Question

Choose a behavior that you would like to change (either your own behavior, someone you know or an animal in your life) and use the techniques of classical conditioning learning to change this behavior. This example can be real or hypothetical.

Explain how you would classically condition a behavior in an organism by answering the following questions. (Please be very specific and detailed in your answers and write in full sentences.)

1. What is the target behavior and the person and/or animal chosen for this scenario?
2. Why did you choose this behavior?
3. Explain what your acquisition phase consists of and be sure to include the timing and the frequency of the pairing of the NS and US.
4. Why did you choose this timing and frequency of the pairing of the NS and US?
5. In your example, what is the NS, US, UR, CS, and CR?
6. What are the challenges to changing the target behavior?
7. How would you extinguish the behavior?
8. How would you prevent against generalization?
9. How would you check for spontaneous recovery?
10. Would this example be ethical if executed? Why or why not?

Answer 1

I shall explain this answer on a hypothetical basis selecting Tim, an officer as an example.

Tim is a person suffering from hypertension and would often miss his medicine dose which he is expected to take every night at bedtime. The behavior Tim would like to bring with him is to have medicine at night at the right time before bed. Here, an alarm with soft music is set at 11 pm indicating that Tim should take medicine. Initially, Tim will look at the alarm, switch off the same, and take medicine. Later on, pairing happens between alarm and medicine. Now, Tim will consume medicine on hearing the sound and would later come to switch off the alarm.

The target behavior here is to take hypertension medicine at the right time. The person here is Tim.

This behavior was chosen because failure in having medicine on the right time would escalate Tim's hypertension leading to several secondary disorders such as heart disease,

The acquisition phase initially consisted of Tim setting the alarm for medicine. Next, Tim was wondering why the alarm was ringing, then Tim began switching off the alarm and then going to have medicine. Post this, Tim directly went to have medicine while the alarm was ringing. Finally, Tim got the behavior of having medicine without the need of an alarm.