On the Distinction Between the Motivating Operation and Setting Event Concepts.

In recent decades, behavior analysts have generally used two different concepts to speak about motivational influences on operant contingencies: setting event and motivating operation. Although both concepts still appear in the contemporary behavior-analytic literature and were designed to address the same antecedent phenomena, the concepts are quite different. The purpose of the present article is to describe and distinguish the concepts and to illustrate their current usage.