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

Motivating Operations and Discriminative Stimuli: Distinguishable but Interactive Variables

“…Both depend on long and complex histories of reinforcement. As we argued elsewhere (Edwards et al, 2019a(Edwards et al, , 2019b, the enduring effects of such histories can be explained in terms of behavioral chains and the ordinary behavioral principles (e.g., conditioned reinforcement and conditional discriminations) involved in performing them. Simply put, the CMO-T concept is unnecessary.…”

“…They alter (a) the effectiveness of reinforcers or punishers (the value-altering effect) and (b) the frequency of operant response classes related to those consequences (the behavior-altering effect)" (p. 212). As we explained elsewhere (Edwards et al, 2019a(Edwards et al, , 2019b, there is solid evidence that the behavior-altering effect usually, if not always, involves a change in the evocative effects of discriminative and other antecedent stimuli relevant to the consequences of interest. Additionally, nothing of value is gained by considering value-altering and behavior-altering effects as fundamentally different.…”

“…Michael and others (e.g., Langthorne & McGill, 2009;Laraway et al, 2003;McGill, 1999;Michael, 2000Michael, , 2007Michael & Miguel, 2019) described CMO subtypes in detail and made the claim that recognizing and distinguishing among them is of conceptual and practical importance. We respectfully disagree (Edwards et al, 2019a(Edwards et al, , 2019b.…”

What Can We Learn by Treating Perspective Taking as Problem Solving?

“…Failure to respond accurately in any perspective-taking task will necessarily be the result of a deficit in the stimuli that are present or a result of those stimuli not having the necessary functions. Of course, stimuli may be "present" but not accessed by the participant (e.g., they may have looked away during a critical stimulus change) and the functions of the stimuli in the task may be temporarily altered by motivating operations (Edwards et al, 2019a(Edwards et al, , 2019b.…”

“…Therefore, the extent to which this stimulus change functions as a reinforcer will depend upon the reinforcing effectiveness of arriving at work, or perhaps more accurately, the punishing effectiveness of arriving at work late or missing work, which can be avoided by timely departure. Motivating operations (MOs) are environmental events that alter the reinforcing or punishing effectiveness of other events and the control of behavior by stimuli associated with the response-dependent availability of those events (Edwards et al, 2019a(Edwards et al, , 2019b. MOs change the individual such that when discriminative stimuli associated with the relevant reinforcer are encountered, these stimuli evoke behavior that was previously reinforced in their presence.…”