i need help looking over my paper, any suggestions would be great!
Introduction and Overview:
Exercising is an essential key to feeling good and staying healthy. To many individuals exercising is enjoyable and the feeling of accomplishment when results are seen is even better; however sometimes without proper discipline, finding the time is the problem. Exercising goes past just looking good but, also enabling a person to enjoy a better, longer life. Having a family history with diabetics encourages me to change my unhealthy habits. I chose this behavior because I needed to change my lazy habits to better my health. I want to feel better about myself as well as creating a healthier environment.
I was a very active person throughout middle school as well as my high school years. I played soccer and I was also a swimming lesson teacher. I enjoyed doing these things and it made me feel good about myself. As soon as I went to college, my focus of studying became a lot more important than to exercise. I became really attached to microwave foods and cooked less and less every year. I also started to realize how it changed my sleeping habits as well as feeling tired all the time. I felt sluggish and very lazy and I also felt more depressed then I should. "Exercise not only increases blood flow to the brain, it releases endorphins, and the bodies very own natural antidepressant... Those who exercised at a moderate level - about 40 minutes three to five days each week - experienced the greatest antidepressant effect. So they interpreted that to mean that exercise was just as good as medicine" (Small 2010). College definitely took a great toll of my outside activities. Not taking the time to organize a scheduled time for exercising brought my asthma back. At the end, I was using inhalers again.
Even though college takes a lot of time out of my day to studying, I still need to make more time not just for leisure, but as well as making more time for physical activities. My goal is to slowly increase my levels of physical activities. I am going to start out each day with at least 20 minutes of cardio and 40 minutes or more of intense running two days a week. Now that I am a senior working towards my BA in psychology, it is going to be tough making time to exercise. I plan to remind myself of the importance of having a better health as well as creating healthy habits for myself. I also plan to reward myself with delicious treats I really love and punishing myself when I do not follow up on my schedule.
My final goal is to work out seven days a week, which I will dedicate 20 minutes of cardio every day and 40 minutes or more of intense running two days a week. In the short run, I suspect to have more intakes with water as well as increasing better eating habits. In the long run, I expect to have better sleeping habits as well as increasing my tolerance when it comes to running. I also expect to see a decrease in using my inhaler and being more physically fit. Furthermore, if I continue to exercise and stay on a timely schedule, I hope to improve my health by lower my chances of having diabetes as well as other health problems and feeling better about myself.
Procedural Details:
My goal was to do cardio work in my apartment for at least 20 minutes a day two hours before I would sleep, and 40 minutes or more of intense running at the gym or outside after class for two days a week. The time that I would start my cardio would be between 8:00 and 9:00 every evening or walking to class instead of driving counted as 12 minutes of cardio and the time that I would start my intense running would be at 4:00 in the evening. I picked out two YouTube videos of cardio that I could manage doing at my apartment and each video was about 10 minutes long. Then on the days I would have to run, I would decide on the weather if I was going to run inside or at the gym. I kept an individual journal to keep the records of the time that I would start my exercise to when I would be finished. Then I would record the data every day of the time spent on exercising and graphed the results of the total time exercised at the end of each day.
For my behavioral modification project I had two different types of dependant variables. My first dependant variable was the total minutes exercised that was graphed at the end of each day. My second dependant variable was the different types of physical activities. All cardio such as walking to class, step workout, bicycle, running, or any kind of movement that works out your muscles. On the other hand, things like walking back to the apartment, walking from class to class, walking out to my car walking around the mall, walking in Seattle or Bellevue are all the things that do not count into the time added for exercising.
In an environment with special need kids "candy reinforcement increased the rate of smiling to a normal range, but the rate of the response promptly decreased when this reinforcement was discontinued... the rate of smiling did not decrease when candy reinforcement was again eliminated. Subsequently, signs were employed to regulate social interactions and the rate of smiling was shown to be controlled by these interactions serving as reinforces" (Hopkins 1968). This behavioral intervention used reinforcement to increase to increase the rate of smiling. In my case, the independent variables used for my behavioral intervention are stimulus control, positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, conditioned reinforcement, response cost, punishment, and overcorrection. These principles of behaviors helps people of all kind decrease or increase a behavior. The Table that I have created gives examples from my experience with these principles (Page 6-7).
I used an ABA (B) reversal design for my behavioral modification project that included two baselines as well as two treatments. Each baseline and treatments lasted 7 days making it a 4 week project. The two treatments consisted prompts and reinforcements as well as punisher to encourage myself to slowly increase my physical activity. Then the first baseline was the measure my activity rate and then my second baseline were to see if I would stick to my routine without any prompts or reinforcements.
