Maintenance of safety behaviors via response-produced stimuli.
A simple safety signal by itself can reinforce behavior — no loss or danger required.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Adults pressed a pedal in a lab. Each press made a blue bar appear on a screen. No shocks, no losses, just the bar.
The team wanted to know if the bar itself could keep the pressing going.
What they found
Pressing stayed high as long as the blue bar showed up. The bar worked like candy or money — it was pure reinforcement.
Threat was not needed. The safety signal alone did the job.
How this fits with other research
Ortega et al. (2015) saw the same thing with babies. A toy plus mom’s smile kept an infant lifting his head. Together the studies show a simple rule: any added stimulus can reward behavior, from two months to sixty years.
Wan et al. (2026) proved it with pigeons. Birds kept pecking for tokens the same way people kept pressing for the blue bar. Lab tokens or lab bars — the mechanism is identical.
Silva et al. (2020) found classrooms run fine whether you give or take tokens. Ioannis et al. tighten that idea: the stimulus you give can be enough, even with no take-away.
Why it matters
You can strengthen safety behaviors, or any response, by pairing it with a clear brief signal. A green check on a tablet, a short chime, or a visual timer can keep a client scanning the road before crossing, without threats or tokens. Pick one signal, deliver it right after the safe act, and watch the behavior stick.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Animal studies suggest that safety behaviors may be maintained by internally or externally produced safety signals, which function as positive reinforcers. We designed two experiments to test this phenomenon with humans. Participants played a computerized game in which they could earn or lose treasures by clicking on a map. In baseline, losses could be postponed by pressing a pedal that also produced a blue bar at the bottom of the screen. During test conditions, no losses were programmed, and pedal presses turned the bar from yellow to blue (Test 1) or blue to yellow (Test 2). In Experiment 2, new participants were exposed to the same conditions but were given information about the safety of the test environment. In both experiments, participants engaged in high rates of pedal pressing when presses were followed by blue bars, suggesting the bar functioned as a safety signal. We discuss how these findings may relate to safety behaviors commonly observed in certain mental health disorders.
Behavior modification, 2015 · doi:10.1177/0145445515610314