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Stop The Habit Of Spitting While At Football Practice

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When deciding what to do during for this project, I went through many of the different habits that I have including biting my nails, snacking when I am not hungry, and skipping breakfast. A habit that my mother always got on me for was spitting unnecessarily when I am outside, so I also took this habit into consideration because my mother always made such a big deal about it. All of the choices I had required more time, attention, or a larger time period than I could offer, except for biting my nails and spitting while I am outside. Breaking the habit of spitting while I am outside would have more of an effect on my everyday life because no matter where I go, I have to go outside for a certain period of time. I only bite my nails when I am…show more content…
Every time I caught myself spitting when I was at practice, I would have to give one chocolate away, only giving myself five opportunities to break my habit before I had no chocolates left. I chose to bring five chocolates to practice so I could easily keep count of how many times I spit; counting on my fingers helped me avoid losing track of how many chocolates I had left.
By using operant conditioning, with a combination of negative punishment and positive reinforcement, my goal was to try to get rid of my habit of spitting, so I could eat as much chocolate as possible. With negative punishment, the goal is to get rid of a certain behavior by taking something away that is good or desirable. In my case, I have to give a chocolate to one of my teammates every time I spit during practice. Another good example is what we talked about in class, where students have some kind of tokens or cash that they can use to redeem prizes, and when then they do something wrong, the negative punishment would be to take tokens away from them.
Positive reinforcement involves adding a stimulus following a certain behavior, making it more likely that the behavior will happen again in the future. In my project, the added stimulus would be the chocolate that I get to eat for not spitting, in attempt to reduce this habit as much as possible. An example of positive reinforcement in class is where we watched the video of the dog being trained, and he
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