Disequilibrium as an Alternative to Internal States and Affordance

While reinforcement theorists ponder the function of the environment, discriminative stimuli, and the reinforcing event itself on the rate, magnitude, and probability of response, applied researchers struggle with finding a parsimonious explanation of reinforcement theory that is both experimentally and ecologically valid. According to the model, the dog should respond in such a way as to minimize the disequilibrium or deviation from baseline for the contingent response. [...]the dog will sit more often in order to approach the rate of treats obtained during free baseline, which by definition is a reinforcement effect. According to this model, there is a bitonic relationship between the rate of reinforcement imposed by a schedule and the strength of the reinforcement effect: The response rate will first increase and then decrease as the reinforcement rate increases.