ABAIII,SessionMotivationEstablishingOperations.pptVIP

Motivating Operations Stimulus Control Discriminative Stimulus (SD) A stimulus in the presence of which a response has been reinforced And in the absence of which a response has not been reinforced S-delta (SΔ) A stimulus in the presence of which a response has not been reinforced Motivating Operations(Sundberg, 2004) In The Behavior of Organisms (1938), Skinner argued against the use of the term “drive” – why? Wanted environmental variables to be the focus of analysis, rather than viewing it as an “internal causal variable” So, rather than talking about a hunger drive, he proposed talking about the relation between food deprivation and changes in behavior Skinner argued, “The degree of hunger developed during the fast is, of course, increased, and the rate at which the rat begins to eat is therefore increased as well” (p. 350). He also argued that this type of control is different from that of an SD. Science and Human Behavior (Skinner, 1953) “Deprivation is put to practical use when a child is made more likely to drink milk by restriction of his water intake” (p. 146) “Satiation is put to practical use when...an abundance of hors d’oeuvres is use to conceal the scantiness of the dinner which follows” (p. 147). “When we present an aversive stimulus, any behavior which has previously been conditioned by the withdrawal of the stimulus immediately follows....The presentation of the aversive stimulus therefore resembles a sudden increase in deprivation” (p. 172). Motivating Operations (Sundberg, 2004) In 1950, Keller and Schoenfeld further refined Skinner’s ideas in Principles of Psychology and used the term establishing operations But beginning in the late 1960s, motivation was left out of many behavioral textbooks and was no longer considered by some to be a separate behavioral principle as Skinner analyzed it “The Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis which began publication in 1968, contained no entries of “establishing operations” in the cumulative indexes (1