Davison, Michael – What “Reinforcers” do to Behavior, II: Signposts to the Future - Over the last few years, it has become increasingly evident that the process of reinforcement may well have been misnamed and misunderstood. Events like contingent food for a hungry animal do not simply increase or maintain the probability of responses that they follow, they don't strengthen behavior. Rather, they may act as signposts to future events, guiding behavior through the learned physical and temporal maze of life. This signposting is not to be seen as additional to these events as reinforcers; Signposting is the reinforcement effect. This realization puts reinforcement right back into the purview of stimulus control. Events that we usually consider "reinforcers", on the other hand, have more or less value to the organism-so, signposting is additional to value. Thus, the next step is to ask whether organismically-valuable stimuli have any special properties when they signal future events. I will briefly discuss some research that starts the process of experimentally investigating what food delivery can, and cannot, signal in the time following such an event. I will try to reorganize some of what we think we know in these terms, and to suggest how this approach may provide a new understanding of behavior-analytic practice.