Dog Operant Conditioning

The two types of dog training methods are positive and negative reinforcement. Negative reinforcement is usually seen as the more inhumane method by those who are against it. Positive reinforcement is usually seen as not as effective by people who are against it. Reinforcement is any consequence that encourages a behavior (“Skinner”). Positive reinforcement is rewarding a dog every time he preforms a desired behavior (“Skinner”). Negative reinforcement is taking away an unpleasant action when the dog performs a desired behavior (“Skinner”). There is controversy on which method of dog training is the most effective. Some people argue that Negative reinforcement is not effective. Others argue that negative reinforcement does not hurt dogs and

So, now you have an arsenal of the most important tools to keep your dog from becoming aggressive and attacking other people and other dogs. Getting attacked by a dog is a really scary event because their bites can cause serious injuries or death. It is important to always protect yourself by carrying a dog repellent spray on your keychain for when an unexpected event happens.

The study of behaviorist psychology have allowed us to understand how we subconsciously engage in the learning process. As demonstrated by notably experiments conducted by Ivan Pavlov, B.F Skinner, and various others, our learning process can be--and normally is--significantly influenced by the social and physical world around us. Two particular examples of this are classical conditioning and operant conditioning. “Classical conditioning occurs when a natural stimulus produces a response after being paired with a stimulus that naturally produces a response” (Schacter). For example, in horror movies suspenseful music tends to precede dramatic events. If you get scared during horror movies, your fear is a natural response to the horror (the stimulus). When music (unconditioned stimulus) is paired with the horror, the music becomes a conditioned stimulus. So when we you hear the music, we feel a sense of fear. (Another example will be provided later on to elaborate on this concept). On the other hand, operant conditioning is “a type of learning in which the consequences of an organism’s behavior determine whether it will be repeated in the future” (Schacter). For example, being put on a time out will decrease the probability of a particular behavior, while being given an allowance for washing the dishes will increase the probability of that behavior. From studying these learning processes, various institutions in our society have begun utilizing them in their marketing

Skinner’s theory observes individuals from the point of view of the behavior that they demonstrate. The key weakness of this theory is its attempt to explain the behaviors of an individual solely through visible phenomena. Critics sometimes accuse behaviorists of denying that ideas and thoughts exist (Jensen & Burgess, 1997). The major opposition that behaviorists face is that behavior of a person cannot be understood without including the mental activity of the individual. Critics have accused behaviorists of focusing only on behavior and ignoring the role of physiology, neuroscience, and genetics (Weiss & Rosales-Ruiz, 2014). Sometimes the reactions that people demonstrate have are not related their experience and therefore they have another

In order to housebreak a dog using operant conditioning principles you would need to use positive reinforcement to teach them where they should be going to the bathroom. By using reinforcement it will teach the dog where it is appropriate to go the bathroom. Shaping would be used by using a treat and showing the dog that the treat is outside and slowly breakdown the whole process into different parts so it becomes easier to learn. At first when the dog does use the bathroom inside show them that it is wrong, and when they go outside use positive reinforcement and give them a treat each time they go to the bathroom. Then slowly begin to give the treat less and use a variable ratio so that they still receive a treat but it

We all want  a well behaved dog; especially if you have children, neighbors, family, and possibly a girl/guy friend. So what are the basics to a good dog?

Siegel, Hinson, Krank and McCully (1982) did a study to determine if environmental cues was a factor in heroin overdose in rats. They argued that conditioning may occur between environmental cues surrounding an organism and the time of drug administration, which in turn affects tolerance and overdose. In this study, they believed that the effect of heroin would be the unconditioned and the conditioned stimulus is the environmental cues associated with using heroin (was once the neutral stimulus before being paired with the effects of heroin). If a drug is administered frequently with the same environmental cues, an association is made between the NS and the CS. Once this association is made, a conditioned response of anticipatory physiological

Behavioral conditioning is used in many studies to train lab animals to perform certain tasks, but studying the concept of behavioral conditioning in itself could be beneficial as well. Behavioral conditioning is known to have associations with dopamine in the brain's reward center, but the exact process is completely figured out. Studying dopamine and DA neuron activity in the brain can provide further clues as to how this process occurs, and allow for the implementation of these results in the future. Understanding the mechanics of behavioral conditioning can provide enough understanding to make training research animals more efficient and effective. On a much larger scale, by understanding the processes that occur when behavior is learned, this knowledge can be used to figure out what exactly should be targeted when figuring out the most effective methods of teaching.

