Sunday, November 23, 2008

shaping behavior - LYDIA WITSCHEL

This assignment was sort of difficult to do over a period of a short time, however i was some what successful.  The behavior that i chose to shape was my brother's behavior toward me.  My brother is nine years old and we get along for the most part pretty well however sometimes he comes in my room and stands in front of the t.v. when I'm watching it, especially when he knows my favorite show is on.  Usually what i do is the first in a loud and forceful tone tell him to "move!" and if he doesn't i continue yelling and eventually either yell to my mom or chase him around the house which I've realized is exactly the reaction that he wants just because he's bored and wants something to do.  
The environment of this is my brother being bored, because when he is not in that mind set of having nothing to do around 8 at night he knows what he can do to get a rise out of the whole family by just preforming a specific behavior.  The behavior that my brother does is standing in front of my television which is a negative stimulus to me therefore making the consequence me screaming and chasing it.

I wanted to shape this behavior by changing the consequence.  I was only able to see this one time in action, and to my surprise it worked.
When he came in and stood in front of my t.v. i just continued to look at the magazine i had in my hand pretending to be more interested in it, rather than the television.  When my brother realized that I didn't seem to care if I saw what was on the t.v. or not he slowly backed away and looked at me with a "now what?" look on his face.  I just smiled and started asking him questions about his day, so rather than losing it completely I showed interest which is all he was really looking for in the first place.  
 This was cool to see how even a small consequence and reinforcement changed a behavior.  With my positive reinforcement of showing interest in what he had done in the day and treating him like something more than a pest, his behavior changed in a split second, I will definitely continue to use this tactic it works great and doesn't take a lot to do.




LYDIA WITSCHEL 

1 comment:

jmattas said...

since im a guy and i know that i usually was board if i had nothing better to do than bug my sister i was suprised by your response that your brother actually wanted to talk about his day, he must have been really bored. i think you handle it well it seems like the more you ignore people the more they get annoyed. i prolly would have locked my door, but i don't know if u have a door or if your parents let u shut it so....