Question

How does a motivating operation affect the likelihood of a response? What is the difference between a value-altering effect and a function-altering effect?

Answer 1

Motivating operations are those environmental or internal factors or variables that modify or stimulates the frequency of stimuli or a reinforcer that has promoted a certain response to occur previously. This modification helps in maintaining or making the response to be repeated again. For instance, If a person is hungry [MO] then he will see food as a reinforcing stimulus and he will eat it. If a person is not hungry, then no reaction will be shown towards food.

Value altering effect is defined as the making modification/alteration in some reinforcing object, stimuli, or event in order to make a response decrease or increase to occur. This happens due to motivating operations. On the other hand, function-altering is about changing the function of certain reinforcing stimuli, event or object in order to either increse or decrese desired response.