more developed, and clear. Behavioral assessment gave me a place to start, while the changing criterion method gave my idea a structured plan to carry out. These two were enough to allow my idea to become a real world practice, but not enough to keep myself motivated throughout the entire process. This is where the rule governed behavior and the positive reinforcement came in as they were the primary factors that kept my program