Results:
It did not surprise me that at my first 7 days of baseline, I only encountered 36 minutes of physical activity. During this week I only decided to walk to class 3 out of 7 days. I also did not participate in any kind of running that was scheduled, which was to run 2 days a week. The average during the 3 days where I did push myself to do some cardio was about 12 minutes a day.
As I was making the transition to move onto my treatment of week 2, I was lucky that I was craving sweets. I immediately saw more motivation to walk to class instead of driving, but that was all I seemed to be motivated for. I knew that as long as I did 20 minutes of cardio each day I had a treat waiting for me. As the treats were wearing off, I was not motivated to get up to run for the 40 minutes I needed to do 2 days a week. I started to feel less satisfied with myself knowing that there was not a drastic incline that I had expected. By now, I knew that I was going to step back into my old habits when I was to return to my baseline.
As I was moving into week 3 of the second phase of my baseline, I showed a decline in the rate of the time spend doing physical activities. I only walked a couple of times to school in the morning and I also followed up on the YouTube video workouts for a couple a minutes a day. I knew that I had to change my reinforcement as well as my punishers. So I decided to add in another treatment for a week to see what would happen to my behavior. Since I love going home on the weekends, I decided that my punishment for not doing to weekly timed exercises was not being able to go home on that week. I also created a money jar where I would put in money for the gas that I needed to get home and back to school. I decided that since I needed at least $40 a week for gas, I decided that 20 minutes a day would equal out to $5 that I could put into the money jar and 40 minutes or more would equal out to $10. There was a huge incline in the minutes of my physical activity. Not only was I walking to class every morning, but I was also following up on the schedule that I had created. I was really motivated to run for longer hours as well as putting more effort into the various cardio at home before I went off to bed.
At the end of the last stage, knowing that I was going to see my family, friends, and boyfriend on the weekends was my prompt. I no longer needed to use sticky notes to remind myself to exercise. I was well above 40 minutes that was spent during that last week in treatment with the mean of 60.5. It is amazing to see that the mean of my first baseline is 6! I did not realize how much going home on the weekends meant to me. I have also attached two graphs that provide an illustration of my behavior trends (Page 13-14).
Discussion and Summary:
This intervention started out very rocky, but at the end, I was proud of all the accomplishments I had made. I am particularly proud that I my tolerance of the minutes spent running have increase and the usage of the inhaler decreasing. Noticing the changes in my body such as my muscle mass increasing and my weight dropping slowly, I am more willing to set aside more time to go out and run. I also feel a lot better about myself and my eating habits has also changed. I am also slowly starting to cook healthier meals like my mom used to and I am staying away from microwave foods more often.
During this project my biggest methodological problems were having no motivations and also the lack of consistency with my reinforcement. I realized that in week 3, the rate of the time exercising started to decrease in a similar rate as my first baseline. I was no longer relying on the desserts, such as brownies and snicker bars as my reinforcement. I had to make drastic changes with my positive and negative reinforcements. I simply adjusted my punisher to not being able to go home on the weekends and my new reinforcement was to earn gas money to be able to make it home and back to school.
Overall, the result of the treatment outweighing the cost was very satisfying. Being able to see my parents and friends on the weekend was very effective and the cost of spending $40 on gas is worth the trip. If I was asked to do this paper over again, I think that I would think about the consistency that my reinforcements may have and construct them in a way to make them more contingent to my behavior.
I personally always wanted to change my behavior with exercising. Using the techniques taught in class to modify my behavior was an outstanding way to keep myself motivated. At first, I did think that this intervention was a little childish and weird. It almost felt like I was the puppy being trained to sit. I immediately knew that starting this intervention to modify my behavior to increase my physical activity was not going to be an easy task. I was very disappointed in myself to see how much I wanted to better myself, so I was very surprised by how motivated I was when I changed my positive reinforcement as well as my punishment. I definitely believe that the same techniques can be used to improve other behaviors that I would like to work on. After this project I feel that I have more control over my behavior. I do not think that I would need reinforcements to help me increase my exercise activity or any other behaviors because this project helped me realize that taking care of myself should me a number one priority.
In conclusion, these techniques could benefit anyone. With the proper tools and education, I believe that someone could make a difference in someone's life. These techniques would definitely help in the long run as well as my career. Working on my degree to be an Occupational Therapist especially working with children in this field would help me be more organized as well as helping children with their everyday behaviors.
