Case Study 2 Sara is a personable student in Mr. El-Haj math class. Mr. El-Haj c
ID: 3486151 • Letter: C
Question
Case Study 2 Sara is a personable student in Mr. El-Haj math class. Mr. El-Haj can see that Sara is popular with her peers. He regularly sees her conversing animatedly with her friends in the cafeteria and before and after school. on tests generally range from 85 to 100%. She regularly volunteers to work problems on the board or to and Mr El-Haj calls on her. "Sara, have a go at it." She does well in class also. Her homework is always on time and is usually well done. Her scores answer questions in class. In short, Sara is a good student who does everything that is expected of her One day Mr El-Haj asks for volunteers to complete a problem at the board. Sara's hand shoots up Sara approaches the board and examines the problem. She looks puzzled but begins to work it. es an error that will severely impact the final answer. Several other students begin to snicker. Sara's heart begins to beat faster. Her skin becomes flushed. She begins to perspire. The other That's enough," warns Mr El-Haj, "Let Sara finish in peace." he class begin to fidget. Some begin snickering again. After several seconds of standing at the board, but doing nothing, Sara runs out of the room in tears. I can't do this, Mr El-Haj, I just can't," she says through her tears as she leaves. Mr El-Haj follows Sara and manages to calm her down. He reassures her that all students make mistakes, that there is no shame in it. He then asks that she return to class, which she does. After this, Sara no longer participates in Mr El-Haj class. Once in Ms. Rima's class, she begins to answer a question and "freezes." The information seems to vanish from her head as she begins to talk. After that she no longer participates in any of her classes. When asked to do so, she simply looks down at her desk, refusing to say a word 1. What are the issues in this case? 2. Analyze this case from a classical conditioning perspective 3. Analyze this case from an operant conditioning perspective 4. Develop a plan to help Sara, using principles of both classical and operant conditioning and social cognitive theoryExplanation / Answer
1) The issue in this case is that Sara, being a good student otherwise, once failed to solve the complete math problem on the board in Mr. El-Haj's math class. She became anxious when she was not able to solve the question, while the other students of the class were snickering. She lost the confidence and self-efficacy (the belief in self to do something). She started associating and generalizing the incident with other similar situations. For example, in Ms. Rima's class, while trying to answer she freezed because of associating it with what happened at Mr El-Haj's math class. This resultantly led to non-participation of Sara in the classes.
2) Classical conditioning is the association of an unconditioned and neutral stimulus, which makes neutral stimulus a conditioned stimulus to elicit a conditioned response. In this case, the unconditioned stimulus (UCS) was the situation of answering in Mr. El-Haj's class where she was unable to perform. The unconditioned response (UCR) was non-participation of Sara in his classes. The neutral stimulus (NS) was situation of answering in Ms. Rima's class. However she associated it with the situation in Mr. El-Haj's class and it became a conditioned stimulus (CS) which elicited the response of not answering and not participating in Ms. Rima's class which was the conditioned response (CR).
3) Negative reinforcement is a concept in operant conditioning. It is a response or behavior which is strengthened by removing, stopping or avoiding a negative outcome or aversive stimulus.
In Sara's case, she wanted to avoid the negative outcome of anxiety (which she also encountered in Mr. Haj's class while trying to answer the question on the board), therefore the behavior participating in the class was strengthened.
4) Plan to help Sara:
(i) Classical conditioning: Extinction of the association can be done by repeated presentations of anwering situations in Ms Rima's class. She will eventually disassociate the anxiety provoking situation with answering in her class and will be able to answer without freezing or anxiety. Similarly in Mr. El-Haj's class the extinction can happen by repeated presentations of answering situations in class which she will be able to answer without the presence of anxiety.
(ii) Operant conditioning: Positive re-inforcement such as verbal praises can be given to her whenever she answers or tries to answer in the class which will lead to strengthening of the behavior of answering in class.
(iii) Social Cognitive Theory: When Sara will look at the behaviors of other students and observe and its outcome she will try out the behavior too, according to the social cognitive theory. So, when Sara will look at her classmates or other students answering the questions and its outcome, which could be receiving praises, she will try out the similar behavior too.