The following is a one-sided version of the poster presentation. The same concept that was used to characterize the output of an amplifier can be applied to the characterization of the output of a living organism. The behavior of an organism can be seen as the input plus the characteristics of that organism. Alternatively stated, the distribution of the operant over time is the distribution of the reinforcers over time plus the characteristics of the organism. The complexity can be dramatically simplified by carrying out the numerical operations necessary to predict behavior in a different domain.
Most people are familiar with a similar domain conversion to simplify a problem.
The multiplication of two numbers can be simplified to the addition of the logs of those two numbers. In the following example the transfer function for an organism is determined. It is the characteristics of the organism. In the same way that the output of an amplifier for any input can be predicted if the transfer function of the amplifier is known, in principle then, the output of an organism is known for any possible input if the transfer function for that particular organism is known. The steps are as follows.