 Wonderful question on the interwebs actually not really just the interwebs on our specific YouTube channel great question Challenging one took a little while the answer. We apologize. So Kristen Davis. Here's your answer You've been waiting patiently for I don't know it says 22 minutes ago, but I also know we took a snapshot of that like Two and a half maybe three months ago July So I'm gonna tell you that it only took us 22 minutes to respond to you because I'm attending to the wrong stimulus But I don't really care. So let me read to you all Kristen's question because that's a good question It's a tricky one mind you. I'm gonna truncate it a bit because This for clarity and time sake and she goes She's worried about antecedent control and asking some questions about how do you find out things about antecedent control? Well, let's just delve into it a little bit This does get into a very very deep topic and I don't know if we're gonna be able to explore it thoroughly But we'll list to give at least it's superficial one here. I you know, I hear a psycho We only do it superficially anyway So let's Right, come on. Give me a break. That's not true. Anyway, so here we go. She says Is there a she goes when determining antecedent control? And just deciding whether or not something is an establishing operation or an S Delta being in charge In charge in the quote-unquote control of behavior. She asked the question. Is there should I ask? Is there a clear MO for the behavior if there is not can one assume that s Delta is the antecedent in control? Kristen, I think there's a couple of issues number one with your question. I think we have a small problem is because It's not one or the other necessarily It's often times a combination of things and we could you could get into Jack Michael's multiple control stuff there And we're talking about reinforcers and things But we will break it down specifically for you. The other thing that I want to talk about is that I wouldn't put it against an EO or an s Delta I would put it against an SD, right? So When you dig into there's a such a small section on this in Cooper and I think to be fair you could actually spend An entire book on the topic. Why do I say that? Because first off motivating operations one thing we know about that We know I'm not going to cover that we've got we've got some other videos coming out on that We're not going to get into that today, but the Difference between that and an SD slash s Delta is Important because we're talking about antecedent control behavior, right? So and it is kind of an either or in some sense as we can think of it like that and here's why because When you get into an s Delta you have to understand that that behavior had the opportunity to occur Without the s Delta. I'm sorry without the SD and with the SD This is the absolute trick with determining whether or not something is a discriminative stimulus or not This is where it gets challenging and the point is very clear I mean it's written on Cooper and every other book covers it as well But it's it's it's a really difficult thing to kind of communicate So if you think about behavior happening in the presence of the SD, right? It only becomes an SD because the behavior happens in that presence of that stimulus It gets reinforced and when the behavior happens in the presence of something with without that stimulus It doesn't get reinforced so the behavior has to occur in both environments first in order for the SD to have the power Because the SD signals that reinforcement is available, right? So I'm not talking about the s Delta the s Delta would signal this one over here would signal that the no reinforcer available So it's not EO versus s Delta. It's establishing operations versus discriminative stimuli, right? So in order to develop the discriminative stimulus, you have the stimulus, right? That signals that reinforcements present for a behavior in the presence of the reinforcements available for behavior in the presence of this Right stimulus and then without it the reinforcement is not available s Delta SD behavior still has to happen in both environments Okay. Now, here's where he gets the difference between an MO and and these and it is this It is the fact that if the behavior only Happens in that one particular environment only ever under that one condition It can't possibly be an SD that's controlling it because the behavior would have happened to had to happen in more than one condition First in order to develop the SD, right? So the this is about probabilities of responding it gets really really detailed and in the laboratory You can tease this apart very clearly in practice. I think you have the right approach I think to answer your question is is there a clear MO? in place for this particular behavior or associated with this particular behavior and you can identify it and you're pretty Really and you're reasonably confident that that's the case. That's a good spot to start your work, right? If that doesn't seem to be having an effect then go for the SD argument Or if there is if you're not aware of any s MO's for the behavior at that particular moment Then sure you can think about an issue with your SDs your S deltas being a problem So it's it's a very deep question that you've asked It's very complex and you have to really look into what a discriminative stimulus is in order to understand it And I think Speaking for myself here. I think that behavior analysts like myself tend to use the term discriminative stimulus Like we tend to overuse it I think that under certain conditions things aren't SDs and they are functioning as MO's Or the antecedent in control is really an MO and I think there's a lot of value to that that our field should focus on heavily And I think that it's changing and doing that But I do think that the term SD is overused because it's really easy just to go SD R SR, right? So that three-term contingency is really easy to understand But that's a very unique sort of I shouldn't say unique that that's a very crystal clear setting Or event I should say and it's just not that clean in the real world That's stuff that we can establish in the laboratory super easy Is they am I saying that there's no such things the three-term contingency? No, what I'm saying is is that we need to be really cautious with the use of our term discriminative stimulus You better actually have one because if you're going to use that term I think it's something we should all be aware of and be cautious with and really focus on that definition of what an SD is especially in comparison to a motivating operation. They're challenging go look it up I don't have a page number for you at the top my head. Maybe somebody will type it in down here But anyway, thanks for the question Kristen. It was awesome. Thank you. I'm sorry It took like 14,000 months to get back to you, but we got back to you. Cheers Be all there Be all there Be all there if you'd like not to have videos similar to this Then you're going to have to like subscribe and share