PSYC 320 Week 6 Behavior Modification Project: Treatment Phase Report Example

Behavior Modification Project Treatment Phase Report: Self-Monitoring, If-Then Plans and a Contingency Contract Raise Daily Study Time

Target Behavior and Baseline

The target behavior remained daily minutes of focused study, recorded with a timer exactly as in the baseline phase. Across the fourteen baseline days, I averaged 26.1 minutes a day, with a median of 27.5 and a range of 0 to 60, and I never reached half of my eventual goal.

Description of the Treatment

The treatment began on day 15 and combined four components drawn from the research paper and adjusted after the baseline.

• 1. Self-monitoring with a posted graph. Each night I added my total to a paper graph on my door and texted my weekly total to a study partner on Sundays.
• 2. Implementation intentions. I wrote three if-then plans, such as "When dinner ends on a weekday, the phone goes to the car and the timer starts at my desk," plus a plan for Fridays and double-shift days: twenty minutes during my lunch break.
• 3. Stimulus control. The desk was used only for studying during treatment, and my phone stayed in the car while the timer ran.
• 4. A contingency contract. Signed by me and witnessed by my study partner, it made the evening gaming hour available only on days I met the goal: 60 minutes on regular days in the first week, 90 in the second, and 20 on Fridays and double-shift days.

Miltenberger (2015) describes how antecedent manipulations and consequences can be combined, and the package was designed to do both: change the cues for studying and make reinforcement immediate. This week's chapter on prompting and transfer of stimulus control helped me see the if-then plans as self-delivered prompts that I hoped to fade as the desk itself became the cue.

Baseline and Treatment Data

In the Word document, both phases appear on one line graph with the 28 days running left to right and daily minutes, up to 120, running bottom to top. A vertical dashed line separates day 14 from day 15, the phases are labeled "Baseline" and "Treatment," the points are connected within each phase but not across the line, and a horizontal dotted line marks each week's goal, following the graphing conventions in Miltenberger (2015).

Results

The treatment phase averaged 65.7 minutes a day, about two and a half times the baseline mean, with a median of 67.5 and a range of 20 to 100. The first treatment week averaged 55.0 minutes and the second 76.4, so the level rose and continued rising as the goal increased. I met the day's goal on 9 of 14 days. Variability remained, mostly from Fridays and the weekend, but weekdays from Monday to Thursday averaged 75 minutes and no treatment day fell to zero. The change appeared immediately after the phase line, which supports the conclusion that the treatment, not gradual drift, produced it.

Narrative of the Process

The first three days were hard. On day 15 I stopped at 55 minutes because I wanted to play games, and missing the reward that night was more motivating than I expected. The if-then plans worked best on weekdays; putting the phone in the car removed the habit of checking it. Weekends were weaker because my routine changed, and Sunday of the first week ended at 40 minutes after a family dinner. Raising the goal to 90 in week two felt steep at first, but seeing the graph climb kept me going, which fits the finding by Harkin et al. (2016) that physically recording and publicly reporting progress strengthens its effect. Two cautions apply. Week two included the run-up to a midterm, which may have added motivation, and self-monitoring alone may have contributed, as reactivity in the baseline suggested. Even so, the immediate jump at the phase line suggests the full package mattered. A stronger design, such as returning to baseline for a few days or introducing the treatment at different times for different behaviors, would allow a firmer conclusion, and I will name that limitation in the presentation.

Conclusion

The treatment raised my daily study time substantially, consistent with research on procrastination that points to delayed rewards as the core problem (Steel, 2007). For the final presentation, I will recommend keeping the weekend goal smaller and adding a weekend if-then plan, and I plan to continue the program through the end of the semester while thinning the contract to every other day.

References

Harkin, B., Webb, T. L., Chang, B. P. I., Prestwich, A., Conner, M., Kellar, I., Benn, Y., & Sheeran, P. (2016). Does monitoring goal progress promote goal attainment? A meta-analysis of the experimental evidence. Psychological Bulletin, 142(2), 198-229. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000025

Miltenberger, R. G. (2015). Behavior modification: Principles and procedures (6th ed.). Cengage Learning.

Steel, P. (2007). The nature of procrastination: A meta-analytic and theoretical review of quintessential self-regulatory failure. Psychological Bulletin, 133(1), 65-94. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.133.1.65