One of these things belongs in an apple crisp and the other: well, not so much.
I almost ruined a batch of apple crisp grabbing the package on the right instead of the left. In the cupboard they look the same: yellow packaging and black print. Perhaps it's easy to see how I could have (almost) made such a mistake.
You would also have to find out more about my reinforcement history with the package on the left to analyze my mistake even further. Everyday I put cinnamon in my coffee. Each day, I grab that yellow package with the black print. And my behaviour is reinforced by provisions of cinnamon I desire. Because I use it so much, there is sits at the front of the spice shelf.
Insert husband who cooked us a lovely meal; likely using onion powder; likely placing the package on the right at the front of the spice shelf.
Now back to the apple crisp. Needing cinnamon, I grab the yellow package with the black print just as I have always done. My cinnamon getting behaviour has been under stimulus control of these variables/conditions and not what the print says or the colour of the powder showing through the cellophane. It wasn't until I caught the scent of the powder just as I was about to sprinkle it blindly on my apple crisp that the difference was signaled: this is not cinnamon. There would be no reinforcement for putting that in the apple crisp - YUCK!
Mistakes happen (or almost happen) thanks in part to weak stimulus control or stimulus generalization - i.e., responding to a slightly different stimulus as if it were the discriminative stimulus (SD) conditioned before. This occurs because the two stimuli shares one or more features. Sometimes this different stimulus gets us the same results and sometimes it doesn't (like in my case). This is one way we learn to make subtle, conditional distinctions between stimuli in our environment so that we respond with the correct action at the correct time. Mistakes like this are actually good for us in the long-term; though, in the short-term are often seen as a huge inconvenience.
Don't be hard on yourself or others for their mistakes. Instead, you can plan for better stimulus control (i.e., re-arrange your environment) so that the right behaviour happens when you want or need it to. When thinking about students - was there a distinct enough cue? Were expectations clear? Was our student responding as we had taught him or her before only today the situation was just slightly different? Again, the learner is not to blame; rather we can blame the environment and the process known as stimulus generalization.
As for my behaviour, I now make sure the cinnamon package is on the lower shelf with the coffee and baking ingredients while the onion power stays close to the other savoury spices more often used in cooking.
Examples of discriminative stimuli
Spot the stimulus control
Making it clear where one should pee
