What is the status of the concept "history of reinforcement", frequently used in behavior analysis?

Abstract

The main objective of this work is to make a distinction between the conceptual uses that behavior analysis has made of the concept history of reinforcement. Within behavior analysis this concept is often employed to refer to the effects that the exposition to past contingencies has on the behavior elicited by current reinforcement contingencies. Nonetheless, if reinforcement history is proposed as an explicative variable of the current behavior, this concept has no applicability given that, by definition, this variable does not operate on current contingencies. Now, if reinforcement history is understood as a specific kind of relation between behavior and environment, a relation that has been established in a particular moment and that continues or integrates as an effective way of behavior within the present contingencies, the concept would be given a molar explanation status, which is acceptable. By not making this distinction is to commit what Ryle (1949) considers a categorical mistake, with grave implications for experimental practices as well as for the applied fields.