HELP.
HELP?
A service-learning project with the National Council on Problem Gambling where we held a roadshow at
Ngee Ann Polytechnic.
My group touched on the 'HELP' aspect of adult problem gambling and we came up with different game stations such as Shoot-o-Lotto, Cup Pong and Cards against Gambling.
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Thaqifah Atiqah | T02 | Year 2 Psychology Studies
I learned that negative reinforcement might not be relevant in the context of the roadshow. Negative reinforcement is the removal of unpleasant stimuli from a situation also increases the probability of the target behaviour (Fiest, Fiest & Roberts, 2018). It is incorporated in our game, Shoot-O-Lotto, where the participants wear gloves which have ice-cream sticks attached to it to hinder the movement of their fingers when they are shooting the cups down with the nerf gun. The participants would take a glove out for every correct answer. In Shoot-O-Lotto, the unconditioned punisher is the removal of the uncomfortable glove and the correct answer is the target behaviour. Wearing of the glove symbolises the consequences of gambling where the problem gambler would be burdened by financial difficulties and relationship issues (National Council on Problem Gambling (NCPG), 2017). However, through the roadshow, my group and I realised that some participants either do not take out the gloves even after answering a question correctly and just continued to shoot the answer with both gloves still on or due to the pressure of time which caused a bottleneck at the game station, the participants do not wear the gloves. We had to come up with fast and effective way to divert the crowd as well as make the process of visiting our booth faster. Therefore, whenever there were several groups of people at our booth, we asked the participants to tell us the answers directly instead of wearing the gloves and shooting down the cups as it will only worsen the bottleneck issue that we had. Furthermore, we used two behavioural strategies in our booth rather than just one as research has found that multiple reinforcers are more effective than a single reinforcer (Alberto & Troutman, 2008), which would be elaborated later on.
I learned adaptability when I had to think on the spot of ways on how to stop the congestion that was happening at the part of my station that I was assigned to. I was in-charge of the station,
Shoot-O-Lotto, where participants had to shoot down the correct answers with a nerf gun. However, my station caused an issue in the dynamic of the booth flow due to how the station was structured where participants have to wear gloves and take them off for every correct answer. Due to the amount of time needed to wear the glove, take it out and shoot the cup down, it caused a bottleneck which I did not think would have happened when we were planning for the roadshow. Hence, I had to be quick on my feet and think of a way, so I just asked the participants for their answers instead of getting them to queue up for them to complete the last game station of our booth. I learned that adaptability is needed for one to overcome issues that arise unexpectedly.
In addition, I learned communication is important when it comes to an exhibition or roadshow which requires people to be present to man the booth. This is so because our group had an issue when it comes to manpower scheduling as the roadshow was during lunch hour. We had members who went for lunch and it caused a lack of manpower. At first, it was manageable having three people at the booth but at a certain point of time, we suddenly had a larger group of people coming to the booth and it became hard to manage as we had to juggle between stations in one booth. Thus, this issue could have been overcome if we communicated about the spread of manpower.
This learning of adaptability matters because it can be applied to situations that we encounter in life. The need to act on the spot to come up with a solution is vital to overcome the situation and making it less complicated. I feel that adaptability matters when it comes to future aspects. For example, during internship, I would be required to posses this trait as I would be put into situations where I need to step out from my comfort zone and be exposed to different instances where I have to do things which I am not familiar with. In relation to the roadshow, I believe that adaptability could have been better used or applied for me as I was not really active in speaking up and advocating for problem gambling as it was something new for me. As much as it is never easy to advocate for the issues that encompasses problem gambling, I feel that I should have adapted better and speak up more rather than just sticking to my task which is to just facilitate the Shoot-O-Lotto station. In addition, communication matters because without it, things would be haywire. In events where there are people involved, communication is needed to relay messages so that things would go smoothly rather. Besides, communication matters as it is widely used not only when it comes to interactions with our friends but also, in school, at home and even at workplaces. As I am part of the Executive Committee in my Co-Curricular Activity (CCA), communication is important for my team and I so as to better relay our instructions to the member when we need to give instructions to the other members or when we need to execute certain tasks which requires more than what our respective responsibilities requires us to.
In light of this learning, in the future I will involve myself in more advocacy work as I realised that advocacy work would have an impact to people even though it might be small. The roadshow changed my outlook on advocacy work as before this roadshow, I had always thought that advocacy work had to be large-scale and requires such great amount of people to be involved to spread a certain message. During the roadshow, we were able to let those who came to our booth learn more about how to help problem gamblers and the participants managed to understand as at the end of the booth they have to put a sticker in the column which equates to the number of tokens that they received. I feel that advocacy should be something that adolescents should involve themselves with as it would be an eye-opening experience that could provide them with learning experience outside of the classroom.
In addition, having learned the behavioural strategies, I feel that token economy can be applied to daily tasks to change the targeted behaviour. Tokens are unconditioned reinforcers that can be accumulated and exchanged for goods (Martin & Pear, 2015). This is so because the participants at our booth were able to collect tokens that they exchanged for prizes at the end, they were more receptive of the information about how to help problem gamblers. Hence, I feel that token economy can be applied to when I want to target a bad habit of mine. All in all, this experience has been a fulfilling one for me as it not only provided me with learning experiences academically but also growth as I learned more about myself in terms of advocating. This experience is just a head start to more advocacy work in the future.
References
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Alberto, P. A., & Troutman, A. C. (2008). Applied behavior analysis for teachers, 8th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Fiest, J., Fiest, G.J., & Roberts, T.A. (2018). Theories of personality (9th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.
National Council on Problem Gambling (NCPG). (2017). Learn about problem gambling: What are the consequences? Retrieved from: https://www.ncpg.org.sg/en/Pages/LearnAboutProblemGambling.aspx?categ=2&article=7
Martin, G., & Pear, J. (2015). Behaviour modification: What it is and how to do it. (10th ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.