The purpose of this assignment is to identify a behavior that will undergo behavior modification. For the purposes of this assignment, we will discuss watching television as the behavior, and rather than having only one subject, a family of three will be at the center of the experiment. The purpose of this research is to decrease the behavioral excess of television watching habits in a family by performing behavior modification. For the purpose of this experiment, television watching will include regular television programs (e.g. sports, primetime, etc.), movies, and video games. The goal of this experiment is to reduce the total number of hours the family currently watches by approximately 50 percent—from about three hours per night, to about an hour and a half per night.
The participants of this experiment will be a family of three, consisting of a father, mother, and young child – none older than 25 years of age. The purpose of this experiment will be to dramatically reduce the amount of the time family spends watching television, and replace that with some other activity, such as reading. We will not focus on the increase in deficit behavior for this research, but rather in decrease in excess behavior. Television watching has been shown to increase a number of negative behaviors, in both adults and children. The average American child has spent more time watching television than they have doing any other activity, besides sleeping (Jason & Brackshaw, 1999).
Section I Research on the Target Behavior
The effects of television on children, and subsequently adults have been well documented for an exceedingly long time. Television’s association with disadvantageous conditions and behaviors is broad, ranging from an i...
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Hu, F. B., Li, T. Y., Colditz, G. A., Willett, W. C., & Manson, J. E. (2003). Television watching and other sedentary beahviors in relation to risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus in women. JAMA , 1785-1791.
Huang, F., & Myoung-Jae, L. (2010). Dynamic treatment effect analysis of TV effects on child cognitive development. Journal of Applied Econometrics , 392-419.
Jason, L. A., & Brackshaw, E. (1999). Access to TV contingent on physical activity: Effects on reducing TV-viewing and body-weight. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry , 145-151.
Miltenberger, R. G. (2012). Behavior modification: Principles and procedures (5th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
National Institute of Health. (2012). What Are the Health Risks of Overweight and Obesity? National Institute of Health: http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/obe/risks.html
Television is a distraction for children and can hurt their cognitive abilities if they watch too much because it is non interactive. In the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity Helena Duch and colleagues mentioned that the American Academy of Pediatrics advises, “parents avoid exposing children 2 and under to screen media, a nationally representative survey found that 68% of children under the age of 2 use screen media in a typical day, and that average screen time was 2.05 hours per day” (Dutch et al 2). Children live in a world full of screens, ranging from iPhones, TVs, to tablets and computers. Drastic brain development occurs during the ages of 1-3 and exposing them to too much screen time of any kind can have negative effects on them (Hopkins 27). Putting them in front of a screen also steals away from times they could be talking, playing, and interacting with their surroundings. Pediatrician Dr. Michael Rich claims that shows d...
Winn, Marie. “Television Addiction” The McGraw-Hill Reader. 8th ed. Ed. Gilbert Muller, New York: McGraw-Hill, 2003. 505-507
Eron, L.D. (1963). Relationship of television viewing habits and aggressive behavior in children. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67, 193-196.
It may be hard to admit, but television has become an intricate part of our everyday lives. People children often find themselves sitting in front of the television screen for a longer period of time than before and this has evolved immensely over the past few years. In this article, “The Trouble with Television,” by the author Marie Winn, mentions that addiction of television is negative effects on children and families. It keeps the families from doing other things and it’s a hidden competitor for all other activities. Television takes place of play and on top of that kids who watch a lot of television grow uncivilized. Also, the author mentioned that televisions are less resourceful for children and have negative effects on children’s school achievement and on physical fitness. Although there are so many other types of addictions but the author Marie Winn’s points of argument of watching television is a serious addiction that our children and families have negative effects.
Viewing television has a direct negative correlation with the amount of mental work a child pr...
In “Television Harms Children”, Ann Vorisek White claims that the intellectual and cognitive development of children who frequently watch television is threatened. To support this claim, she points to the findings that “the more television children watch, the weaker their language skills and imaginations” (White, 2006). Before the brain fully matures around age 12, it is in the stage of rapid development. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) “recommends that children under the age of two not watch TV or videos, and that older children watch only one to two hours per day of nonviolent, educational TV” (White, 2006). A study from the AAP (as cited in White, 2006) found that the average American child watches four hours of television every day. Considering "expression and reasoning are not automatic" abilities, young children who routinely watch television eventually become "passive and nonverbal" to stimuli in their environment (White, 2006). Since the normality of curiosity and imaginations of young children are the foundation of how they learn, remaining passive for extended periods of time affects their intellectual and moral development.
