Operationally Defining a Target Behavior
The operational definition of the target behavior in this video is temper and hence aggressiveness. After watching the video, the child is experiencing some tantrums because she does not want to leave the horse barn at the county fair for home as being advised by her mother. Despite the mother explaining it is time to leave the facility, it is clear that the child does not seem to buy in the ideas, which results in her temper tantrums through crying. Eventually, it is her father who grabs and carries her home. The type of measurement that I find appropriate in recording the level of occurrence of the target behavior shown by the children will be time duration, which will, in this particular case involved the length of time from the beginning of the behavior to its end. In the scenario from the video, the target behavior occurred for 33 seconds.
In the post by Diani Bonilla, on “Tantrum with Teacher, from the Developing Observation Skills” bundle of classroom moments. From the video, it is quite evident that the type of measurement that my fellow student used in assessing and measuring the level of occurrence of this target behavior is duration, which is 1 minute, 53 seconds as evident from the video from when the child started crying to when he ceased. Because of its preciseness, I find it to be the best method to adopt in the measurement of the identified behavior.
In the second post by Elizabeth Curtin on “OCD Hand Washing, It Hurts So Good” there is an occurrence of the behavior the classmate has indicated. After going through the video, I recorded the same duration, which is 50 seconds of handwashing using hot water. This figure decreased to about 36 seconds after employing the conditional probability record, the same measurement provided by my fellow student.
References
Temper Tantrum. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ubyh7ca10tI&list=PLIzkmxuTCdW_P6Qg55bAMWEgeii6jli_R&index=6