- Location
- Andorra and Spain
Most of us are aware of the ABC of learning:
A - Antecedent. That is, in basic terms, the stimulus that leads to the behaviour. It might be an auditory cue, a visual cue, a scent ... it can be a combination of factors, and it's not necessarily something we do intentionally. It is just any stimulus (or combination of stimulii) that create a behaviour.
B - Behaviour. The response to the stimulus. Maybe a sit, maybe a bark, a growl, running, eating... basically the verb of the equation.
C - Consequence. What happens as a result of the behaviour. Cause and effect.
A couple of examples:
A: You say "sit"
B: The dog sits
C: Dog gets a cookie
A: A stranger reaches towards your dog
B: Your dog barks at him
C: The stranger retreats
Learning always happens through this ABC construct.
However, that's not the whole picture. Even before the A, we have what's called Motivating Operators (MO). In essence, the MO is, how valuable the reinforcer (or punisher) is that I'm using in that certain environment. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking a certain thing is your dog's strongest reinforcer, but it depends a lot on the context.
Consider your favourite food. Mine is probably a home-made chilli sausage roll, warm and flaky straight from the oven. Delicious! If I knew that was available as a reinforcer, I would work hard to get it. The thing with these sausage rolls is, I don't have them very often. So, however hungry I am, if it's there, I'll gobble it up. Yummy!
If I had the same type of sausage roll for every meal for a week, however, even if I was quite hungry, I wouldn't be as excited to perform my behaviour to get it. The reinforcer hasn't changed, but my motivation for it has. This also applies in other scenarios. Go back to the scarce sausage roll, but try to give it to me in the middle of a job interview, or a piece of work where I have to concentrate, or in the middle of a great night out when I'm boogying down on the dance floor. In all these scenarios, I'm far less likely to perform a behaviour for the sausage roll. The sausage roll itself hasn't changed, and take me out of that scenario I'd be happy to take it. But in that environment, my motivation has massively decreased.
Conversely, day to day, social acceptance isn't a big deal to me. I try to be pleasant to everyone, but if someone doesn't like me, I don't worry myself over it. If you repeatedly interrupt me when I'm in the middle of an important piece of work, I'm likely to snap at you. Yet, put me back in that job interview, and social acceptance suddenly becomes massively more important to me. I will go out of my way to align myself with the interviewers, to gain their respect. If one of them is trying to push my buttons, I will respond in a totally different way to how I would if you did the same in an everyday environment.
It's easy to see this in our dogs, too. How often have you heard (or even said), "My dog won't eat outside"? Or, "My dog doesn't have any interest in playing with toys in the park". It's all to do with the MO! Knowing this allows us to manipulate the situation so that we increase the value of our reinforcers in that environment. Maybe that means keeping back his favourite thing for a week or so, so that it's amazing when he sees it again. Maybe it's a case of making the environment less challenging and working towards that in slow increments.
If I met each of my interviewers separately in a social context when I was happy to eat sausage rolls in front of them, if I became friends with them all, then I would be far more relaxed in the job interview and might be more willing to take a sausage roll if it were offered. The environment may look the same to an onlooker, but the motivating operations have changed, and that has a big impact on how much I am going to try to gain access to those different types of reinforcement.
A - Antecedent. That is, in basic terms, the stimulus that leads to the behaviour. It might be an auditory cue, a visual cue, a scent ... it can be a combination of factors, and it's not necessarily something we do intentionally. It is just any stimulus (or combination of stimulii) that create a behaviour.
B - Behaviour. The response to the stimulus. Maybe a sit, maybe a bark, a growl, running, eating... basically the verb of the equation.
C - Consequence. What happens as a result of the behaviour. Cause and effect.
A couple of examples:
A: You say "sit"
B: The dog sits
C: Dog gets a cookie
A: A stranger reaches towards your dog
B: Your dog barks at him
C: The stranger retreats
Learning always happens through this ABC construct.
However, that's not the whole picture. Even before the A, we have what's called Motivating Operators (MO). In essence, the MO is, how valuable the reinforcer (or punisher) is that I'm using in that certain environment. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking a certain thing is your dog's strongest reinforcer, but it depends a lot on the context.
Consider your favourite food. Mine is probably a home-made chilli sausage roll, warm and flaky straight from the oven. Delicious! If I knew that was available as a reinforcer, I would work hard to get it. The thing with these sausage rolls is, I don't have them very often. So, however hungry I am, if it's there, I'll gobble it up. Yummy!
If I had the same type of sausage roll for every meal for a week, however, even if I was quite hungry, I wouldn't be as excited to perform my behaviour to get it. The reinforcer hasn't changed, but my motivation for it has. This also applies in other scenarios. Go back to the scarce sausage roll, but try to give it to me in the middle of a job interview, or a piece of work where I have to concentrate, or in the middle of a great night out when I'm boogying down on the dance floor. In all these scenarios, I'm far less likely to perform a behaviour for the sausage roll. The sausage roll itself hasn't changed, and take me out of that scenario I'd be happy to take it. But in that environment, my motivation has massively decreased.
Conversely, day to day, social acceptance isn't a big deal to me. I try to be pleasant to everyone, but if someone doesn't like me, I don't worry myself over it. If you repeatedly interrupt me when I'm in the middle of an important piece of work, I'm likely to snap at you. Yet, put me back in that job interview, and social acceptance suddenly becomes massively more important to me. I will go out of my way to align myself with the interviewers, to gain their respect. If one of them is trying to push my buttons, I will respond in a totally different way to how I would if you did the same in an everyday environment.
It's easy to see this in our dogs, too. How often have you heard (or even said), "My dog won't eat outside"? Or, "My dog doesn't have any interest in playing with toys in the park". It's all to do with the MO! Knowing this allows us to manipulate the situation so that we increase the value of our reinforcers in that environment. Maybe that means keeping back his favourite thing for a week or so, so that it's amazing when he sees it again. Maybe it's a case of making the environment less challenging and working towards that in slow increments.
If I met each of my interviewers separately in a social context when I was happy to eat sausage rolls in front of them, if I became friends with them all, then I would be far more relaxed in the job interview and might be more willing to take a sausage roll if it were offered. The environment may look the same to an onlooker, but the motivating operations have changed, and that has a big impact on how much I am going to try to gain access to those different types of reinforcement.