Antecedent behavior, also known as behavioral psychology, is a stimulus that causes a living thing to maintain a certain behavior (Langthorne & McGill, 2009). This is described as to what inspires the organism to make the next action. Therefore, antecedent behavior is one that is caused by a certain stimulus, which can either cause it to pursue something or move in the opposite direction. This type of behavior can be in the form of motivation operation or discriminative stimuli. They are used to study the behavior of human beings.
Similarities between discriminative stimulus and operation motivation
Operation motivation and discriminative stimulus have one thing in common, and that is that they are both antecedent behaviors. Meaning that they are both causatives that push an organism to show a certain trait in their actions.
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Differences between discriminative stimulus and operation motivation
A discriminative stimulus is a situation where the effect caused a particular reinforcement makes one more responsive (Langthorne & McGill, 2009). Meaning, that discriminative stimuli are used when one is talking about events that are associated with the existence or non-existence of reinforcement in the past. A possible example of a discriminative stimulus is a certain sign indicating the availability of something while a red light indicates its unavailability. This is a somewhat different concept when compared with motivation operation because of many factors considered.
On the other hand, a motivating operation changes the effectiveness of certain stimuli as a reinforcer. It also interferes with how normal behaviour reinforced by the incentives occurs (Michael, 2009). This can be used to comprehend the response of human beings. An example of motivational operation is when a human being is deprived of something such as a phone. The desire to get a phone increases then and this is what is referred to as a motivational operation.
From this, behavioural analysts can work to affect the behaviour of people by either applying any of the two. This can either inspire one to be more productive when a stimulus is introduced or even prevent them from doing something when caution is needed.
References
Langthorne, P., & McGill, P. (2009). A tutorial on the concept of the motivating operation and its importance to application. Behavior analysis in practice , 2 (2), 22-31.
Michael J. (1982). Distinguishing between discriminative and motivational functions of stimuli. Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior , 37 (1), 149-55.
