Problem, Goal, Commitment & Baseline

1.1 The Problem

I am facing a serious problem of behavioral excesses. I spend too many hours on my sleep daily. This is posing a serious problem as I do not have enough time for study and other activities. Apart from the standard and usual 8hrs of sleep I try to get each night, I also have a tendency to nap an extra of about 2-3.5h of sleep in the afternoons. This amounts to about more than 10hrs of time wasted on sleep. I think this is a waste of time. I hope to correct my problem so that I have more time for other activities.

Furthermore, sleeping too much is not a socially appropriate behavior especially if I nap in the afternoon. I cannot nap in the office in future when i go out to work so it is best that I can eliminate this troubling behavior before I go out into the society to work.

Tamakoshi and Ohno (2004) conducted a longitudinal study on sleep duration (no. of hours of sleep per night) on more than 100, 000 participants for 10 years. The most no. of deaths after 10 years of study occurred for participants who slept for 10 or more hours per night. I wish to lead a healthy lifestyle so the results of this study increase my determination to solve this behavioral excess of sleeping.


1.2 The goal

I aim to reduce the number of naps hours to zero daily for more than half the number of treatment sessions so that I have only have about 7-8hrs of normal night sleep each day.

I will record the number of hours of nap time I spend each day and make a record of the baseline and during treatment results. If my results indicate that my nap hours have become stabilized at 0hrs per day for more than half the number of treatment sessions after the behavior modification program has been implemented, it would indicate that my program is successful.


2. The commitment to change

Martin and Pear (2003) has suggested some ways to ensure commitment of change. I will follow their guidelines to help plan my behavioral modification program.

a) Make a list of the benefits of the success of the behavior change

· I will lead a healthier lifestyle
· I have more time to study so I will do better and score GPA higher than 4.0
· I will have more time to engage in my favorite activities such as watching television and shopping
· I will not feel guilty for leaving my work aside to sleep
· I will not be nagged at by my mother for sleeping too much

b) Make my commitment to change publicly known to others

· I will update my progress of my behavior modification program in a this public blog
· My buddy assigned (Huiting) will read about my progress and comment on it
· I have also made known my intention (to change my sleep pattern) to my boyfriend and my parents

c) Frequently remind myself of my commitment and goal

· I wrote many post-it notes to remind myself of my goal and commitment
· I stuck the post-its on the walls of my bedroom, sofa, study desk, laptop, book shelves, bed frame, textbooks and files
· I pasted a large poster on my bed frame that says “Stay away from me. No naps for you.”
· I will write a list of work I have to do daily to constantly remind me that I have too much work to do than to spend the time sleeping

d) Invest substantial amount of time and energy in planning my program

· I analyzed all the possible causes of me falling asleep in the afternoon
· I made posters and post-its to remind myself of my goals
· I plan properly what I intend to do in my behavioral modification program
· I will keep track of my progress on a blog daily

e) Plan ahead to handle temptations

· I will get my parents to wake me up if they see me falling asleep in the day whenever I am at home
· I will walk around the house when I start feeling drowsy
· I will stand upright and hold my textbook in front of me if I feel tired
· I will get enough sleep at night so that I will not feel sleepy in the day


3.1 Baseline

There are various methods for increasing the strength of baseline and record keeping suggested by Martin and Pear (2003). I can set up external reinforcers controlled by other people to reinforce my record keeping for baseline and during treatment phase. This will help motivate me to continue taking accurate records.

a) Informing friends about my behavior modification project

· I will inform my boyfriend and buddy of my blog URL so that they can read about it. I will update them on the results and progress of my behavior modification program through my blog which I will update daily.

b) Keeping my recording graph in obvious places

· I will plot a graph to record my progress daily. This graph will be placed in my blog so that my buddy can comment on it. She can provide feedback in the comments section and this will encourage and motivate me to continue keeping records of my behavior.

Here is a graph diagram of the baseline of the no. of nap hours i took in the day from 4/10/08 to 10/10/08.

3.2 Analyze cause

Martin and Pear (2003) suggested looking at the antecedents that might be SD (discriminative stimulus) for the problem behavior and the immediate consequence maintaining the behavior excess. For my situation, it is a problem of immediate reinforcers (for problem behavior of long napping hours) versus delayed reinforcers (for Alternative Desirable Behavior of studying).

I prefer to sleep when I feel tired from studying. I have problems with delaying my gratification for sleep when I should have been spending the time on studying even though I know that studying has much more benefits than my extra time spent on sleeping. The benefits of studying such as scoring higher GPAs, doing well for exams and quizzes, not having to rush to meet project submission is delayed as compared to the immediate gratification of sleeping.

a) Antecedent for my undesirable behavior for sleeping in the day

- The discriminative stimulus for my behavior is the bed and sofa. I have a high tendency to fall asleep when i study on my sofa or bed as compared to the study desk.

- The discriminative stimuli for my behavior is the study desk in the living room. When i study at my living room desk which is faraway from the sofa or bed, I will be alert and fall asleep less.

b) Immediate consequence that maintain the behavior of falling asleep in the day

· The immediate gratification of sleeping to relieve my fatigue

c) Immediate consequence of zero hours spent on sleeping in the day

· Able to spend time on studying
· Able to watch more television drama serials