Introduction and Overview:
Exercising is an essential key to feeling good and staying healthy. To many individuals exercising is enjoyable and the feeling of accomplishment when results are seen is even better; however sometimes without proper discipline, finding the time is the problem. Exercising goes past just looking good but, also enabling a person to enjoy a better, longer life. Having a family history with diabetics encourages me to change my unhealthy habits. I chose this behavior because I needed to change my lazy habits to better my health. I want to feel better about myself as well as creating a healthier environment.
I was a very active person throughout middle school as well as my high school years. I played soccer and I was also a swimming lesson teacher. I enjoyed doing these things and it made me feel good about myself. As soon as I went to college, my focus of studying became a lot more important than to exercise. I became really attached to microwave foods and cooked less and less every year. I also started to realize how it changed my sleeping habits as well as feeling tired all the time. I felt sluggish and very lazy and I also felt more depressed then I should. "Exercise not only increases blood flow to the brain, it releases endorphins, and the bodies very own natural antidepressant... Those who exercised at a moderate level - about 40 minutes three to five days each week - experienced the greatest antidepressant effect. So they interpreted that to mean that exercise was just as good as medicine" (Small 2010). College definitely took a great toll of my outside activities. Not taking the time to organize a scheduled time for exercising brought my asthma back. At the end, I was using inhalers again.
Even though college takes a lot of time out of my day to studying, I still need to make more time not just for leisure, but as well as making more time for physical activities. My goal is to slowly increase my levels of physical activities. I am going to start out each day with at least 20 minutes of cardio and 40 minutes or more of intense running two days a week. Now that I am a senior working towards my BA in psychology, it is going to be tough making time to exercise. I plan to remind myself of the importance of having a better health as well as creating healthy habits for myself. I also plan to reward myself with delicious treats I really love and punishing myself when I do not follow up on my schedule.
My final goal is to work out seven days a week, which I will dedicate 20 minutes of cardio every day and 40 minutes or more of intense running two days a week. In the short run, I suspect to have more intakes with water as well as increasing better eating habits. In the long run, I expect to have better sleeping habits as well as increasing my tolerance when it comes to running. I also expect to see a decrease in using my inhaler and being more physically fit. Furthermore, if I continue to exercise and stay on a timely schedule, I hope to improve my health by lower my chances of having diabetes as well as other health problems and feeling better about myself.
Procedural Details:
My goal was to do cardio work in my apartment for at least 20 minutes a day two hours before I would sleep, and 40 minutes or more of intense running at the gym or outside after class for two days a week. The time that I would start my cardio would be between 8:00 and 9:00 every evening or walking to class instead of driving counted as 12 minutes of cardio and the time that I would start my intense running would be at 4:00 in the evening. I picked out two YouTube videos of cardio that I could manage doing at my apartment and each video was about 10 minutes long. Then on the days I would have to run, I would decide on the weather if I was going to run inside or at the gym. I kept an individual journal to keep the records of the time that I would start my exercise to when I would be finished. Then I would record the data every day of the time spent on exercising and graphed the results of the total time exercised at the end of each day.
For my behavioral modification project I had two different types of dependant variables. My first dependant variable was the total minutes exercised that was graphed at the end of each day. My second dependant variable was the different types of physical activities. All cardio such as walking to class, step workout, bicycle, running, or any kind of movement that works out your muscles. On the other hand, things like walking back to the apartment, walking from class to class, walking out to my car walking around the mall, walking in Seattle or Bellevue are all the things that do not count into the time added for exercising.
In an environment with special need kids "candy reinforcement increased the rate of smiling to a normal range, but the rate of the response promptly decreased when this reinforcement was discontinued... the rate of smiling did not decrease when candy reinforcement was again eliminated. Subsequently, signs were employed to regulate social interactions and the rate of smiling was shown to be controlled by these interactions serving as reinforces" (Hopkins 1968). This behavioral intervention used reinforcement to increase to increase the rate of smiling. In my case, the independent variables used for my behavioral intervention are stimulus control, positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, conditioned reinforcement, response cost, punishment, and overcorrection. These principles of behaviors helps people of all kind decrease or increase a behavior. The Table that I have created gives examples from my experience with these principles (Page 6-7).
I used an ABA (B) reversal design for my behavioral modification project that included two baselines as well as two treatments. Each baseline and treatments lasted 7 days making it a 4 week project. The two treatments consisted prompts and reinforcements as well as punisher to encourage myself to slowly increase my physical activity. Then the first baseline was the measure my activity rate and then my second baseline were to see if I would stick to my routine without any prompts or reinforcements.
