Field Guide · Glossary
Motivating operation
Learning scienceA condition that temporarily changes how much a dog wants a particular reward, and so changes how hard they will work for it.
How it works
The same piece of food is worth more to a hungry dog than to one who has just eaten, and a ball means more to a dog who has been resting all day than to one who has played for an hour. Behavior analysis calls those conditions motivating operations. One that increases a reward's value is an establishing operation, such as a short period without play before a play session. One that decreases it is an abolishing operation, such as a full meal before a training session that uses food. They do not teach anything new. They change, for a while, how strongly the dog's existing learning shows up, which is why a session can go very differently depending on what came before it.
What it looks like
A dog who works eagerly for kibble before breakfast barely responds to the same kibble an hour after eating. Nothing about the training has changed. Scheduling food-based sessions before meals, or using part of the meal as the training reward, keeps the food worth working for.
Commonly confused with
- Antecedent
- An antecedent is anything that comes before a behavior, including the cue. A motivating operation is a particular kind of antecedent that changes how much the reward is wanted, rather than signaling that a reward is available.
Related terms