BA400 Unit 7 Motivating Operations Paper Example

Why the Snack Card Worked at Four O'Clock and Not at Noon: A BA400 Unit 7 Motivating Operations Paper

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

BA400: Foundations of Behavior Analysis

Unit 7 Motivating Operations Paper

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The writer, the group home, the residents and every figure are composite and illustrative; the articles and book cited are real.

The Puzzle

Afternoons are when I see the most of Kevin, since I work the two-to-ten shift at the house. Kevin, 29, who has autism and limited speech, learned this spring to hand staff a picture card to request a snack. Staff were pleased with his progress, but the data puzzled them. Between three and five in the afternoon, Kevin used the card ten to fourteen times. Between noon and two, right after lunch, he used it once or twice, sometimes not at all. The card, the staff, the kitchen and the snacks were the same, and so was Kevin's skill at using the card.

The explanation lies in a distinction this course draws carefully: between stimuli that signal reinforcement is available and events that change how valuable the reinforcement is.

Two Functions of Stimuli

Michael (1982) argued that behavior analysts had been treating two different kinds of antecedent variables as if they were the same. A discriminative stimulus, or SD, is a stimulus in whose presence a behavior has been reinforced and in whose absence it has not; it signals that reinforcement is available. A motivating operation, by contrast, changes the effectiveness of a consequence as a reinforcer and changes the frequency of behavior that has produced that consequence.

Laraway et al. (2003) refined the terms, partly because earlier writing had used them inconsistently. They described motivating operations as having two effects: a value-altering effect, which increases or decreases a reinforcer's effectiveness, and a behavior-altering effect, which increases or decreases behavior that has been reinforced by it. Establishing operations increase a reinforcer's value; abolishing operations decrease it.

Kevin and the Snack Card

For Kevin, the presence of a staff member in the kitchen with the snack cabinet open functions as an SD: in that situation, handing over the card has reliably produced a snack. The SD is present at noon and at four o'clock alike.

What changes is time since eating. By late afternoon, several hours after lunch, food deprivation functions as an establishing operation. It increases the value of snacks as reinforcers and evokes behavior that has produced snacks, including card use. Right after lunch, food satiation functions as an abolishing operation, decreasing the value of snacks and abating card use.

The card told Kevin when a snack was available; hunger decided whether he wanted one.

Gail and Breakfast

Gail, whose food-taking appeared in earlier units, is the second case. When I reviewed a month of data alongside the house log, food-taking at lunch was about twice as frequent on days she had refused breakfast. Skipping breakfast was an establishing operation for food, which increased the frequency of behaviors that had produced food, including taking it from others. The same analysis helped explain why her food-taking was lower at dinner on days she had a large afternoon snack.

Marcus and His Tokens

Marcus, 34, earns tokens for chores and exchanges them for outings. Staff noticed that he completes chores eagerly for most of the week but slowly on the day after an outing. The outing appears to function as an abolishing operation: having just enjoyed the backup reinforcer, tokens are temporarily less valuable, and chore completion abates. As the next outing approaches and time since the last one grows, the tokens regain value.

Testing the Explanation

A motivating operation account makes a checkable prediction. If time since eating drives Kevin's card use, then on days when lunch is late or small, card use after lunch should rise. In May, a field trip pushed lunch back to two o'clock and Kevin ate little. That afternoon, he used the card eight times between two and four, far more than his usual early-afternoon rate. On another day, when he had a large late breakfast, his late-afternoon card use dropped to five. These were natural variations rather than an experiment, but they fit the prediction better than an explanation based on the card or the time of day alone.

A Note on Ethics

Understanding establishing operations raises an ethical question. If deprivation makes reinforcers more effective, a program could be tempted to withhold food, attention or activities to increase motivation for teaching. Our agency's policy, consistent with professional ethics, does not allow residents to be deprived of food, contact or other basic needs for teaching purposes. The team used naturally occurring motivating operations, such as the hours between meals, rather than creating new deprivation. That boundary matters most for people who depend on staff for access to nearly everything.

Using Motivating Operations in Planning

Cooper et al. (2020) note that practitioners can use motivating operations deliberately, for example by teaching requests when the relevant reinforcer is valuable and by avoiding teaching sessions immediately after satiation. Our team made three changes.

First, after a team discussion, Kevin's request training moved from right after lunch to mid-afternoon, when snacks are valuable. He began requesting more consistently, and staff gradually extended training to other items. Second, staff on the morning shift now offer Gail a breakfast option she likes, such as toast with peanut butter, on days she refuses the usual meal, which reduces the establishing operation for food at lunch and has cut her lunchtime food-taking. Third, Marcus's chore schedule was adjusted so his most demanding chores fall later in the week, when tokens are most valuable.

Avoiding a Common Error

Before this course, I would have said Kevin uses the card in the afternoon because he knows snacks are available then. That explanation treats the card as the only antecedent and misses the motivating operation. It would have led to the wrong fix, such as adding more cues at noon, when the problem was not that Kevin missed the signal but that snacks, right after a full meal, were simply not worth requesting.

Conclusion

Kevin's snack card worked at four o'clock and not at noon because the motivating operation changed while the discriminative stimulus stayed the same. Michael's distinction and Laraway and colleagues' terms make it possible to name what changed, and the same analysis explains Gail's lunchtime food-taking and Marcus's slow chore days. Planning around motivating operations, teaching when reinforcers matter and adjusting schedules, helped all three residents, without withholding anything any of them needed.

References

Cooper, J. O., Heron, T. E., & Heward, W. L. (2020). Applied behavior analysis (3rd ed.). Pearson.

Laraway, S., Snycerski, S., Michael, J., & Poling, A. (2003). Motivating operations and terms to describe them: Some further refinements. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 36(3), 407-414. https://doi.org/10.1901/jaba.2003.36-407

Michael, J. (1982). Distinguishing between discriminative and motivational functions of stimuli. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 37(1), 149-155. https://doi.org/10.1901/jeab.1982.37-149