Controlling My Leg-Shaking Habit: A Behavior Modification Journey

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Behavior Modification Assignment When I first tried to think of a behavior that I wanted to get rid of, I honestly did not think I had any traits that were really that bad to get rid. But when I started paying more attention to myself, I noticed that I would always constantly tap my foot on the floor, and it did not limit to the floor. Even when I was laying down on my bed doing homework or something, my right leg would always be wiggling. This trait was something that I would always do and I would usually not even notice until my leg feels tired or someone next to tells me to stop because I was shaking the chair and it was really annoying to them. This is a trait that I would actually want to decrease because I myself find it really annoying because it always constantly do it all the time. I even remember when my parents would lecture me during church when I would automatically shake my leg and I would shake the entire chair which really annoyed them. But this trait was something I felt like I had no control over as it was something I subconsciously do all the time. This does not really hinder my everyday life, but my leg does get tired from doing that all the time, but also because I feel a little self-conscious when I shake my leg and annoy the people around me. For the first four days of the observational part of the experiment, I noticed that I always shook my legs when I was in class or focusing on something like homework. In the terms of classical conditioning terms: The Unconditioned stimulus is probably me focusing on my work or in class, the Unconditional response is the shaking of the legs, the conditioned stimulus is me being class, and the conditional responses is the shaking of the legs in response to me being in cl... ... middle of paper ... .... This helped myself become more aware of my habit, but this position tended to get tiring to keep so I would only cross my legs when I feel I want to. I personally thought that classical conditioning helped me identify what my habits were but also where they came from, and the operant conditioning helped to decrease the habit little by little. Classical conditioning identifies what the stimulus were that lead to my response of the shaking of the leg. I think a positive punishment would be more helpful to stopping my habit like every time I would shake my leg, there would be a little shocking thing on my leg to shock myself so I would stop. It sounds really painful because if I always shake my legs then I would get a lot go shocks. But this would most likely help condition myself to stop shaking my legs as the pain would stop me from continuing to shake my legs.

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