Understanding Motivating Operations: Enhancing Behavioral Analysis and Response

1. Motivating Operations Week 8: Antecedent considerations

2. Motivation Operations • Also referred to as: • Value altering effect: establishing/abolishing • Behavior altering effect: Frequency • Establishing operation: Evocative effect • Abolishing operation: Abative effects

3. Some clarification • Not just Frequency: Magnitude • Behavior altering effect is not just due to encounter with change in reinforcement frequency: Extinction! • SD is not = MO • SD: Differential availability of reinforcement for a behavior • MO: differential reinforcer effectiveness of an environmental event.

4. Three types of Motivating Operations • Surrogate: Stimulus paired with another • Not likely to be important to study • Reflexive: Stimulus that preceded some form of worsening improvement • Thanks and holding doors open for people • Transitive: Stimulus that alters value of another stimulus • Must be just as available (Dr. asking for scalpel)

5. 8 UMO • Sex • Temperature • Pain • Food • Water • Sleep • Activity • Oxygen • Key Point: These are not SD’s because to have an SD you must have an Sdelta (neutral stimulus) to signal unavailability of reinforcement is a possible

6. Altered States • Drugs • Anxiety • Do not cause behavior! They interact with environment however. • Moderation Variables.

7. What about treatment? • You will never get rid of the UMO effects • You will only weaken momentarily • Must development treatment that focuses on acceptable behavior to gain access to the reinforcer

8. UMOs & Punishment • Difficult to know for sure • Observation of the abative effect requires the evocative effect of an MO for reinforcement with respect to the punished behavior.

9. Multiple Effects • Evocative effect: Do what you gotta do • Punishment effect: Decreases probability you engage in the behavior that preceded the MO

10. SMIRC Model • Stimulus • Motiviating Operation • Individual • Response • Consequence

11. Behavior Analytic Problem-Solving Model Beginning to pull it all together

12. Components • Contextual Variables: • Behavior occurs in some contexts but not others • Antecedent Stimuli: Environmental Triggers • Individual Mediators: Internal Triggers • UMO & CMO • Individual Behavior Deficits: • Try to reframe all behavior this way (your turn) • Behavior: • Not enough R+ or too much response effort • Consequences: • Consider function (careful of response topography and response class).

14. Stimulus Discrimination and Stimulus Generalization

15. 3 Types of Stimuli • Discriminative Stimulus: Reinforcement is available (SD) • Neutral Stimulus: No reinforcement or punishment is available (SΔ ) • Warning Stimulus: Punishments is available

16. Discrimination Training • Learning when to behave and when not to behave • Reinforcing a response in presence of one stimulus but not another e. g. Colors

17. Color Discrimination

18. What about you? • When have you engaged in stimulus discrimination today?

19. Stimulus Control • Degree of correlation between stimulus and response • Degree to which a behavior occurs in presence of a specific stimulus • e.g. Traffic light • Stimulus Generalization Gradient: Probability of response reinforced in one stimulus condition are emitted in the presence of untrained stimuli.

20. Color Discrimination Revisited

21. What about you? • What behaviors do you have that are under stimulus control?

22. Let’s discriminate Learning an Alien Language

23. Effective discrimination training • Choose distinct signals • Minimize opportunities for error • Minimize stimulus array • Maximize Number of learning trials • Make use of rules

24. Stimulus Generalization • Responding similarly across two or more stimuli √ The more the stimuli are alike the more likely the response to take place e.g. finding your car

25. What about you? • What behaviors/responses do you generalize across settings? • Can that response always be generalized? • Should that response always be generalized?

26. Classes of Stimuli Stimulus Class: Set of stimuli with similar characteristics in common AKA: Concept Equivalence Class: Set of stimuli with different characteristics, but represent the same thing e.g. Written name, verbal name, picture of person

27. Inducing Stimuli Classes √ Explicit training is not necessarily needed to induce stimulus control across stimuli • Symmetry: A = B • Reflexivity: A = A • Transivity: A = B; B = C; A = C

28. Discriminating discrimination among other discriminative stimuli Stimulus discrimination and escape e.g. hailing a taxi out in the cold: Must have no patrons in it. Stimulus discrimination and punishment e.g. Boiling pan: Do not touch or you get burned.

29. Stimulus Discrimination and Differential Reinforcement DR- 2 responses (right way and wrong way)and 1 stimulus e.g. Asking mom for money SD- Two stimuli (Right signal wrong Signal) and 1 response e.g. Asking mom OR dad for money?

30. Requirements for stimulus control • Attention of the subject • Sensory capabilities of the subject • The stimulus must stand out relative to other stimuli.