When the sight of the thing reinforces looking at it

Revised on 1/4/14

Malott's 2nd question on p. 6 (middle of 1st column) asks what reinforces the behavior of giving attention to Eric as he throws a tantrum. Watching something - Eric throwing a tantrum, a beautiful sunset, a good-looking person - is a behavior. And all behaviors require explanation.

Malott says that sometimes the sight of the thing we're looking at reinforces the behavior of looking at it. This is an example of a stimulus functioning as a reinforcer (remember the 4 kinds of reinforcers discussed on p. 3). The sight of something, the smell of something, the taste of something - these are all stimuli, & in the right circumstances, any of them might function as a reinforcer for a behavior that they immediately follow.

Anyway, Eric is throwing a tantrum & you watch him as he howls & flails about. Your watching is a behavior. Why do you do it? Because it's reinforced by the sight of the thing you're looking at.

Reinforcer is as reinforcer does

Revised on 1/4/14

Malott points out several places in Ch. 1 that whether or not something functions as a reinforcer in a particular instance depends on whether the frequency of the behavior it immediately follows increases when circumstances are similar in the future. That's kind of a tangled sentence, so you should re-read it as many times as you need to in order to understand what I just said.

One of the places he makes this point is on p. 8 (the "Reinforcer Assessment" section). We can't simply make the blanket statement that candy is a reinforcer, because for some people, if you give them candy immediately following a target behavior, the future frequency of that behavior doesn't increase. And even if candy often works as a reinforcer for someone, there may be times when it doesn't. So the only way to know for sure if something functions as a reinforcer for a given organism performing a given behavior in a given type of situation is to see if the frequency of that behavior increases when that organism is in a similar situation in the future.

Despite all this, it's certainly true that some things almost always function as reinforcers for most normal people in most normal situations. A good example is money. So as long as we realize the limitations of what we're saying, it's OK to refer to those things as reinforcers. Can you think of some examples?

What are the functions of the stimuli in a behavioral chain?

Revised on 3/29/14

The dual-functioning stimuli that link the responses in a behavioral chain function as reinforcers for the behaviors that precede them. The 1st stimulus or condition that starts the chain doesn't link two behaviors, so in analyzing a chain, we normally don't label that one as a reinforcer. The 2nd function of these stimuli may be S^D, EO, operandum, or opportunity to respond. This last option is not discussed in Ch. 20. It's briefly discussed in Ch. 22 (p. 354) but it's relevant here too. Without having it as an option for the 2nd function of these linking stimuli, we're handicapped in some cases. Anyway, figuring out which of these functions applies to a particular dual-functioning stimulus is one of the trickier things to do when analyzing a behavioral chain.

In this chapter, Malott's only discussion of a stimulus functioning as an EO is in the footnote at the bottom of p. 315, where he assigns that function to the stimulus that starts the behavioral chain he's describing. Can a dual-functioning stimulus in the middle of a chain also have the EO function? I think it can because the introduction of an EO increases the likelihood that the next behavior in the chain will occur, and that's the sort of thing these linking stimuli do to keep the behaviors happening one after the other. But that's not my main concern in this post.

My main concern is this opportunity to respond option. In Ch. 22 we're going to learn about analogs to discriminated avoidance. These are situations in which there's a deadline and the target behavior has to happen before the deadline or else you lose the chance to receive a reinforcer. We'll learn that in lots of these scenarios, the time before the deadline functions as an S^D, meaning that if the target behavior happens before the deadline, it's reinforced. And in those scenarios, the time after the deadline functions as an S^Δ, meaning that if the behavior happens after the deadline, it won't be reinforced. But, Malott explains to us, the time before a deadline doesn't always function as an S^D. It's not an S^D in cases where the target behavior, for various possible reasons, cannot be performed after the deadline has expired. If the target behavior can't be performed, this means the time after the deadline is not an S^Δ, which means that the time before the deadline is not an S^D. So if the time before the deadline is not an S^D, what is it? According to Malott, that stimulus condition is best labeled as an opportunity to respond (again, see p. 354).

Are you still with me? OK, then here we go, back to those dual-functioning stimuli in behavioral chains. When my students think up examples of behavioral chains, they sometimes have trouble figuring out the function of the stimulus/condition described in the 1st box as well as the other linking stimuli. I now realize that there are 4 possibilities: S^D, EO, operandum, or opportunity to respond. As an example of opportunity to respond, consider the example provided by one of my students. The 1st box says "Car is parked." The following behavior box says "Start car." The following dual-functioning stimulus box says "Car running." Is that first stimulus condition (Car is parked) an operandum? I don't think so. Is it an EO? I don't think so because if it was, that would mean that when the car is parked, the reinforcement value of "car is running" would be greater than if the car was not parked, that is, if the car was running or being driven. This doesn't make sense because in the latter condition (car is running or being driven), the behavior of starting the car can't be performed because the car is already started. Is it an S^D? I don't think so because the corresponding S^Δ would then be "car is running/being driven." And again, in that condition the behavior of starting the car couldn't be performed because the car is already running. So what's the function of the condition described in that first box, "car is parked?" I think it's an opportunity to respond.

