The concept of an establishing operation for reinforcement is relatively new and can be difficult to understand. It is helpful to contrast an establishing operation with a discriminative stimulus. For a discriminative stimulus to be effective, the reinforcement must currently be effective. Imagine a water vending machine that costs nothing to use, but only works when the “water” sign is lit up.
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