And through this new friendship they might pick up new things or different ways to commit a crime, which is also known as the social learning theory. “Social learning theory is designed to explain how people learn criminal behavior using the psychological principles of operant conditioning” (Walsh, 2015, p. 130). As stated above, the new attachment that a criminal has with his new friends, who are also criminals, will learn new things from these friends. For instance, a burglar that has been sent to prison and after being released he joins a street gang. Upon entering the street gang, the burglar might learn different offenses and how to avoid to get caught by the police. If the criminals do not get caught by the police, then they are going to have better and strong connections with the street gang members (Anderson, 2016).

The patterns of communication and coordination with the dog training group that I am in are both verbal and non-verbal. Verbal is being the communication between the trainers to the client then to the dog. I do have to say that the verbal communication does get mixed up sometimes. As for non-verbal communication this comes through body language and command training signals that are either being taught or they already know. The coordination of the different dog training classes varies greatly depending on which dogs know what skills, temperament, behaviors, and their owners. It also depends on how hyper and playful the dogs are that day.

For instance, with positive reinforcement a dog will sit to earn a treat, while with negative reinforcement a dog may sit to get out of its pen. In the example of positive reinforcement, the dog sits for the addition of the treat. But in the negative reinforcement example, the dog sits for the subtraction of captivity in the cage. Again, using a dog, we can look at examples of positive and negative punishment. When using positive punishment, the dog failing to sit will cause additional time in the pen. For use of negative punishment, when the dog fails to sit the treat is withheld or taken away. Training a dog is the perfect time to use each of these in a practical way. Classical conditioning can be explained by using food poisoning as an example. If you are in a restaurant and order chicken that is undercooked, you may contract salmonella. After contracting salmonella, the unconditioned stimulus is a stomach ache, an unconditioned response to a stomach ache is nausea, then the conditioned stimulus is vomiting, and an unconditioned response to vomiting, is nausea and

picked up the wallet and ran away, then Kevin is likely to see this as

Operant conditioning is a kind of conditioning which examines how often a behavior will or occur or will not occur depending on the effects of the behavior (King, 2016, pg. ). There are four different ways that positive, negative, reinforcement and punishment are applied in operant conditioning. They are used as either positive and negative reinforcement or positive and negative punishment (King, 2016). Although, positive and negative apply more significance to the words reinforcement or punishment. Positive is the addition of something to the stimulus, while negative is the removal of something from the stimulus (King, 2016). For instance, with positive reinforcement, this is the addition to a factor that impacts the behavior to increase the amount of times that the behavior occurs (King, 2016). An example of positive reinforcement is when a child is given an allowance for completing their household chores; the positive reinforcement is the allowance which helps to increase the behavior of doing chores at home. In contrast with negative reinforcement which increases the possibility of a behavior occurring by removing something from the factor that is influencing the behavior (King, 2016). For example, scolding a student in the library every time they bring food into the library, results in the student not taking anymore food into the library to avoid a scolding. The behavior that was prompted to occur more was the student no longer bringing food into the library and it was

Within the early 19th Century, Edward Throne like conducted experiments on dogs and cats to determine the way these animals behave under certain conditions. These studies were conducted through replicating and standardizing the circumstances that the animals were in through a controlled environment. As such, this model demonstrated that animals had the nature to learn when they were presented with certain consequences. In 1938, Burrhus Friederich (B. F.) developed the core idea of the Operant Conditioning Skinner, which claims that operant conditioning, was brought about by the response from the operant under threat (Sakagami,&Lattal, 2016).

What is the operant conditioning theory? The operant conditioning theory supports the idea that learning is responsible for the change in behavior. One of the most widely known operant conditioner is B. F. Skinner. He believed that the essential learning principles in operant conditioning are positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment, and negative punishment. According to (Troutman & Alberto, 2017), B.F. Skinner began testing this theory by working on animals, preferably white rats and sometimes pigeons. In 1963, Skinner explained while he was in the military, “he and his colleagues began to train the pigeons to perform various behaviors” (Troutman & Alberto, 2017). This began Skinner’s preliminary approach to studying human behavior. My goal is to briefly describe the operant conditioning theory, the theorist B.F. Skinner and his beliefs, and then connect how my case study is related.