The staggering amount that we waste our day watching TV for more hours than we should. There are days where I tell myself I’m going to leave my apartment to do something active, but most of the time that never happens because of how distracted I get from the TV. My little TV time ends up being more than expected in a matter of seconds without even realizing. Unproductiveness is a very important trait into becoming unhealthy, it can lead to something even more serious, like obesity. In Sach’s essay, he explains how there are at least two-thirds of the population in America whom are obese and I agree that TV can be one of its leading factors. The Nurses Healthy Study followed over 50,000 women for six years and notice that for every two hours of TV spent a day increased their chances of being obese by 23% (Obesity Prevention Source). As it is, we can watch TV for numerous amount of hours without even noticing that the time has passed by, so could you imagine how much percentage has increased now?
Television has become a big part in children’s day-to-day lives especially in the 20th century. Children in this century rely on television to keep them entertained and educated instead of entertaining and educating themselves by participating in activities, which will teach them a lot more in life then the actual television. There is no doubt that children are most easily influenced by television because of the different content that they watch as well as the amount of time consumed watching TV. The television does have an emotional and intellectual development on children but this all depends on the content that they’re watching and the way that they absorb the information that the show is trying to send out. Different programs will portray
Children in their adolescents years watch a great amount of TV each week and it is almost inevitable that they will start to be influenced by what they see on their television. They will see diffe...
'Television also conditions a child to dual stimui: sound and images.';(Neural Activity and the Growth of the Brain) The constant and rapidly changing sound and images can condition a child to expect the level of televisions in other situations. The problem with this is that in school children are called upon to speak, to listen, to work some problems, or read, and none of these tasks contain the 'dual stimula'; that children expect from television. Dr. Hinto...
How TV Affects your Child? Kids Health. October 2011. Web. The Web.
In United States, “Children watch 4 hours of television every day, 28 hours a week and, sometimes, 10 hours on Saturdays and Sundays. Before their 18th birthday, children may view 25,000 hours of television” (Ni Chang 85). Nowadays, technology has been developed and used in many different ways. Many children spend large amount of time on IPad, smart phone, and computer. Clearly, television has played an important role in most of the younger age group’s life. As a parent, one of the biggest concerns about the influence that television has on the children is that they tend to become aggressive while they watch a lot of violent program. Communicating and engaging with one and other is limited because television has destroyed communication among family and removed children from the social interaction. Moreover, watching a lot of TV also contributes child obesity. Overall, television is harmful for children in their early development because it is not only going to delay their brain development, but also increase their aggressive behavior, and cause child obesity in a long term period.
To many children, TV can be appealing because they find the colorful cartoons interesting and instantly catches their attention. But, as entertaining and fun Television can be, spending too much time looking at your big fifty inch flat screen TV can eventually impact your life. It seems like if you just spend all your time sitting on the couch, you may find yourself preparing fast meals, such as a ham sandwich thrown with some potato chips on a plate or just driving to buying something from McDonald’s. But this can eventually affect your health. If we give Television too much attention it can also affect relationships with parents, siblings or a partner. It can slowly become an easy addiction to come home to, sit on the couch and spend the rest of the day watching all the shows we like. Lastly, too much Television can affect our mood which can lead to certain thinking and
With television, people who run broadcasting organizations know how to grab a curious viewer 's attention. Just like worm on a hook to a fish, television has different ways to lure us in. Some shows use jump cuts, camera tricks like pans and zooms and sudden noises. As humans, we tend to pay attention to orienting responses because they can take us by surprise. To study the addictive nature of the television, Kubey and Csikszentmihalyi ran an experiment where participants are watching television. Both authors observed that while the participants were watching television, they feel relaxed and were passive. When the television was turned off, though, they were still passive but were not relaxed anymore. The participants felt as if the television it drained them of the energy they have. Just like a narcotic, television can give you somewhat of a high, but is short and can leave your body, with a bit of withdrawal for the person who is using the drug. Another author by the name of Cary W. Horvath ran a similar experiment in his article, “Measuring Television Addiction”, but in Horvath 's case, he ran two separate experiments which were used to measure the addictive nature of television. One of the experiments involved participants were around adult age, ranging from 18 to 82, each was personally contacted at four locations: a flea market, a restaurant, and 2 fire stations. The scale of measuring
One of the physiological effects of watching television in excessive amounts is eye-strain. It is true that there are specifications for watching television; television should be 5 m. away from the eye, the room should be adequately lit, television should be placed at the same height with our eyes, etc. However, these do not prevent our eyes from getting tired if we keep watching television for a long time. Another effect is obesity, which is widely observed in people who like watching television and eating snacks everyday (there is even a term “television snacks” to refer to fast food that is suitable for eating in front of the television). television is such a powerful machine that people cannot get away from it – it is addictive. Apart from the physiological effects, television also causes psychological effects. One is a result of being exposed to