Establishing terms: A commentary on Edwards, Lotfizadeh & Poling's “Motivating operations and stimulus control”

Rethinking motivating operations: A reply to commentaries on Edwards, Lotfizadeh, and Poling (2019)

“…Nevertheless, our proposed reconceptualization did not do away with the establishing and abolishing operations distinction. We agree with Catania and St. Peter's () concern that this distinction generates additional, and perhaps unnecessary, complexity. We have found that motivating operations and their effects can be described without these terms with little trouble and that they add little in the way of precision.…”

“…Catania and St. Peter () raised important points about the complexity of the MO concept in its current form. For example, under the current conceptualization, several different effects of MOs are described.…”

Motivating Operations and Discriminative Stimuli: Distinguishable but Interactive Variables

“…Our attempt to simplify, and thereby improve, the MO concept is just that: an attempt. Our initial article (Edwards et al, 2019a) is accompanied by nine commentaries (Carbone, 2019;Catania & St. Peter, 2019;Killeen, 2019;Laraway & Snycerski, 2019;Lechago, 2019;Miguel, 2019;Petursdottir, 2019;Pilgrim, 2019;Rehfeldt, 2019) and our response to those commentaries (Edwards et al, 2019b). Although, in our opinion, none of the criticisms contained in the commentaries negated the value of our reconceptualization of the MO concept, a perusal of their contents suggests that many behavior analysts will find fault with some of our conclusions; some will reject all of them.…”

“…The MO concept calls attention to that fact, which behavior-analytic practitioners ignore at their peril. Over time, however, the concept has grown cumbersome, with a proliferation of terms (Catania & St. Peter, 2019) and a level of detail that makes it difficult to understand and, arguably, reduces its value to practitioners. The opportunity cost of mastering the MO concept as it is presented in, say, Michael and Miguel's (2019) chapter in Cooper, Heron, and Heward's (2019) influential "white book" is substantial.…”

Improving Juvenile Justice Settings by Decreasing Coercion: One Lab’s Perspectives from Behind the Fence

“…On the other hand, counting may have momentarily decreased the reinforcing properties of media, thereby acting as an abolishing operation (e.g., Laraway et al, 2003 ) for sexual arousal. There has been debate surrounding the conceptualization and definition of motivating operations (e.g., Catania & St Peter, 2019 ; Lechago, 2019 ; Miguel, 2019 ; Poling et al, 2019 ). The potential nuance of motivating operations conceptualization notwithstanding, a behavior-analytic account could contribute to important behavioral interventions for inappropriate sexual behavior.…”