Description of the Stimuli Concept
The crucial feature of behavior research is that any behavior response occurs within some physical environment. Particular aspects of this environment affect organisms. Scholars define them as stimuli and classify them into several stimulus classes that share common elements (Cooper et al., 2020). The temporal dimension, which is a type of stimulus class, means that stimuli differ between antecedent (occurring before a particular behavior) and consequence (following the behavior of interest) (Cooper et al., 2020). It is useful to consider this conceptual framework through an example to understand how it works in practice.
Application of the Stimuli Concept to Personal Experience
For example, I can analyze my behavior in elementary school when the teacher asked me a question. In general, antecedents of the learning process are often discussed in academic literature, so it is a legitimate example (Nakamura et al., 2021). Possible antecedent events are the student composition (how many motivated students are in the class?), my heavy cold (barrier for engagement), and teacher instructions during a lesson. The common feature of all these stimuli is that they do not depend on my activity as a student present at a particular lesson. They also had an impact on me before I decided to respond. However, analytically, scholars may give a more detailed classification of antecedent conditions. The functional impact may subdivide these antecedents because the teacher’s readiness to engage in the class discussion has a more significant impact than other factors.
My response to these stimuli was an unprepared and crumpled answer to the question. The cold did not allow me to concentrate, while the rest of the students were not involved in the discussion. A functional explanation for this behavior could be that the lesson is not graded, so I had no interest in being involved. The behavior of the rest of the students can also be combined into one response class. For example, they sleep on the desk, play on the phone, or pretend to listen to the teacher.
These are all answers to non-involvement in the educational process, expressed in various forms. The teacher needs to change the lesson’s structure to change this stimulus-response relationship. For example, the teacher may add more interactive games to engage the children. This will make students change their perception of the lesson and modify their response to more favorable stimuli.
References
Cooper, J. O., Heron, T. E., & Heward, W. L. (2020). Applied behavior analysis. Pearson UK.
Nakamura, S., Darasawang, P., & Reinders, H. (2021). The antecedents of boredom in L2 classroom learning. System, 98, 1-15. Web.