My behavior change project was attempting to have a more regular sleep schedule. This project was challenging to me because I typically have a hard time falling asleep and waking up, and I usually procrastinate leading to many late nights. I think the biggest challenge that this change presents is slipping up and staying up late or sleeping or napping can mess up your whole cycle of sleeping and take an even longer amount of time to correct. In the beginning keeping track of my sleep felt good because I knew that I was getting enough sleep and it gave me an excuse to stop studying and go to bed. Ultimately though, making a conscious effort to track my sleep and get more sleep was more stressful than jut letting sleep happen naturally.
The project ended up not being particularly valuable for me in the sense that the change was never really able to become permanent. This is most likely directly because I did not strictly adhere to my change plan either by choice or by extenuating circumstance. The project has shown me that in order for a difficult change to be made it has to be an incredibly high priority. My change ended up not being as high on my priority list as studying for exams or going out with friends when I had limited time around exams which was ultimately the downfall of my change.
I keeping a log was useful to make connections about why I felt so tired on certain days and try to make changes to combat that and to track progress. Besides keeping track I did not find much use in keeping a log. If I had to start over I would simply log hours and make a chart to show how much I slept versus how tired I was and make it more data than a field log I think that would have been more helpful to me personally.
I pretty much jump...
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...wanted to make this change in the first place.
What I learned from the behavior change project is that it can be extremely hard to implement a behavioral change. Even if there is a real desire to make the change there are extenuating circumstances in everyone’s life that will test their resolve to change. That makes a high prioritization of the change a must. This also means that an physician must be understanding of a patient who is having a hard time changing. Being supportive instead of judgmental is paramount. The project also taught me how to develop and implement a change plan. The change plan is the ground floor to the entire change and failing to commit the time and energy to developing a realistic and goal oriented plan is a mistake. Finally having a good experience advising a peer will help future patients giving me experience and confidence to draw on.
Have you ever gone to bed and wondered what does sleep do to your physical and mental health? Sleeping has effects on our physical heart as well as our mental health (disorders, etc.)
It was effective because it started by stating the behavioral issue and why it needs to be modified. Then this program formed various reasons as to why individuals portray certain behaviors. Next, the target behavior and the assessment of behavior was examined, measured and observed. During this time, a frequency tracking of the behavior was done and results were recorded. After obtaining the results, realistic goals were set with positive and negative reinforcement. Altogether, these steps resulted in a change in behavior which was evident by our test sample, Sarah. The behavioral modification needs to be exposed to the world on a broader scale to create more effective behavioral changes with guidance because there are many individuals who would like to change their behaviors but do not know the first step to take in doing
When most people think of sleep, they think of it as a relaxed but yet not a very important part of our daily lives. What most people don’t understand is although we are not up and moving around and getting tasks completed, our brains are still very active. Without sleep our bodies do not function correctly on a daily basis, and our mental state is at risk.
We live our entire life in two states, sleep and awake1. These two states are characterized by two distinct behaviors. For instance, the brain demonstrates a well-defined activity during non-REM sleep (nREM) that is different when we are awake. In the study of sleep by Huber et. al., the authors stated that sleep is in fact a global state2. It is unclear whether this statement means that sleep is a state of global behavioural inactivity or the state of the global nervous system. The notion that sleep is a global state of the nervous system served as basis for sleep researchers to search for a sleep switch. The discovery of the sleep switch, in return, provided evidence and enhanced the notion that sleep is a global state of the nervous system. The switch hypothesis developed from the fact that sleep can be initiated without fatigue and it is reversible1. It was hypothesized that there is something in the brain that has the ability to control the whole brain and initiate sleep. Studies have found a good candidate that demonstrated this ability3. They found a group of neurons in the Ventrolateral Preoptic (VLPO) nucleus. It was a good candidate because it was active during sleep, has neuronal output that can influence the wakefulness pathway, and lesion in the area followed reduce sleep3. The idea that there is something that can control the whole brain and result sleep state supports the idea that sleep is a global state of the nervous system.
