PSYC FPX 1000 Assessment 1 Conditioning and Learning Plan
PSYC FPX 1000 Introduction to Psychology
Prof. Name
November, 2024
Conditioning and Learning Plan
| Part 1: Scenario | |
| Instructions | Scenario and Behavior |
| Emily enjoys drawing and making crafts, spending hours working on her creative projects. However, she has gotten into the habit of letting her crayons, paper, scissors, and glue lie all over her desk and the floor of her room. Her parents have reminded her a million times, but usually, she needs to remember or just needs more motivation to clean. They use operant conditioning for her to adopt this habit of tidying up after the creative sessions (Quickel, 2020). | |
| The undesired behavior is that Emily scatters her art supplies after she uses them. The desired behavior is that she neatly puts away all of her materials in established drawers and bins right after she is done with her projects. Emily’s parents feel that by doing this, she will learn responsibility and make the home environment more organized. | |
| This behavioral change will help Emily feel responsible and care for mutual spaces within the home. | |
| In addition, learning to clean up after herself will inculcate organizational skills that she can apply outside of school. | |
| Further, it instills a regulated routine that helps her manage her time well and stay disciplined in everyday life. |
| Part 2: Plan | Conditioning Principles |
| Targeted Response: | The targeted response is to encourage Emily to always clean up after she uses her art materials and organize them into their storage after each creative session (Holcomb, 2023). This response would help replace the behavior of leaving all the materials scattered with a routine of cleanup. In this regard, one will instill the value of responsibility and organization in Emily, emphasizing that a clean and ordered environment should be maintained. By creating a structured and positive learning process, her parents want to develop a habit that will play across her life. |
| Primary Reinforcer | The main reinforcer in this activity is a sticker from a bright collection of one of Emily’s favorite designs (Ghosh et al., 2024). Emily loves collecting stickers and putting them on pages in her journal, making this an attractive motivator. After every clean-up session after work, she receives one sticker and gets to add it to her collection. Stickers work because of their immediate rewards and because they correspond to personal tastes, in this case, Emily’s. Associating the action of cleaning with a reward for which she cares helps her parents establish a clear linkage between behavior and outcome. |
| Secondary Reinforcer | Emily’s parents also use verbal praise as a secondary reinforcer. After she tidies up her workspace, they commend her with affirmations like, “Your room looks so nice now, great job! ” or “You’re taking care of your things, Emily. I’m proud of you! ” This helps her associate cleaning with positive emotions and recognition. Praise is a simple yet effective way to reinforce good behavior (Ennis et al., 2019). This builds intrinsic motivation and strengthens the love relationship between Emily and her parents in contrast with material rewards. As time passes, she relies on this inward satisfaction more than she would on external rewards such as stickers. |
| Schedules of Reinforcement | Emily’s parents adopt a structured approach to reinforcement by beginning with continuous reinforcement to train in the habit and then shifting the variable schedules to maintain it. At first, Emily received a sticker and verbal praise for each time she cleaned her art supplies so that she could connect the task itself with a positive outcome and thereby breed consistency. As her conduct improves, they use a variable-ratio schedule, where she gets the sticker after an unpredictable number of clean-ups; this adds surprise and reinforces her to continue with the habit. Finally, they utilize the variable-interval schedule: they reward her after maintaining this habit for different periods; this ensures long-term consistency even as it reduces reliance on immediate rewards. This gradual approach helps Emily internalize the behavior, such that it will be a lasting habit even when rewards become infrequent. |
| Shaping | Shaping is an essential part of Emily’s learning process. In the beginning, she earns rewards for half her efforts, like putting away half of her supplies (Hiltner et al., 2024). By increasing consistency, parents gradually raise the expectation to clear out the whole workspace. Shaping breaks down complex behavior into easy, small steps that work favorably to help Emily succeed. It does this in a way that prevents frustration and builds confidence in Emily and keeps her motivated throughout the learning process. |
| Optional follow-up: | Teaching her to clean up art supplies addresses the immediate problem of organization, but laying a foundation for how things are done in this way ties into broader life skills (Abulibdeh et al., 2024). As she gets the hang of the routine, Emily learns responsibility, self-discipline, and respect for shared spaces. Her parents also get this opportunity for positive engagement with her; an exercise designed to bring them closer together in open communication. Reinforcement applied consistently over time then enables Emily gradually to shift from requiring extrinsic rewards so that she can be driven by intrinsically satisfying completion of her task, which is a critical step in developing lifelong habits of responsibility and tidiness. |
PSYC FPX 1000 Assessment 1 References
Abulibdeh, A., Zaidan, E., & Abulibdeh, R. (2024). Navigating the confluence of artificial intelligence and education for sustainable development in the era of industry 4.0: Challenges, opportunities, and ethical dimensions. Journal of Cleaner Production, 437, 140527–140527. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2023.140527
Ennis, R. P., Royer, D. J., Lane, K. L., & Dunlap, K. D. (2019). Behavior-Specific praise in PK–12 settings: Mapping the 50-year knowledge base. Behavioral Disorders, 45(3), 019874291984307. https://doi.org/10.1177/0198742919843075
Ghosh, R., Khan, N., Migovich, M., Tate, J. A., Maxwell, C., Latshaw, E., Newhouse, P., Scharre, D. W., Tan, A., Colopietro, K., Mion, L. C., & Sarkar, N. (2024). User-centered design of socially assistive robotics combined with non-immersive virtual reality-based dyadic activities for older adults residing in long-term care facilities. ArXiv.org. https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.21197
Holcomb, R. (2023). A multiple case study of primary grade school teachers’ experiences with using colors to teach writing. Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/4848/
Hiltner, S., Eaton, E., Healy, N., Scerri, A., Stephens, J. C., & Supran, G. (2024). Fossil fuel industry influence in higher education: A review and a research agenda. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Change. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.904
Quickel, E. J. W. (2020). Operant conditioning. Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences, 3340–3342. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24612-3_987
