As with differential reinforcement, the shaping procedure involves only combinations of the reinforcement and extinction processes. But both differential reinforcement, which we sometimes call simple differential reinforcement, and shaping involve these two processes in slightly different ways.
Our understanding of why human behavior happens begins now to go in the additional direction of engineering applications and interventions. We want to know more than merely about why behavior happens, more than merely about what causes human behavior, more than merely about contingencies.
Behavior always occurs in some context. Even in the vacuum of space, behavior occurs in a context, often in a capsule of some sort, for example, a part of the International Space Station, a shuttle, or a lunar lander, or just a space suit. Without at least a space suit, behavior in space ceases quite quickly and permanently.
Last time we took a quick look at contingency causes of behavior through the oversimplified “A—B—Cs of behaviorology.” A slightly more realistic formula, “A—B—P,” refers mostly to events in time and stands for “Antecedents—Behaviors—Postcedents.” We will quickly see this develop into many fully realistic versions, a common one of which is “Evocative Stimulus—Response—Consequential Stimulus.”
