Coercion causes problems. The scientist who led the effort to discover the parameters of punishment and coercion in the experimental laboratory, Dr. Murry Sidman, called these problems “fallout.” He called the three main types of this fallout “escape,” “avoidance,” and “countercoercion.”
Many people easily accept that those processes exert control over behavior. Some, however, only see or acknowledge such coercive controls, and think that the rest of behavior is free. But the real connection is more surprising and more beneficial.
The words preclusion, extinction, and forgetting refer to different processes or procedures. Preclusion differs from extinction in a way similar to forgetting. While forgetting is a process, and extinction can be either a process or a procedure, preclusion is an intervention procedure that can help solve some types of behavior problems.
While the process of generalization enlarges the set of evocative stimulus relations, the process of evocation shrinks the set of evocative stimulus relations. The evocation process often reduces the number of stimuli that evoke the response of concern while making the remaining evocative stimuli more effective. Let’s consider to what these terms refer.
The contingencies in respondent and operant behavior and conditioning form the foundation for effective understanding, prediction, control, and interpretation of our behavior. Helping us in these endeavors is the elicit/evoke distinction.
Consequences divide into various types that we detail later. Our concern just now is their status as either “reinforcing” or “punishing” consequences, because this characteristic pertains to the central role of consequences. This central role involves consequences either making responses occur more often, in which case the consequence earns the title “reinforcer,” or making responses occur less often, in which case the consequence earns the title “punisher.”
