Running Head: MOTIVATING OPERATIONS AND DISCRIMINATIVE STIMULI 1
Motivating operations and Discriminative Stimuli |
|
How they are Alike |
How they Differ |
| They both possess behaviour altering effects as they are antecedent variables | Discriminative Stimuli signals availability of reinforcement, Motivational Stimuli changes the effectiveness of a reinforce (Michael, 1982) |
| They both alter the frequency of the current behaviour with regard to either the Reinforcer or the punisher. | Motivational Stimuli alters the value of consequences that act as types of reinforcement or punishment. Discriminative Stimuli proposes the value of reinforcement without interference on what the subject is to select (Michael, 1982). |
| They affect the current frequency of behaviour but do not alter the future frequency of behaviour (Michael, 1982) | Discrimination Stimulus is Functional Altering while Motivational Stimuli is behavioural altering. |
| Each has two types of reinforcers. M.O. either stimulates Establishing Operations E.O. or Abolishing Operations A.O. Discriminative Stimuli suggests two types of reinforcers, Positive (S+), or Negative (S-) (Michael, 1982) . | Most Individuals learn to approach the S+ stimulus more than they do S- in Discriminative Stimuli, however, for Motivational Operation, there is no specific preference. |
Motivating Operations and Discriminative Stimuli
Table 1: Differences and Comparisons between Motivational Operational and Discriminative Stimuli
From the above, the identification of Motivational Operation and Discriminative Stimuli is evident. In the environment currently, there are various situations where a person is confronted with either of these two. When discussing on Motivational Operation, this is a concept that has been used to define the internal processes or desires that an individual may possess. These desires change or improve with regard to the presence of a certain stimulus. An example of a motivational Operation can be where, for instance, where a child is offered fruits at a certain point during the day (Meadows, 2013) . The child may choose to taste a few of the fruits and throw away or waste the rest. The mother then decides, instead of offering the child fruits for the next few days, they can choose to offer the child nothing at that particular time where fruits were to be offered. The deprivation of these fruits leads to the creation of an urge or a craving by the child. They long for the fruits to be returned and hence on returning after a few days, the mother observes the child eating the fruits without hesitation or playing with them. In this example, taking away of the fruits is the reinforcer where the Motivational Operation that was developed led to a behaviour change after the fruits were brought back. It is an E.O. value as it improved the effectiveness of the reinforcer. For Abolition Operation, where a mother wishes for her son to quit asking for cake, she can increase the intake of cake for her son. This in turn will make the son reduce the urge to have cake as days go by and thus reduce the craving for cake (Michael, 1982) .
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Discriminative Stimulus is a concept that is used to define the various internal processes that allow a person to make a decision as to whether to act on an action. The Discriminative Stimulus allows a person to select which action they would like to select in order to satisfy the Motivational Operation or reinforcer that is taking place. Most people drive away from the S- Stimuli as it indicates there is no reinforcement present. The choice made for most people is S+ which allows a person to satisfy the reinforcer or Motivational Operation that is driving the behaviour of that person. The Discriminative Stimulus is a Function Altering stimuli (Dewey, 2007) . In order for a D.S. to take place, there must be a motivational operation preceding it that allows the individual to choose what behaviour to push forward or select and from their selection, experience the consequence of their selection. For instance, if a person is heading for an interview and gets their shoes dirty, they will require to clean the shoes. Passing by a shoe shiner, the person stops and sits to get his shoes cleaned, after which he continues to the interview undisturbed by the previously dirty shoes. From the above, the following are the stimuli’s:
Motivational Operation: Uncomfortable - Shoes need to be clean
Discriminative Stimuli : Sits at a shoe shiner
Behaviour : Pays for his shoes to be cleaned/ Shoes are cleaned
Consequence: Shoes are clean, goes to Interview.
This is an S+ behaviour, where a person chose to react to the reinforcement. The S- tells a person that there is no reinforcement and hence keeps the person at the mercy of the Motivational Operation. An example of this can be where a person is driving and the gas light comes on. They look around and are unable to see any gas stations around. At this point, the stimuli present is the S- stimulus which does not provide any reinforcement. The person continues driving hoping to run into a gas station. The reinforcement in this scenario would be finding a gas station, where the person would drive in and fill up their gas tank.
In conclusion, the various behaviours that are experienced or observed during Motivational Operations and Discriminative Stimuli’s can be distinguished anticipated. In order to train toddlers for instance, the use of E.O.s has proven to be a vital tool where children can learn and adapt to different behaviours through the use of stimuli to dictate their resulting behaviour.
References
Dewey, R. A. (2007). An Introduction Discriminative Stimuli | in Chapter 05: Conditioning | from Psychology: An Introduction by Russ Dewey . In Psychology: Retrieved from http://www.intropsych.com/ch05_conditioning/discriminative_stimuli.html
Meadows, T. (2013). Understanding M.O.: Motivating Operations. Retrieved June 5, 2017, from http://www.iloveaba.com/2011/11/understanding-eo-establishing.html
Michael, J. (1982). Distinguishing Between Discriminating and Motivational Functions of Stimuli (Vol. 1, pp. 149–155).
