Focus of assessment is below: Carrie Ann has a tendency to procrastinate before
ID: 3492829 • Letter: F
Question
Focus of assessment is below:
Carrie Ann has a tendency to procrastinate before completing her assignments. Between family, job, and school work, she has a busy schedule and often does not feel up to the task of trying to understand what is expected for assignments. Between her busy schedule and anxiety about doing the tasks required for assignments, she tends to wait until the day before an assignment is due to begin work on it. Because her work is rushed, she ends up not doing her best work. She would very much like to begin her work sooner, but each time she has an assignment due she ends up repeating the procrastination. Carrie Ann has decided to use operant conditioning principles to help her develop better habits in completing assignments. Carrie Ann will need to develop a target goal and plan for herself.
Directions
Describe a plan for meeting a goal. Include the following elements in the description of your change plan:
Describe the specific goal.
Describe how the concept of "shaping" (a behavioral learning theory term) can be employed to help in incremental progress toward the goal. Identify what reinforcers (both primary and secondary) you could apply to make progress toward the goal.
Describe the schedule of reinforcement for the application of the reinforcers. For example, the person losing weight (described in Option B) might treat himself to a movie for the first week where he exercised for at least 40 minutes each day. In this case, the movie would be a positive primary reinforcer delivered on a fixed ratio schedule.
Behavioral terms to apply in the change plan:
Shaping.
Positive Reinforcement (You can also use negative reinforcement if it applies to your goal).Use one or both of the following in your plan (at least one must be included):
Primary reinforcers.
Secondary reinforcers.
Schedule of Reinforcement (one or more of the following):
Fixed ratio.
Variable ratio.
Fixed interval.
Variable interval.
Include the following information:
Provide an introduction that discusses operant conditioning behavioral learning principles and how they are relevant to changing behavior.
Identify a specific target goal for a behavior change plan.
Describe a behavioral plan.
Describe how the behavior can be shaped through operant conditioning principles.
Identify and apply specific reinforcers that are part of the plan.
Apply a schedule of reinforcement that would be used for each reinforcer that is part of the plan.
Explanation / Answer
1. Describe the specific goal.
To complete the given assignment at least a day before the assignment is due to be submitted
2. Describe how the concept of "shaping" (a behavioral learning theory term) can be employed to help in incremental progress toward the goal.
The asssignment could be planned out, breaking it into equal parts, eliminating the day before the assignment is due. This would help in distributing work equally, so that pressure doesn’t mount up in a single day. Also, at the end of the day, the end of each day’s work a reward can be placed, in the form of one chocolate bar or any ice cream , that might motivate the person to move towards finishing the goal. Also, it should be kept In mind that the rewards for everyday should be different, so that the motivation is persistent.
3. Identify what reinforcers (both primary and secondary) you could apply to make progress toward the goal.
Primary reinforcers can be kept in the form of food, in this case and secondary reinforcer would be better performance and better grades.
4. Describe the schedule of reinforcement for the application of the reinforcers.
In this schedule the reinforce,end can be kept at night in the form of a luxury such as a movie or food, every night after the desired goal is achieved, if it is not achieved, Carrie would abstain from the luxury.