Famous and successful people like Albert Einstein and Da Vinci took naps regularly! Without his naps, Da Vinci might have never had enough energy to paint the Mona Lisa, or Albert Einstein might have never become one of the smartest people in the world. After reading what you just read above, you might feel like you should start taking naps too. However, why should someone take naps? Here is a situation: did your doctor ever recommend you to get some more rest during the night? No doubt, you obviously thought about it for a while. Regrettably, here is the problem: can you fit some more time in your schedule so that you could sleep more or do you seek an alternate way? Unfortunately, many people don’t sleep enough during the night, because of
However, after I stopped the conditioning, the sleeping time went back to the middle range of baseline and the conditioning time. It is the process called extinction. Extinction states that when the reinforcement/punishment stops, the behavior will return to baseline . This phenomenon demonstrates that the conditioning is effective in a short period of time.
learned how important it is that we must help our patients make a commitment to continue to
Sleep loss and shifting sleep patterns are known to be widespread across college campuses throughout the United States and the world at large. Yet, while many studies exist relating sleep to performance, a much smaller amount of studies focus on the Through analysis of these sources as they would prove useful when researching and writing upon the idea of sleep and its correlation to academic performance it was found that a paper titled “Sleep-Wake Patterns and Academic Performance in University Students”, which was presented to the European Conference on Educational Research, is overall the most useful source represented to research the topic.
The Transtheoretical Model is used to understand how individuals change health behaviors. Use of this model aids in developing interventions, appropriate for each stage of the change process. The model includes a total of six stages of change, which are: precontemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance, and termination (Glanz, Rimer, & Viswanath, 2015). During the precontemplation stage, individuals have no intentions of taking action to change their behaviors within the following six months. During the contemplation stage individuals have an intention to change their behavior within the next six months. Individuals of the preparation stage, intend to take action to change the health behavior within the next 30 days. Action
Studies have previously been conducted about sleep and students. These studies cover a variety of variables including sleep length, inductive reasoning, preference in time of day, grade-point average, sleep quality, etc. (Escribano & Díaz-Morales, 2013);(Gilbert & Weaver, 2010). In one study researchers used Likert scales on a one to five platform to gather information (Gilbert & Weaver, 2010), and another on a one to four scale (Gaultney, 2004). Another study had a survey that asked for objective information such as exact grade-point average (Kelly, Kelly & Clanton, 2010). Yet another study used sleep logs and divided the students into a series of three classes based on their sleep habits (Tsai & Li, 2004). This stu...
Because sleep is vital to our well-being, we have to make sure to get an enough quality sleep at the right times as it helps to protect our mental and physical health, quality of life and safety.
Healthy living is a huge step in life, especially in this day and age. This whole course focuses on having healthy lifestyle, making the changes necessary to maintain one, and gives the learner step-by-step instructions of where to start. There are multiple reasons why someone should make a behavior change. Some could include health reasons, to support family members, or some decide to make the change because he or she wants to live healthy. Personally, my family affects a lot of the decisions in my life. Growing up, I was used to taking care of my older sister and I was used to changing my diet to fit what plan my mom had for the week. My behavior change was always dependent on them. During this course, I learned a lot of how the social cognitive
The four stages of sleep are REM (rapid eye movement sleep), NREM1 (non-rem), NREM2, and NREM3. During the REM stage “your heart rate rises, your breathing becomes rapid and irregular, and every half-minute or so your eyes dart around in momentary burst of activity behind closed lids” (Myers, 2014, p. 96).
Maynard, W., & Brogmus, G. (2006). Safer shift work through more effective scheduling. Occupational health and safety, 16.
The negative aspect of my physical health is my sleeping patterns. 8 hours of sleep for me is not consistent, especially when I have many school assessments and tutoring lessons outside of school. Managing school assessments, piano tutorials and theory, sport, tutoring and outside of school activities can be quite stressful.