Implications and refinements of the establishing operation concept

In this paper I discuss (a) three steps in the development of establishing operation (EO) terminology, (b) my early neglect of its possible relevance to applied behavior analysis, (c) the importance of functional analysis methodology for increasing awareness of EO issues, and (d) three comprehensive reviews that clarify the role of EOs in applied work. I then review and further analyze seven topics that require further clarification or that have been raised since my 1982 and 1993 articles: the EO evocative effect, deprivation and satiation, problem behavior maintained by attention, decreasing behavior evoked by a transitive conditioned establishing operation, EOs in the context of escape and avoidance, academic demand, and decreasing behavior evoked by a reflexive conditioned establishing operation.     

Motivating Operations Affect Stimulus Control: A Largely Overlooked Phenomenon in Discrimination Learning

Several recent studies have explored what Michael (e.g., 1982) termed the value-altering effect and the behavior-altering effect of motivating operations. One aspect of the behavior-altering effect that has garnered no recent attention involves changes in stimulus control produced by motivating operations. To call attention to this aspect of the behavior-altering effect, we herein review 11 studies that are concerned with the influence of varying levels of food or water deprivation on stimulus generalization. These studies suggest that motivating operations influence stimulus control (a) by changing the evocative strength of not just an established discriminative stimulus, but also of stimuli that are physically similar to it; (b) by changing the range of stimuli that evoke the operant in question; and (c) by exerting these effects in a graded fashion. These findings are potentially of conceptual and applied significance, and it appears that further research examining how motivating operations alter stimulus control, including some studies suggested herein, is warranted.     

Relative influences of establishing operations and reinforcement contingencies on self-injurious behavior during functional analyses

In the typical functional analysis in which the antecedent and consequent events associated with problem behavior are manipulated, the control condition involves elimination of both the relevant establishing operation (EO) and its associated contingency through a schedule of noncontingent reinforcement (usually fixed-time [FT] 30 s). In some functional analyses, however, antecedent events are manipulated in the absence of differential consequences, and a common test condition in such analyses also involves the delivery of reinforcement on an FT 30-s schedule. Thus, the same schedule of reinforcement (FT 30 s) is not considered to be an EO in the former type of analysis but is considered to be an EO in the latter. We examined the relative influences of EOs and reinforcement contingencies on problem behavior by exposing 6 individuals who engaged in self-injurious behavior (SIB) to four combinations of functional analysis conditions: EO present/contingency present, EO absent/contingency present, EO present/contingency absent, and EO absent/contingency absent. Results indicated that the only condition in which high rates of SIB were observed consistently was one in which the EO and the reinforcement contingency were both present. Implications of these results for the design of functional analysis test and control conditions are discussed.     

Self-Concept,Motivational Orientation,and Help-Seeking Behavior in Mathematics: A Study of Adults Returning to High School

The purpose of this study was to explore relations between mathematics achievement, self-concept, goal orientation, intrinsic motivation, and help-seeking behavior among adults studying for a high school diploma. Participants in this study were 145 adults (55 males and 90 females) enrolled in nine first year high school classes for adult students at five high schools in three cities in Norway. The age of the students varied from 18 to 52 years. Data were analyzed by means of structural equation modeling. The results indicate that mathematics self-concept in adult years build strongly on achievement in school years and that it is predictive of adult students’ goal orientation, intrinsic motivation, and learning strategies. Three weakly correlated dimensions of goal orientation predicted interest and help-seeking behavior in mathematics lessons differently.     

Attack priming and satiation in female golden hamsters: Tests of some alternatives to the aggression arousal interpretation

“Priming” a female hamster by allowing it a single attack on an intruder placed into its home cage transiently decreases the latency and increases the probability of attack on a second trial. Although we have previously argued that this priming effect reflects an increase in aggressive arousal, an alternative interpretation is that the fear elicited by placing a foreign object into the subject's home cage is reduced when it happens again on the second trial. Another interpretation is that priming is an effect of intruder novelty, i.e., the subject perceives a difference between the first and second intruders which causes it to attack the second more quickly. Experiment 1 compared the standard two trial paradigm with different intruders to trials in which (1) the first intruder was withdrawn and used again in the second trial, and (2) the intruder remained in the cage following the first attack. All intruders were pretreated with the analgesic-sedative methotrimeprazine to reduce the variability of their behavior. Neither hypothesis tested in Experiment 1 was supported, strengthening the interpretation of attack priming as a manipulation that affects primarily internal motivational mechanisms specific to aggression. Allowing a hamster to carry out a protracted series of attacks produces a “satiation” effect that is the reverse of priming, i.e., the latency of a subsequent attack is increased and its probability reduced. It is possible that the attack satiation observed in our earlier studies was not the result of processes internal to the subject, but could have been due to habituation to a particular intruder or to certain stimuli emitted by it during the protracted interaction. In Experiment 2 subjects were given three sessions of 10 successive trials using either 1 intruder presented repeatedly, 2 intruders presented alternately, or 10 different intruders presented once each. No difference among conditions was found in this study either suggesting that subject's aggressive behavior is insensitive to whatever changes may occur in intruders' behavior or other stimulus characteristics when they have been treated with methotrimeprazine. The lack of differences among test conditions in both experiments is most likely due to the efficacy of the drug in “standardizing” intruder behavior. Experiment 2 also revealed an interesting difference in two measures of attack latency. The time elapsing between intruder presentation and attack, i.e., the standard measure of latency, decreased from the first to the fourth trail; it then increased steadily over the remaining trials. The cumulative time that the subject remained in contact with the intruder prior to attack, a measure more indicative of attention to the intruder, dropped to an asymptotic value by the second trial. This difference suggests that the satiation effect may be accounted for by subjects' increasing avoidance of the intruders over trails, perhaps as a way of regualting their level of aggressive arousal.