Observational Essay

Submitted By chelseac123
Words: 710
Pages: 3
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For this experiment I have decided to observe a mother named Kate and her 4 year old daughter, Ali. These subjects live in their two-story Claremont home. I chose these subjects because of the many phenomenon’s displayed throughout their activities and behaviors. When you have a young child there is so many things that they still need to be taught therefore you need strategies to teach them and make sure that they are understanding and taking in all the information. When conducting this experiment I informed the father but did not mention anything to the mother or child. I wanted it to remain secret to them otherwise it could have affected the observation. When people feel like or are being watched they tend to perform differently to what they usually would. This family I know well so it wasn’t anything unusual for me to show up and spend time with them. With caution I would take notes on my phone whilst observing the behavior.

Observation 1
I observed that whenever Ali misbehaved e.g. didn’t listen to her mother, hit her, threw things or wouldn’t do what she was told, she was sent into what they called ‘the naughty corner’. This was a small corner in the laundry where they had placed a stool for Ali to sit. She was sent to sit there for one minute every time she misbehaved. This was a way of punishing Ali for her bad behavior because she didn’t enjoy sitting by herself in a corner for what seemed like a very long time to her.
Operant conditioning is the term used by B.F. Skinner to describe the effects of consequences of a particular behavior on the future occurrence of that behavior (in text refference). This is the process involved where a punishment, reward or reinforcement is applied after a certain behavior. Both positive and negative reinforcement strengthen behavior whilst both forms of punishment are the opposite, they weaken the behavior.
I noticed this phenomenon being displayed in the case where Kate sends Ali to ‘the naughty corner’; she is punishing Ali for her actions therefore weakening the behavior. Kate wants Ali to stop disobeying her so she uses ‘the naughty corner’ to stop her from misbehaving. Slowly Ali will realize that if she doesn’t misbehave, she wont be sent to sit in the corner. This will slowly decrease her bad behavior until she doesn’t misbehave anymore. This is an example of using operant conditioning at home with a child.

Observation 2
I observed that on the family’s kitchen fridge, there was a sticker chart listing multiple activities. The chart was listed with things that Ali was still learning to do. Below every listed activity
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