Using antecedent strategies to resolve challenging behaviour



So I thought I’d share it.


Behaviour occurs in context





The behaviour serves some type of purpose, it has function. The function may be to escape the situation, or to get access to some resource, for instance. The behaviour has some type of consequence that’s relevant to the animal.

Typically, as the animal performs the behaviour, his emotional state shifts. If he escaped an annoying situation, he may feel relief. If he managed to get a cookie, he might feel happy/excited.

And when it comes to behaviour that is problematic to us humans, what we might call “challenging behaviour”, those behaviours are often the animal’s attempt to resolve what’s to him a challenging context.

In other words, the unwanted behaviour might be the animal’s solution to his problem. He’s doing it to get away from the scary situation, or he figured out that there’s chicken on the kitchen counter.

So how do we resolve these types of situations?

How do we get rid of unwanted behaviour? How do we solve our problem, without messing with the animal’s solution to his problem?

In short, to get rid of unwanted behaviour we can a) change his overall mood, we can b) change his emotional reaction to the challenging context, or we can c) change something about the function that’s currently maintaining the unwanted behaviour.

Yes, that was very short, and these three strategies are essentially what I teach in the Problem Solving course: 25 hours, 141 videos and counting.

What I’m sharing in this post is one small part of the function category.

The Behaviour Function

To understand the function of behaviour in a specific context, we must look at the ABCs.

The ABCs explain the current function that maintains the behaviour in that situation.

The why of the behaviour, if you will.

A for Antecedents, B for Behaviour, And C as in Consequences.

Consequences are about what happens after the behaviour, what the animal gets from doing the behaviour – or what he gets away from.

Antecedents are about the context where the behaviour occurs. Where does it occur? When? Which stimuli are present? What does the environment look like? What happens just before the behaviour?

Antecedents are all about things that happen or are in place before a specific behaviour occurs. Events or stimuli that signal that a particular behaviour is likely to be reinforced or punished, or that make that reinforcer more or less valued.

Normally, we don’t make distinctions between the animal, the trainer and the environment when talking about antecedents. Rather, we categorize them differently.

Three types of antecedents

Antecedents come in three kinds.

Setting events would be the equivalent of the outlines for the different colour fields.

Setting Events. This is about changes in the environment, or the animal, that affect the probability of behaviour. It’s about context, conditions and situational influences.

Setting events are about how the environment is organized, physically. Without those outlines in the image above, the behaviour of drawing a giraffe would be at the mercy of my drawing skills. But since they’re there, they’re informing my behaviour, helping me draw a giraffe by giving clear boundaries.

The physical space where we’re at impacts behaviour, and challenging behaviour can be more or less probable depending on how the environment is organized.

For instance, setting events may be about whether there are visual barriers or not in the presence of distractions.

They may be about the presence or absence of objects, people or other animals in the environment where the behaviour occurs.

Setting events could also involve the animal’s bodily state, for instance health or hormonal status that impacts behaviour. For instance, lack of sleep may make an animal more likely to show aggressive behaviour when she hears a loud noise. 

  • Another type of Antecedent is the Motivating Operation, or MO. This one is about how interested the animal is right now in performing a behaviour and getting the outcomes of that behaviour.

MOs help explain variations in the effects in the consequences of behavior: sometimes the animal works eagerly for access to a resource, other times not.

An MO affects how strongly the individual is reinforced or punished by the consequences of their behavior, so the MO alters the value of the reinforcer momentarily. This helps explain why certain challenging behaviour occur in one context but not in another context. The reinforcer may be there in both contexts, but it’s more valuable in one than in the other.

MOs have a value-altering effect. If you can find a way to alter the value of a reinforcer or a punisher, that’s an MO, a motivating operation. And since MOs alter the value of the consequence, they also alter the probability of the behaviour affected by the consequence:  the frequency, latency, magnitude of behaviour.

In short, an MO changes how much you “want” something and how hard you will “work” to get it. Per definition, both of these must occur in order for it to be called an MO.  The concept of motivating operation deals with the observation that behavior depends not only on the stimuli present here and now, and the organism’s past experience with those stimuli yesterday and last week, but also on the animal’s recent past history of deprivation, satiation, pain, or other such events, in the last couple of hours or so.

So, the value of a given consequence as a type of reinforcement or punishment is in constant flux, as is the probability of behavior occurring that has previously been associated with those consequences. MOs happen naturally, or can be intentionally arranged by the trainer.

And of course, value can increase or decrease, and the probability of behaviour can increase or decrease. When trying to understand challenging behaviour, it’s important to identify the MOs that are associated with the challenging behaviour, and the ones that aren’t. For instance, the animal may show the challenging behaviour when he’s hungry, but not when he’s just eaten.

  • The third and last type of Antecedent is some type of triggering stimulus, typically referred to as the Discriminative Stimulus, the SD; the cue; the green light that signals to the animal that reinforcers are available if the behaviour occurs.

