The purpose of this study is to see if reducing time spent on entertainment can enhance time spent on other tasks such as sleeping and studying. There was only one participant in the experiment. The independent variable (IV) was time spent on entertainment, while the dependent variable (DV) was time spent sleeping and studying. Classical conditioning, on the other hand, was a purposeful blackout, whereas exercise acted as operant conditioning. For seven days, participants recorded the amount of hours spent on entertainment, studying, and sleeping. The level of concentration was then measured. From the findings, spending less time on entertainment increases the time for studying and sleeping, thereby improving the level of concentration. The study encountered limitations such as a small study sample and inadequate data collection methods, which made the results unreliable.
Introduction
Background
Humans adapt to some behaviors that have adverse effects on their health. For instance, they prefer consuming junk and unhealthy food, spend much time watching television, or on entertainment, sleep few hours and abuse drugs. These behaviors are common among the adolescents and young adults. Not only do they affect their physical health, but also their social life. Behavioral modification enables many people to adopt positive behaviors that can improve their lives. An example is adhering to a healthy diet plan with regular physical activities, watching television only when it is necessary and sleeping a minimum of 6 hours each day. Approaches used to modify behaviors are classical and operant conditioning. Classical conditioning refers to an automatic response to a conditioned stimuli paired or coupled with unconditioned stimuli (Nicholas, 2008). On the other hand, operant conditioning requires modification or acquisition of new behaviors due to the associated effect, for instance punishment or reward (Mazur, 2015). Owing to these definitions, it is possible to explain the behavioral change as a process that needs replacement of negative behaviors with positive ones either voluntary or on a perception of the associated consequences (Martin & Pear 2015). This study seeks to identify measures I can take to modify my behaviors by either using operant or classical conditioning.
Rationale
This study is important because it helps to identify new behaviors I can adapt to improve my physical and health, as well as social life. Since I attained the age of 15, I have been struggling with some negative behaviors, which I intend to change. Firstly, I have poor sleeping patterns characterized by going to bed late sleep and failing to wake up on time. I suffer from sleep deprivation and in most cases; I tend to sleep only a few hours. It also affects my daily activities, for instance, I frequently feel dizzy during the day hence unable to pay maximum attention to my studies and friends. Secondly, I have developed an active addiction to entertainment especially on social media impacts negatively on my studies, and sleep. For instance, I occasionally forget to do my assignments on time or sleep late. Thirdly, hanging out with a friend eats into my time, which I would otherwise use to do other important business. Although social interaction is not wrong, it is evident to me that I should reduce the amount of time I spend with them.
Going by the mentioned desired and undesired behaviors, I came up with five ways of modification. One, I tried the use of positive reinforcement and the effect it would have on my conduct, for instance, rewarding myself whenever I do well in exams. Two, negative reinforcement, for example, is punishing myself by not spending on entertainment like toys, or games if I fail any exams. Three, punishment, for instance, pinching myself hard if I fail to answer questions in a lecture. Four, flooding by exposing myself to the worst fears such as keeping away from music and games the entire day. Five, use of an extension, for instance, not taking any measure in case of bad behavior or not rewarding myself in case of proper conduct (Kazdin, 2012).
Methodology
Participants
This study involved only one participant. Since I was the only subjects, I met all the criteria for selection.
Design
The objective of this study was to determine if minimizing time spent on entertainment and social media can increase my time for other activities including learning, doing assignments and sleeping. Therefore, the research employed an experimental design to achieve this goal. The independent variable (IV) was hours used on entertainment while the dependent variable (DV) was hours dedicated for sleeping and studying. The operant conditioning was exercise whereas a deliberate blackout acted as classical conditioning.
Materials
Stopwatch, a diary, and a laptop.
Procedure
The number of hours spent on sleeping, studying, entertainment, and the level of concentration were recorded for seven days. A stopwatch was used to measure time and the information registered in a diary. Later on, the data was compiled and entered into a computer using Ms. Word. Furthermore, the level of concentration of all the activities was noted each day.
