Coal Is Not Black, Snow Is Not White, Food Is Not a Reinforcer: The Roles of Affordances and Dispositions in the Analysis of Behavior

Abstract

Reinforcers comprise sequences of actions in context. Just as the white of snow and black of coal depend on the interaction of an organism's visual system and the reflectances in its surrounds, reinforcers depend on an organism's motivational state and the affordances-possibilities for perception and action-in its surrounds. Reinforcers are not intrinsic to things but are a relation between what the thing affords, its context, the organism, and his or her history as capitulated in their current state. Reinforcers and other affordances are potentialities rather than intrinsic features. Realizing those potentialities requires motivational operations and stimulus contexts that change the state of the organism-they change its disposition to make the desired response. An expansion of the three-term contingency is suggested in order to help keep us mindful of the importance of behavioral systems, states, emotions, and dispositions in our research programs.

New is always better: Novelty modulates oculomotor learning

“…However, the notion of reward is a very complex and idiosyncratic issue. There are many possible variables that have to be considered: dispositions and personal preferences of the subject, which contribute to the value of the reinforcer, as well as the subject's recent history and experiences, which in turn form reward expectations (Killeen & Jacobs, 2016). Furthermore, features of the stimulus including its content, social importance, and salience have relevant effects on behavior.…”

Being there on time: Reinforcer effects on timing and locating

“…When one environmental event usually precedes other events, this marker event signposts (Shahan, ) the likely future because of its correlation with subsequent events. It is this correlation that exerts control over behavior (Baum, ; Cowie, ; Cowie & Davison, ), provided the future conditions signposted by the marker event are important in the context of the organism's current affordances, dispositions (Killeen & Jacobs, ), or phylogenetic history (Baum, ; Cowie & Davison, ). This sort of control by correlations that have occurred across an organism's learning history is often termed stimulus control .…”

Does a negative discriminative stimulus function as a punishing consequence?

“…Suboptimal choice appears to be driven partially by a preference for locally richer alternatives, and partially by the availability of discriminative stimuli signaling reinforcement contingencies (Chow, Smith, Wilson, Zentall & Beckmann 2017;Zentall & Laude, 2013;Zentall & Stagner, 2011). The extent to which any discriminative stimulus functions as a punisher will depend upon what that stimulus predicts about the nature and probability of future events (see Baum, 2012;Cowie & Davison, 2016;Killeen & Jacobs, 2017;Shahan, 2017). If we accept that behavior changes as a function of events that are likely to follow, these changes should occur irrespective of past events, and regardless of whether discriminative stimuli are appetitive (e.g., Cowie, Davison & Elliffe, 2011), aversive (Ayllon & Azrin, 1966;Galbicka & Platt, 1984;Kelleher & Morse, 1968) or have no phylogenetic importance (Boutros, Davison & Elliffe, 2011).…”