So some quick guidelines for figuring out the functions of the initial stimulus/condition and the linking stimuli:

Is it an S^D? Figure out what its corresponding S^Δ would be. Then ask yourself two questions: (1) In the S^Δ condition, could the following behavior be performed? If not, then this condition is not an S^Δ, which means that the stimulus/condition in question is not an S^D. (2) In the S^Δ condition, if the following behavior could be performed, would it be followed by the reinforcer that's described in the next stimulus box? If so, then then this condition is not an S^Δ, which means that the stimulus/condition in question is not an S^D.

Is it an EO? Look at the reinforcing stimulus that results from the behavior. Is it a more powerful reinforcer for the behavior because of the presence of the stimulus/condition in question? If so, then it's an EO.

Is it an operandum? Does the stimulus/condition constitute making available some "thing" that you must have in order to perform the following behavior? An example is "fork in hand" when the following behavior (such as "put fork in potato") can't be performed without that "thing." If so, then it's an operandum.

Is it an opportunity to respond? Similar to operandum in that without either - operandum or opportunity to respond - the following behavior can't be performed. Here, tho, the inability to perform the behavior is not because some implement or object is not available, but for some other reason it's not possible to perform the behavior, like in the "car is parked" example above.

Have fun figuring out the dual functions of these linking stimuli in behavioral chains!

Choosing target behaviors for contingency analyses

Revised on 1/4/14

Take a look at an earlier post with the "Principles of Behavior: Ch. 02" label for tips about preparing the reinforcement CA. This post will elaborate on some of what was written there.

One of the most common errors that students make with CAs is in identifying the target behavior. Because the courses that use Malott's book focus on the basic behavioral contingencies, the examples of contingencies that you use in your CAs should use simple, discrete behaviors. "Discrete" means not consisting of multiple parts. So you should not use behaviors that are actually behavioral chains consisting of a sequence of connected behaviors. An example of a behavioral chain is baking a cake, which is not a discrete, unitary act, but several acts or behaviors performed one after the other until you're finished. You should not use any other "collection" of behaviors either. Doing your homework or cleaning up your room, for instance, are collections of separate behaviors, consisting of any number of individual behaviors. Often these collections of behaviors have other, unrelated, behaviors interspersed. So you might work for a while on your homework, or pick up a few things in your room, then take a break, get a bite to eat or go to the bathroom, then resume working on your homework or cleaning your room. Collections of behaviors like this don't work for the kinds of CAs we're doing. One of the reasons is that in this kind of situation, it's not possible to specify what is meant by "immediately following the target behavior."

The target behaviors you choose should have a clear starting point, a clear ending point, and between the starting and ending points there should be no interruption and no interspersed behaviors.

The one possible exception is the reinforceable response unit (RRU), which you can read about on p. 374. An RRU meets the criteria I just spelled out in the preceding paragraph, so it's acceptable. But if you specify an RRU as the target behavior in one of your CAs, be careful, because they're rare in real life, and your CAs need to be faithful to real life.

Comparing graphs

We often need to analyze and compare cumulative graphs. Malott discusses the cumulative graph in Ch. 17 and Cooper, Heron, and Heward discuss it in Ch. 6. Three basic ways in which you can compare graphs are in terms of their level, trend, and variability.

The level of behavior depicted on a graph refers to the average frequency of the behavior across time. Calculate it by dividing the number of responses by the amount of time in which those responses were made. For example, if a rat pressed a lever 120 times in an hour, then one way to express the level of behavior would be 2 responses per minute (120 lever presses divided by 60 minutes). When visually analyzing a graph, imagine a straight horizontal line running across the graph at the level on the vertical axis that represents the average frequency based on all the data points. Sometimes a graph actually shows this "mean level line" (sometimes it's a "median level line"). The higher the mean level line is from the baseline, the greater the average frequency of the behavior across the period of time represented by the graph.

Trend refers to the overall tendency across time for the behavior to increase in frequency, decrease in frequency, or remain stable. Again, imagine a straight line, this time running through the data points in such a way that approximately half of them are above the line and half of them are below the line. If this trend line is horizontal, it tells you that, overall, the behavior did not change in frequency over the time period represented by the graph. If the line slopes upward from left to right, the frequency increased across time, and if it slopes downward, the frequency decreased. Another word for trend that you'll often see is slope.

Variability refers to the average change in frequency from one data point to the next. Imagine the trend line again. If the actual data points tend to be far from the line, then variability is high. This would indicate that the frequency of the behavior tended to change a lot from moment to moment during the session. There were periods of fast responding mixed in with periods of slow responding. We'd probably describe a line like this as very "jagged." When variability is low, the line is less jagged, more smooth.

The following graph shows a low level of behavior, a near-zero trend, and low or fairly stable variability.


The following graph shows a moderate level of behavior, an increasing trend, and high variability. Notice that a trend line has been added.


The following graph shows a low level of behavior, a slightly increasing trend, and moderate variability:

What gets paired in a verbal pairing procedure?