The motivators that would make me gain normalcy included exercising during the day. Through observation, I noticed whenever I engaged in some form of physical exercise during the day such as attending gym sessions; I studied for some reasonable time then retired to bed earlier because of being exhausted from the daytime activity. In this case, exercise was directly related to sleeping while it was indirectly related to studying. I did this for six days, and the observation was consistent.
I also used a stopwatch as a measure of the time I employed in studying. I realized that I could concentrate for a much longer time after exercise. Having tested this across over the six days, I concluded that exercise has a positive impact on my studies. It was therefore clear that there existed a positive correlation between exercise and concentration on my studies
I did run a test on myself to identify the effect of light on the sleeping hours. To do this, I decided to control, my behavior through power rationing. Whenever I noticed, I would spend a lot of time in either reading or having entertainment I switched off the lights deliberately to enable me to retire to bed before 1.00 am. I did this at around 11 pm on five different occasions and noticed that in the absence of light, I fell asleep almost immediately. This even worked better because blackout meant an end not only an end not only to studying but also an end to entertainment.
Results
DAYS
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Entertainment hours (I.V)
4
5
4
4
3
2
1
Sleeping
Hours (I.V)
4
3
5
4
5
6
6
Study hours for the next day (D.V)
10
8
10
9
10
11
10
Concentration level
moderate
low
moderate
moderate
high
Very high
Very high
The above results show that lack of balance between entertainment hours and sleeping time directly influence study hours and concentration level. For instance, when you have an adequate sleep it will increase your concentration level and increase study hours and vice versa.
According to the above findings, it is better to spend less time on entertainment since entertainment influence all the activities like sleeping hours and studying hours. The lesser the time dedicated to entertainment, the better for all the subsequent events for instance, according to the table you will notice that day six and day seven recorded a very high level of concentration with many hours spent on studies due to enough sleep.
Discussion
From the outcome of this experiment, reducing time spent on entertainment increases the time for sleeping and studying. With exercise as an operant conditioning, the only option was to adhere to the strict time management schedule to avoid exercising regularly, which is also tiresome. On the other hand, deliberate blackout as a classical conditioning made it easy to realize when I was spending much time on entertainment, hence regulating its use.
This study encountered two challenges or limitations. First, the number of study participants was small. Since the research involved only one subject, it was possible to collect biased data. It is easy to manipulate a single participant to ensure he or she conforms to the researchers own procedures to achieve the desired outcome. Thus, it is difficult to trust and rely on the results. Besides, a small sample size fails to represent a large population. Notably, many people suffer from poor time management. In fact, with the increasing growth of technology, it is quick to access to multiple entertainment sites. Thus, a large number of people need behavioral modification to allocate their time equally to all their activities. Therefore, only one subject cannot determine the behavioral changes useful to a large society. Second, the data collection method did not sufficiently get all the desired information. Since the researcher also acted as a study subject, it was possible to make observations on the body changes. For instance, it was difficult to note any disturbance during the sleep or studying. The research also failed to use a questionnaire, which is a significant survey tool to any experiment that involves a dependent and independent variable.
Future research
On the future research, I would change my methodology and prolong the study period from one week to about three weeks. Two, I would broaden the data collection techniques used to get as much information as possible. Finally, I would involve more modification techniques in my future research to see the possibility of using them. Besides, I would incorporate more independent variables that affect my studies and look at the more examples of the classical conditioning and the operant conditioning.
Conclusion
As a psychology student focusing on the learning processes, behavior and performance, the self-directed research has been helpful to my comrades who can choose to use my results as a case study and to me. Besides, I have been able to learn how classical and operant conditioning affects behavior and how to learn or unlearn a particular behavior. Finally, the research on behavior modification has given me an opportunity to identify how my behavior influences my studies and how other people change my character.
References
Kazdin, A. E. (2012). Behavior modification in applied settings. Waveland Press.
Mahoney, M. J. (1974). Cognition and behavior modification. Ballinger.
Martin, G., & Pear, J. J. (2015). Behavior modification: What it is and how to do it. Psychology Press.
Mazur, J. E. (2015). Learning and behavior. Psychology Press.
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Nicholas, L. J. (2008). Introduction to psychology. Cape Town: UCT Press.
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