Results:
It did not surprise me that at my first 7 days of baseline, I only encountered 36 minutes of physical activity. During this week I only decided to walk to class 3 out of 7 days. I also did not participate in any kind of running that was scheduled, which was to run 2 days a week. The average during the 3 days where I did push myself to do some cardio was about 12 minutes a day.
As I was making the transition to move onto my treatment of week 2, I was lucky that I was craving sweets. I immediately saw more motivation to walk to class instead of driving, but that was all I seemed to be motivated for. I knew that as long as I did 20 minutes of cardio each day I had a treat waiting for me. As the treats were wearing off, I was not motivated to get up to run for the 40 minutes I needed to do 2 days a week. I started to feel less satisfied with myself knowing that there was not a drastic incline that I had expected. By now, I knew that I was going to step back into my old habits when I was to return to my baseline.
As I was moving into week 3 of the second phase of my baseline, I showed a decline in the rate of the time spend doing physical activities. I only walked a couple of times to school in the morning and I also followed up on the YouTube video workouts for a couple a minutes a day. I knew that I had to change my reinforcement as well as my punishers. So I decided to add in another treatment for a week to see what would happen to my behavior. Since I love going home on the weekends, I decided that my punishment for not doing to weekly timed exercises was not being able to go home on that week. I also created a money jar where I would put in money for the gas that I needed to get home and back to school. I decided that since I needed at least $40 a week for gas, I decided that 20 minutes a day would equal out to $5 that I could put into the money jar and 40 minutes or more would equal out to $10. There was a huge incline in the minutes of my physical activity. Not only was I walking to class every morning, but I was also following up on the schedule that I had created. I was really motivated to run for longer hours as well as putting more effort into the various cardio at home before I went off to bed.
At the end of the last stage, knowing that I was going to see my family, friends, and boyfriend on the weekends was my prompt. I no longer needed to use sticky notes to remind myself to exercise. I was well above 40 minutes that was spent during that last week in treatment with the mean of 60.5. It is amazing to see that the mean of my first baseline is 6! I did not realize how much going home on the weekends meant to me. I have also attached two graphs that provide an illustration of my behavior trends (Page 13-14).
Discussion and Summary:
This intervention started out very rocky, but at the end, I was proud of all the accomplishments I had made. I am particularly proud that I my tolerance of the minutes spent running have increase and the usage of the inhaler decreasing. Noticing the changes in my body such as my muscle mass increasing and my weight dropping slowly, I am more willing to set aside more time to go out and run. I also feel a lot better about myself and my eating habits has also changed. I am also slowly starting to cook healthier meals like my mom used to and I am staying away from microwave foods more often.
During this project my biggest methodological problems were having no motivations and also the lack of consistency with my reinforcement. I realized that in week 3, the rate of the time exercising started to decrease in a similar rate as my first baseline. I was no longer relying on the desserts, such as brownies and snicker bars as my reinforcement. I had to make drastic changes with my positive and negative reinforcements. I simply adjusted my punisher to not being able to go home on the weekends and my new reinforcement was to earn gas money to be able to make it home and back to school.
Overall, the result of the treatment outweighing the cost was very satisfying. Being able to see my parents and friends on the weekend was very effective and the cost of spending $40 on gas is worth the trip. If I was asked to do this paper over again, I think that I would think about the consistency that my reinforcements may have and construct them in a way to make them more contingent to my behavior.
I personally always wanted to change my behavior with exercising. Using the techniques taught in class to modify my behavior was an outstanding way to keep myself motivated. At first, I did think that this intervention was a little childish and weird. It almost felt like I was the puppy being trained to sit. I immediately knew that starting this intervention to modify my behavior to increase my physical activity was not going to be an easy task. I was very disappointed in myself to see how much I wanted to better myself, so I was very surprised by how motivated I was when I changed my positive reinforcement as well as my punishment. I definitely believe that the same techniques can be used to improve other behaviors that I would like to work on. After this project I feel that I have more control over my behavior. I do not think that I would need reinforcements to help me increase my exercise activity or any other behaviors because this project helped me realize that taking care of myself should me a number one priority.
In conclusion, these techniques could benefit anyone. With the proper tools and education, I believe that someone could make a difference in someone's life. These techniques would definitely help in the long run as well as my career. Working on my degree to be an Occupational Therapist especially working with children in this field would help me be more organized as well as helping children with their everyday behaviors.