Several times in the chapters on rule-governed behavior (23, 24, 25, maybe elsewhere too), Malott discusses the verbal analog to the pairing procedure (“verbal pairing procedure” for short). Remember that a neutral stimulus becomes a learned reinforcer or a learned aversive stimulus (punisher) by being paired with a stimulus that’s already a reinforcer or aversive stimulus (Ch. 11). Like this...


According to Malott’s theory of how rule-governed behavior works, in order for a rule to control behavior, there has to be an aversive stimulus/condition that’s escaped by performing the target behavior that the rule specifies. This direct acting escape contingency is the engine at the heart of rule control. If behavior is controlled by its immediate consequences, as Malott posits, then in order to understand any behavior, including complex rule-governed behavior, we have to dig deep until we uncover whatever direct acting contingency is actually doing the work of controlling the behavior.

So in rule-governed behavior, where does the necessary aversive stimulus/condition come from? Malott makes it clear that when a rule is stated (by someone else or by oneself), and if there’s a deadline, then the combination of noncompliance with the rule (not performing the target behavior) and the approaching deadline constitutes an aversive stimulus/condition. It’s a conditional aversive stimulus because each of the two components (noncompliance and approaching deadline) by itself would not be aversive. The aversiveness of one of the components is conditional upon its being combined with the other.

But what still requires a little further clarification, I think, is why that conditional stimulus is aversive. The mere combining of noncompliance and an approaching deadline isn’t necessarily aversive. For instance, consider this rule: Take your kid to the dentist before the end of the week and you’ll receive 5 cents. Most of us would not worry about losing the opportunity for that 5 cents. So noncompliance (I haven’t taken the kid to the dentist yet) plus the approaching deadline (It’s already Friday afternoon) would not constitute an aversive stimulus/condition. But if the amount were $100 instead of 5 cents, we’d probably worry and noncompliance plus approaching deadline would be aversive. So whether or not this kind of conditional stimulus is aversive depends on the consequence specified in the contingency that the rule describes. If the consequence is sizable enough and/or probable enough, then the conditional stimulus (noncompliance + approaching deadline) will be aversive.

So back to the original question about the verbal pairing procedure. Remember that in order to turn a neutral stimulus into an aversive stimulus, it has to be paired with an already-aversive stimulus. As explained above, noncompliance with a rule plus an approaching deadline constitutes a conditional stimulus which, by itself, is neutral, that is, it’s not aversive. It only becomes aversive when it’s paired with an already-aversive stimulus, such as loss of the opportunity to receive a sizable and/or probable reinforcer. Like this…


Pardon me for getting mentalistic for just a moment, but this “pairing” doesn’t take place in the outside, observable world, but “in your head.” The proper way to say that is that the neutral conditional stimulus and the already-aversive stimulus are “verbally paired.” Or to say it another way, because we’re not talking about actually physically pairing two stimuli, this is a verbal analog of the pairing procedure.

Anyway, this verbal pairing procedure makes “it's Friday afternoon and kid hasn't been taken to dentist” an aversive condition. So now it can function as the before condition in the direct acting escape contingency that ultimately controls the target behavior, as in the diagram in the 2nd column on p. 405. This contingency and the 3rd contingency in the 1st column on that page are essentially the same, or at least we’ll treat them the same for now. I believe the before conditions described in these two contingencies are different from each other. But for present purposes they can be treated as interchangeable because under normal circumstances they would always occur together.

Tinkering with some contingencies in Ch. 26B

(1) In Ch. 26B on the web, Malott calls the contingency at the top of p. 7 an analog to penalty. But I think it's an analog to punishment by prevention of a reinforcer. What do you think?

Before: You will enter Heaven when you die.
Behavior: You dump a barrel of toxic waste.
After: You will not enter Heaven when you die.

(2) At the bottom of p. 12 there's a description of a rule-governed analog to punishment, and on the top of the next page it's diagrammed, but incorrectly, I think. It seems to me that the diagram should say:

Before: You won't enter Hell when you die.
Behavior: You commit one mortal sin.
After: You will enter Hell when you die.

(3) On pgs. 13-14 Malott offers the example of an analog to avoidance of the loss of the opportunity for a reinforcer (AALOR). As we've learned, if a contingency looks like an analog to reinforcement, but it includes a deadline, then it's really an AALOR. In this example, the rule is to do a good deed before the end of the day so you'll go to Heaven if you die before you wake. Malott says the deadline is the end of the day and that it functions as an S^D. But I don't think so. I think the deadline is something like "before you fall asleep and never wake up." If this rule is effective in controlling someone's good deed behavior, it's because noncompliance as sleepy time approaches is highly aversive since you won't get another chance to earn entry into Heaven if you die before you wake. This deadline is not an S^D because the corresponding S^Δ would be something like "after you wake up, still alive." In that circumstance, the target behavior of doing a good deed would still earn the reinforcer of getting to Heaven, or at least getting closer. So I think this is another example of a deadline that functions as an opportunity to respond. So I'd change the diagram at the top of p. 14 to:

Before: You won't go to Heaven.
Opportunity to Respond/Deadline: Before you fall asleep and never wake up.
Behavior: You perform a good deed.
After: You will go to Heaven.

(4) The stranded motorist scenario is another example in which the deadline functions as an opportunity to respond rather than as an S^D.