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Social Media Use as a Behavior Modification: Treatment Phase Report
Target Behavior
The target behavior which is being recorded through this behavioral
assessment is tardiness. The time of arrival at each scheduled destination will be recorded. Any
time that is not before or of the selected frame necessary to meet the deadline will be considered
tardy. The validity of this target experiment is valid due to close friends and family members (i.e.
participants husband) monitoring and commenting on this behavior.
Treatment Method
Using multiple tools, the participant will take part in this study to work on tardiness,
procrastination, and overall time management issues. This participant will be using strategies
such as self-observation, time checking, TBPM (time-based perspective memory) training, and
behavior planning, in order to achieve desired modifications. Devices used will be a planning
apparatus, alarms, and timers, which will help the participant to stay on a steady track where
previous failure has occurred.
The participant that has been chosen for this study is 32-year-old female, mother of three,
small business owner, and full-time scholar. The participant also struggles with ADHD and
executive functioning deficits. The issue being addressed in this study is the participants chronic
tardiness to most of the events that occur in the day-to-day, but also difficulty with time
management concepts overall. The participant has had difficulty with time management since
childhood, which has seemed to get worse with age. During this study, not only will the
participant work towards changing the behavior associated with these deficits, but recording the
overall wellbeing if time-management is exhibited.
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Experiment Narrative
The observation period for this behavior was done over one week from May 31 until June
6, 2022. There were seven different outing occasions with scheduled time frames which were
observed and recorded each day. It was recorded by notes on a mobile device immediately upon
arrival to destination for each event. The data from this report is graphed showing seven different
accounts over seven days (figure 1). The next treatment period began on June 7th and ended on
June 13th. Over these 7 days there was only one case of tardiness recorded overall.
Results
Timeliness was observed in three of the seven occasions. Four out of the seven occasions were
considered tardy by varying minutes ranging from 2-17. This indicates a lack of time management skills
necessitating a re-evaluation of how much time needs to be given for events leading up to set
appointments. The commonality in each tardy scenario was related to lack of time awareness, or
forgetfulness. Invoking an alarm or reminder system to help remember time, as well as having a
checklist of all necessary items that are needed for departure, will need to take place in order for regular
promptness to be obtained. The tardiness that is shown in the second treatment phase was on day 4 of
treatment, there is a five-minute tardiness window. This was due to the participants child having a
diaper blowout. In order to ensure this does not happen in the future, the participant will try to add in a
10-minute window for delays of this nature.
Summary of Treatment
When the participant first began the treatment, timers were set during very basic aspects
of her day such as brushing teeth, washing face, getting kids dressed, getting shoes on, etc. These
times were each put into a file on the participants mobile device in order to show approximate
times that each task might take in the future.
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During the first treatment period, May 31-June 6, the participant was late to 4 out of 7 of
the scheduled meetings/appointments that she had, with the longest absence of tardiness being 17
minutes tardy. The patient had a difficult time setting timers and following through with
scheduling in advance, which is going to be the first priority going through the next treatment
period.
During the second treatment phase which was between June 7-June 13th, with 7
appointments booked, the participant decided to do the planning in advance instead of the day of
the scheduled event. June 7th all data was entered into schedule, and alarms were set in order to
bring attention to when one task was needing to proceed to the next. This allowed for a
significant decrease in tardiness. In the second treatment phase there were only reports of 1 tardy
behavior out of the seven events, and it was due to unforeseen circumstances with child of
participant. (Child had a diaper blow-out, causing a five-minute delay)
The observation that is most significantly noted throughout these treatment processes was
the lack of awareness when it comes to how much time each menial task might take in the
beginning. The participant seemed to have very skewed ideas of how long things would take vs.
how long they actually took, which in turn created the whole of the issues she had related to time
management and tardiness in general.
Another observation is that when the participant put in extended efforts at the beginning
of the treatment phase to create a schedule as closely detailed as possible, the timeliness began
happening more easily on its own. Putting the alarms in place to remind her when it was time to
go to the next activity was definitely the most helpful of tools, and in the future, she would
benefit from continuing this practice.
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The results of the treatment showed that it is, in fact, a proper treatment method for the
participant due to the progress shown in both phases. As shown in the first phase, there is a slight
improvement after simply being mindful of time as a whole. Once the added benefit of
scheduling came into play, it seemed that the participant was able to figure things out much more
efficiently.
The treatment punishment that was used was at the end of each treatment period, the
participant had her husband assess her results. After the first treatment period had multiple
failures, he went over her timing step by step in order to evaluate where she went wrong. This
pointing out of bad behavior helped the participant in the future treatment period so that she
could continue her forward progress.
Phase 1 Phase 2
day 1 day 2 day 3 day 4 day 5 day 6 day 7
20 mins
15 mins
10 mins
5 mins
0 mins
Figure 1: Line graph showing phase 1 and phase 2 of treatment over 7 day time period
for each phase
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