Shaping Project

The topic of my shaping project did not come easily. There were no animals at my disposal near my dorm suitable for this type of experiment. I had to look to the people around me, so I decided to choose none other than my sister, who is also my roommate, to become the subject of my behavior shaping experiment. She would be easy to keep track of because we are roommates, and also I know what she is doing most of the time.

Now, being my sister, there were obviously quite a few annoying behaviors that I could pick out and decide on a shaping plan to attempt to diminish them. However, being the good sister I am, I decided to choose a behavior to aid my sister in her schoolwork. I know that she despises having to do her computer science homework; she generally puts it off and does not spend enough time working on it. So, I thought that through positive reinforcement I could possibly get her to increase the time she spent working on her computer science homework, therefore resulting in a better understanding of the material.

Initially, my sister spent about 30 minutes working on her computer science

homework each time she sat down for homework. My goal was to increase the amount of time per session she spent working on her computer science homework. I decided to implement some classical conditioning into this project. Each time my sister sat down to do her homework; I would offer her a piece of her favorite candy and say either, “Nice work,” or “I’m proud that you are working on your CS homework.” I would do this after every ten-minute interval she worked on her homework. This was in hopes that by the time the experiment reached an end, if she started putting up her CS notes, than saying either one of those phrases would prompt her to continue working on her CS homework because of the positive reward of the candy associated with the continuation of working on homework.

This served also as operant conditioning because the candy was the reward for the desired behavior exhibited, which would be spending time on her homework. I implemented a fixed ration schedule for the reward: For each one time the target behavior was performed (10 minutes of studying), my sister would receive one reward (piece of candy + positive saying). I felt that this schedule would best suit this experiment because the behavior I was targeting was already a time interval in itself, so if I increased to a larger fixed ratio, this would increase the amount of time my sister had to spend doing her homework without reward. This would not be an effective way to increase the target behavior in this particular situation. A variable schedule would not have been as effective either because in the experiment I am trying to increase time spent on studying, so varying the schedule would mean sometimes my sister would be rewarded for longer periods and sometimes for shorter periods. That would get to