Motivating operations are one of the most clinically useful concepts in ABA and one of the most frequently underappreciated by practitioners who are new to the field. They explain something that experienced therapists notice intuitively but often cannot name: why the same reinforcer that worked perfectly in Monday’s session produces no behaviour change at all in Wednesday’s session.
What a Motivating Operation Is
A motivating operation is any variable that changes the effectiveness of a reinforcer and simultaneously changes the frequency of behaviour that has been reinforced by that reinforcer in the past.
There are two types.
An establishing operation makes a reinforcer more effective and increases the frequency of behaviour related to obtaining it. Food deprivation is the clearest example. A child who has not eaten for several hours finds food significantly more reinforcing than a child who has just had a full meal. That state of food deprivation is an establishing operation for food as a reinforcer.
An abolishing operation makes a reinforcer less effective and decreases the frequency of behaviour related to obtaining it. Satiation is the clearest example of this. A child who has just had extensive access to a favourite toy finds that toy less reinforcing for the remainder of the session. The recent access to the toy has abolished, at least temporarily, its value as a reinforcer.
Why This Matters in Clinical Practice
Understanding motivating operations changes how you think about reinforcement and about the variability you observe in your data.
A child who earns a preferred snack as reinforcement across a session will find that snack less reinforcing as the session progresses and they consume more of it. If your data shows strong responding in the first third of a session and declining responding across the second and third thirds, satiation may be what is happening rather than fatigue or loss of motivation in a general sense. Varying the reinforcers used across a session or limiting access to each reinforcer to maintain its value are clinical responses to this.
A child who has had unlimited access to a preferred toy over the weekend may arrive at Monday’s session without the same motivation for that toy as they showed in Friday’s session. This is not noncompliance. It is a motivating operation effect. Identifying which reinforcers have been abundantly available before a session and which are relatively deprived is clinically useful information.
Motivating Operations and Escape-Maintained Behaviour
Motivating operations apply to escape maintenance as much as to positive reinforcement. A child who finds a specific academic task aversive will be more motivated to escape it when the demand is high and the task is difficult, and less motivated to escape when the task is easier or the demand has been reduced.
If you increase the difficulty of a task while the reinforcement schedule remains constant, you have changed the motivating operation for escape. The task has become more aversive, which makes escape more reinforcing, which increases the frequency of escape-maintained behaviour.
Understanding this means that increases in challenging behaviour are not always signs that the child is becoming more difficult. They may be signs that something in the environment has changed the establishing operation for the behaviour you are trying to reduce.
Practical Applications
Before a session, check for known motivating operation effects. Has the child eaten recently? Have they had extended access to any of the planned reinforcers over the past day? Was the preceding activity demanding enough to have increased the aversive properties of demands in general?
During a session, monitor for signs of satiation in reinforcer effectiveness. Declining response rates, increased latency before responses, and reduced interest in the reinforcer are all signals. Switch to a less-accessed reinforcer rather than continuing to use a reinforced that has lost its effect.
When planning reinforcement schedules, build in variety across a session rather than relying on a single reinforcer throughout. A varied reinforcer menu reduces the rate at which any individual reinforcer loses effectiveness through satiation.
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