Are responses in avoidance procedures "safety" signals?

Hineline (2001) wrote a theory paper about avoidance.

The author asked: when a rat presses a lever to stop shock, is the lever press itself a "safety signal"?

The paper stays inside Dinsmoor’s well-known avoidance story but says we still need to map how the response itself gets its power.

There were no new data.

The piece ends by saying "safety" is still a fuzzy word and we must spell out how response-produced stimuli gain their function over time.

Harte et al. (2017) gave the idea legs. They showed that direct rules make people stick to old patterns even when the pay-off flips. Their lab data echo N’s call to track how verbal stimuli keep control.

Malott (1988) had already sketched a bridge: rules work because breaking them feels bad. Hineline (2001) keeps the bridge but asks for a better road map of the stimulus side.

Demello et al. (1992) warned that loose terms muddy science. Hineline (2001) makes the same move, only here the loose term is "safety" instead of "equivalence."

If you write behavior plans that use "safe hands" or "calm body" rules, you are banking on the same process N talks about. The paper reminds you to test what the client’s own response actually signals. Track whether the rule, the response, or both are holding the behavior in place. Next time you see rigid avoidance, ask: what stimulus is now "safe"—the act or the cue?