Attempts to explain the emergence and maintenance of instrumental responses, as well as the topography of the responses, wholly in terms of stimulus-incentive (S:IS) contingencies. A detailed examination of the behavior displayed in 4 training procedures (autoshaping, omission-training, superstition, and shaping) points to the following tentative conclusions: (a) The emergence, maintenance, and topographies of the instrumental responses displayed in all the above training paradigms can be explained by the relative incentive-motivational values of situational stimuli. (b) It is not necessary to invoke any contribution of response-incentive (R:IS) contingencies in order to explain the behavior in these training procedures. (c) Certain features of the observed instrumental responding that are usually attributed to adventitious R:IS contingencies are not controlled by R:IS contingencies, but by S:IS contingencies. The generalizability of these conclusions to instrumental responses displayed in other types of learning paradigms remains to be investigated. (French summary) (60 ref)

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