Final answer:
The behavior of asking for crackers involves a three-term contingency, where Joey sees that Tom has his favorite crackers, asks Tom for some of his crackers, and Tom happily shares them with Joey.
Step-by-step explanation:
The behavior of asking for crackers involves a three-term contingency. In this contingency, the antecedent is Joey seeing that Tom has his favorite crackers for snack time. The behavior is Joey asking Tom for some of his crackers. And the consequence is Tom happily sharing his crackers with Joey.
This three-term contingency is important in operant conditioning, which is a type of learning where behaviors are strengthened or weakened based on the consequences that follow them. In this case, Joey's behavior of asking for crackers is likely to be reinforced by the positive consequence of Tom sharing his crackers.