Perhaps the most common types of establishing operations, those mentioned by Skinner in Verbal Behavior, are deprivation and aversive stimulation. The stimulus change that results from a situation in which you have no water to one in which you now have water available often acts as reinforcement for the verbal response, “water, please.” However, this is likely to be reinforcement only if you are currently water deprived.
An environmental change or event with the following features:
Precedes the response to which it is functionally related
Increases the effectiveness of a particular stimulus change as reinforcement
The type of environmental event
The cause of the environmental event
The type of stimulus that gains reinforcing effectiveness