A verbal “come!” would be the SD telling the animal that if he runs up to the person, he’s going to get a treat. Or the presence of a chicken on the kitchen counter might be the SD that triggers counter surfing behaviour.  If you’re having trouble with cues, here’s how to teach ‘em.

Understanding antecedents and arranging them to support the behaviours that we want, and to discourage the behaviours that we don’t want, is part of the savvy animal trainer’s arsenal.

If you’d like to learn more about using antecedents to get desired behaviour, check out my introductory Getting Behaviour course, or perhaps the Advanced Animal Training course.

Below, I’m sharing the video about how to use antecedents to get rid of unwanted behaviour from the upcoming Problem Solving course. This video is from module 7.

One thing I’ve pointed out many times during the course prior to showing this video is that it’s typically not a good idea to allow the animal to rehearse unwanted behaviour. I’ve also talked about the importance of managing the behaviour; trying to prevent it from being rehearsed, something that ties in heavily with Setting Events.

One of my brave pilot students remarked: “It seems to me there’s a gray area between management and antecedent arrangement. Would you say the difference is in whether you are preventing a behavior from occurring (management) or making a behavior more likely (antecedent arrangement)?

I have to confess that when I first learned about antecedent arrangement, I felt a bit as if I was avoiding the problem, not solving it. I encounter clients who feel the same way, as if the problem is only “solved” if they can get the animal to do the behavior they want under the exact same conditions where the unwanted behavior occurred.”

I answered: For me antecedent arrangements are both about facilitating and impeding behaviour, and management is prevention… so closely related. But I don’t work hands-on, I’m sure that the terms are used differently by different people!

I suspect the hesitancy to Antecedent strategies that you mention is very common! It’s not considered a true solution – but it can make an enormous difference in life quality for all involved! 🙂


Interested in joining me when the Problem Solving course finally opens to the public? Just sign up below and I’ll keep you posted! I’ll also let you know whenever I publish any other new content that has to do with animal behaviour, learning and wellbeing.

 *MHERA (formerly EMRA) is about Mood State, Hedonic Budget, Emotional and Reinforcement Assessment, a tool developed by COAPE (the Centre of Applied Pet Ethology)

Fact or Fake?



  • About the state of the climate crisis.
  • About who won the 2020 US election.
  • About how best to train animals.




We very often reject information, even though it’s true.

And we accept information, even though it’s false.

And we all do it.

Every. Single. Person. Does this.



Aunt Peggie.



A close-up of a chain

Description automatically generated with low confidence



Continue reading “Fact or Fake?”


Is your dog afraid of fireworks? How about thunder?

Keep reading, this blog post contains everything you need to know. This post is updated and all the links are double-checked about twice a year, last on July 1st, 2021 – look for the “revised” signs in the post to find the latest changes.



fearful dogs fireworks


Talking to animals

When I was little, I became mesmerized by Dr Dolittle.

Dr Dolittle could talk to animals. He’d ask them questions, they’d vocalize, he’d nod wisely and translate their chirps, whistles, woofs and meows to plain English, to the astonishment of those present.

It was my all-time favourite movie, when I was nine.

(Credit Image: SNAP)

Side-note: the 2,5-hour film from 1967 was broadcast on TV at a time in the evening when I was supposed to go to bed about three-quarters of the way through. So after one hour and 45 minutes, dad said: “time to go to bed, Karolina”.

And I pleaded. Threatened. Screamed.

To no avail; there were to be no exceptions to that bedtime hour. I remember being lead to my room, still protesting loudly. And then I spent several hours having a loud and ugly meltdown alone in my room, way past the time that the film ended, and at some point somewhat triumphantly shrieking at the door: “If only you’d let me watch the whole film I’d be asleep by now!!!”

Continue reading “Talking to animals”

Most-listened-to animal-related podcasts (August 2020)

Last week, I asked the people on my email list, and my Facebook community, whether they listened to any animal-related podcasts, and if so, which ones.

I don’t know what I expected, maybe a handful of answers. Little did I know…

Podcasts – yes, no, or huh?

517 people answered, and I just summarized the wealth of data that they provided.

Continue reading “Most-listened-to animal-related podcasts (August 2020)”

How to teach a cue

Is this familiar?

You’ve been training tricks with your dog, and want to impress some visiting friends with his new skills.

You ask him for a high five.

He gives a high five, then he lies down, plays dead, rolls over… all the while throwing expectant looks at you, as if saying “is it this?!”

“Is this what you wanted, mommy?”

In other words, you ask for one specific behaviour, and he enthusiastically responds by giving you his entire learned repertoire of tricks.

What’s going on?

Well, in technical terms, he’s not under Stimulus Control.

In less technical terms, he hasn’t yet quite learned about cues. Continue reading “How to teach a cue”