What Are the Effects of Reinforcer Presentations?

Chapter 9 of the monograph The Revealed Operant: A Way to Study the Characteristics of Individual Occurrences of Operant Responses (available in full above). This chapter develops the thesis that the usual effect of a reinforcer is not to increase the strength of the preceding behavior, but rather to perpetuate its direction of change. The Foundation has conducted a research program to address this issue experimentally, using shaping procedures for various types of revealed operants.