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Psychological Factors Affecting Operant Conditioning

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The behavior I chose to remove by operant conditioning was biting and picking my nails and the skin around my nails. This behavior consists of biting my nails, biting the skin surrounding my nails, and picking at the skin surrounding my nails. I group these behaviors together because I often do them simultaneously. For simplicity's sake, I will refer to the behavior as nail biting/picking; this term will include the act of biting my nails, and picking and biting the skin around my nails. I chose this behavior because when I pick or bite the skin around my nails, my cuticles become messed up look bad and are occasionally painful. Therefore, I want to extinguish this behavior so that my nails and the skin around them will look better. The act of biting/picking my nails occurs most often during class or while doing homework. Biting/picking my nails gives me something to do with my hands when I need to fidget, especially when in class. I …show more content…

Saturday and Sunday determined my base rate: Saturday I bit/picked my nails 33 times and Sunday the count was 34 times. Monday through Friday I applied positive reinforcement, and the rate of the behavior decreased. However, the decrease was not very drastic at the beginning; I bit/picked 33 times Monday and 27 times Tuesday. But by Wednesday, I began to notice a steeper decrease of the behavior: a total of 13 times Wednesday, 7 times Thursday, and 4 times Friday. Wednesday was the first day I was able to not bite my nails at all for one 2-hr interval, and Thursday and Friday I was able to have 2 intervals of 0 nail biting/picking each day. Because I broke down my day into 2-hr intervals, data collection was simple. Each time I noticed that I bit/picked my nails I would write it down on my phone on a spreadsheet right after it occurred. This ensured that I would not forget any times that the behavior occurred, and it allowed for my data to be

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