Direct-acting, indirect-acting, and ineffective

All behavioral contingencies consist of three elements: the occasion for a behavior/response, the actual behavior/response, and the outcome of the behavior/response (p. 16). The contingencies we learned about first are the direct-acting contingencies, which Malott defines on p. 366 as those for which "the outcome of the response reinforces or punishes that response." The outcome (such as presentation of a reinforcer or an aversive stimulus) reinforces or punishes the target behavior because it immediately follows that behavior. In other words, the outcome directly affects the future frequency of the target behavior.

Indirect-acting contingencies consist of the same three elements, but we call them indirect-acting because the outcome (such as presentation of a reinforcer or an aversive stimulus) does NOT reinforce or punish the target behavior because it does not immediately follow that behavior but, instead, comes after some delay. This delayed outcome still affects the future frequency of the target behavior, but it affects it indirectly instead of directly. These indirect effects on the behavior's frequency are not called "reinforcement" or "punishment" because, by definition, reinforcement and punishment involve outcomes that follow the target behavior immediately.

These indirect-acting contingencies are one type of analog contingency (or what Malott calls "analogs to behavioral contingencies"). They're analogs because they resemble the direct-acting contingencies, but they're different because of their delayed outcomes. For our present purposes, indirect-acting contingencies and analog contingencies are the same thing.

In order for an indirect-acting contingency to be effective (affect the future frequency of the behavior), the contingency must be described to the behaver. A statement that describes a contingency (direct-acting or indirect-acting) is a rule. If the statement of a rule describing an indirect-acting contingency affects the frequency of the target behavior, then we can say that the behavior is "rule-governed."

When we talk about analog/indirect-acting contingencies, we need to say more. We need to say what kind of analog/indirect-acting contingency we're talking about. For instance, in Ch. 22 Malott talks about analog reinforcement contingencies and analog discriminated avoidance contingencies.

To our visitors...

It could be that some folks who are not fellow students in your class may be visiting the ole DMT site from time to time. If so, this post is intended mainly for them.

I hope our guests will feel free to explore and to add their comments to any of the posts here. For now, at least, things are set up so that anyone can add comments without restraint. I trust that all comments, whether from students or guests, will be offered in the same spirit that motivated creating DMT in the first place. That spirit is best-expressed in the words of Rudolph the Rat, who appears in the upper-left of our front page. Getting a little more specific, our goal at DMT is for more and more people to learn the principles of behavior analysis and how to use them to improve our lives. And we're always open to suggestions about how we can do that better. If you'd like to communicate directly with me (PW), you can send an email to williamspsATgmail.com (replace AT with @).

How do you avoid something immediately?

Most of the behavioral contingencies that we deal with in Principles of Behavior have immediate consequences, that is, reinforcing or aversive consequences that follow the target behavior immediately. Starting with Ch. 22 we get deeper into analog contingencies, which often means that the consequences don't follow the target behavior immediately, or so it seems. Actually, we'll learn that even with these analogs, the consequences that directly affect the future frequency of the target behavior do, indeed, follow the target behavior immediately.

But I digress .... In the case of some avoidance contingencies, it's hard to see how this immediacy criterion applies. In other cases it's obvious. If you're a race car driver whizzing around a track surrounded by lots of other drivers in close quarters, you're going to experience something pretty aversive any second unless you're continuously performing several different behaviors. Because all kinds of nasty stuff threatens to happen to you immediately, within seconds if not less, then whatever behaviors you perform to prevent those things from happening have the immediate consequence of avoiding/preventing aversive consequences. This is the sense in which the consequences of avoidance follow the target behavior immediately.

What that means when you're inventing avoidance CAs is that the aversive stimulus described in your before box must be something that's going to be experienced within seconds UNLESS the target behavior happens. Another way to say this is that the aversive stimulus is going to experienced within seconds unless the next thing you do is the target behavior.

What that also means is that behaviors like taking an alternate route so you won't have to put up with the heavy traffic on your regular route, or telling them to "hold the onions" when you order bean burritos from Taco Bell so you won't gross out everyone you talk to, are not examples of avoidance. In this latter case, when you tell them to hold the onions, you haven't yet eaten them, right? So at the time you tell them to hold the onions, the aversive condition of onion breath is not going to happen within seconds. That aversive condition won't happen unless you do something else first, namely actually eating a burrito with onions on it. So telling them to hold the onions is not an avoidance behavior. In an avoidance situation, the aversive stimulus or condition is going to happen within seconds unless the next thing you do is the target behavior.

But even though it's not avoidance, you should still tell them to hold the onions.