The Effects Of Operant Conditioning On Sleep Procrastination

Operant conditioning about sleep procrastination
Introduction
There are many bad habits these days and the most serious one for me is stay up late all the time and not energetic enough in the morning. This behavior is called sleep procrastination. Just as the words from the researchers at Utrecht University, “pre-bed procrastination is the latest diagnosable strain of mismanaged time, stopping us from shutting off when we should and causing us to fritter away valuable snoozing opportunities on unnecessary tasks.” Indeed, such tiny behavior has already spread out the entire campus and wastes energy and time. Therefore, trying to correct this behavior by using psychological ways, I decided to use operant conditioning, the process of associating

Every day before sleeping, I record the exact time and collect them to show the effectiveness of certain methods. This experiment could be divided into 3 steps:
1) Collecting baseline data in first 3 days. In these days I would not use any conditioning, just to measure the baseline data of my sleeping time.
2) Using operant conditioning in middle 3 days. Because I am extremely fond of eating steak. Therefore, I decided to use steak as the stimulus for this experiment. If I could sleep before 12o’ clock, I would get steak the next noon; however if I could not sleep on time, I would only have normal lunch in dining hall the next day.
3) Measuring the difference after the conditioning: in the last 3 days. In this period of time, I would stop conditioning and measure the aftereffect of the behavior change; at the same time, comparing the baseline data and the result data to find out the effectiveness of the

However, after I stopped the conditioning, the sleeping time went back to the middle range of baseline and the conditioning time. It is the process called extinction. Extinction states that when the reinforcement/punishment stops, the behavior will return to baseline . This phenomenon demonstrates that the conditioning is effective in a short period of time.
Conclusion
In the experiment of changing sleep procrastination by using operant conditioning with positive reinforcement, the effectiveness of the conditioning changes during the conditioning time. It shows that the stimulus is effective to me in certain extent. But the response data also shows that the extinction effect of the operant conditioning disturbs the result of the experiment. Tring to decrease the disturbance, I should extend the experiment time to make sure that the conditioning could work better. In conclusion, the experiment works well by choosing the positive reinforcement and the suitable