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.