Operant conditioning is when an association is formed between behaviors and resulting actions. Two predominant experiments were conducted that helped to solidify the idea of operant conditioning. Thorndike’s experiment focused on the law of effect. The law of effect is defined as a rewarded behavior is likely to recur. A simple example is with food as the reward for an animal doing a trick. In a similar experiment, it was concluded that animals can be trained to do unnatural behaviors that they would never do in their natural habitat. This was called the Skinner Box or Operant Chamber experiment. In order to prove this experiment true, shaping was used. This term refers to using reinforcers to guide behavior closer towards the desired behavior. This involves giving a reward during each step of a trained behavior which is defined as successive approximations. In many cases, positive reinforcement is used to increase the good behavior when something is added to the environment.
All these different but related points pertaining to operant conditioning can be surmised by training a dog a trick. In my experience, my family got a golden doodle puppy about five years ago. Since the puppy was my idea, I was tasked with training her. An old farmer who has been our family friend since before I was born had a dog that would roll over and play dead when he made a gun shape with his hand and said, “bang!” All our neighbors would laugh every time. When I got a dog, I knew I wanted to train it to do the same trick through operant conditioning. I started off using shaping and successive approximations. I first taught her to sit by holding a treat in my hand and pushing down on her back while saying “sit”. When she sat, I rewarded her with a treat. After a while, Thorndike’s experiment was proven to be correct. Every time I said “sit”, she would sit down because she knew she would get a reward. This also proves positive reinforcement. After this, I taught her how to lay down and roll over using the same technique. When I started to teach her to play dead, I followed the same methodology. I would get her to sit, lay down, and then roll over. However, when she rolled over, I started to say “bang” so that she would associate that word with being upside down. I got her to stay on her back by using the stay command that I had previously taught her. After emptying a treat bag, she would roll over and play dead whenever I said “bang”. This proved the Skinner Box experiment. In a dog’s natural environment, they would never play dead when a human said “bang” to them. Nevertheless, my dog was able to be fairly easily trained to do this unnatural trick. Overall, operant conditioning proved to be very successful in teaching my golden doodle a fun party trick.
I thought your blog post was extremely interesting. I also had a neighbor who’s dog could play dead from the sight of a gun. I think this is a cool example of operant conditioning.
I find this so interesting how you were able to train your dog to do this! I remember when I was young I wanted to train my dog how to do this as well, so my family and I all took lessons with my dog to try and train him to do this special trick. My dog sadly had no manners or desire to learn, so we stopped going to lessons and trying to teach him because he was deathly afraid of the “gun” sound we used to try and train him so we ended up stopping. We tried to train him as a young pup, but he was the wimpiest dog I’ve ever known. But, great job to you that your dog learned how to play dead!
I really relate to your blog! I used operant conditioning while training my dog without even knowing when I was younger. I really like how you explained and gave a really detailed background of this learning process. I think it was cool how you trained your dog though I did it differently by holding it over her head and guiding her and then rewarding. But we are similar in how we repeatedly went over the behavior so our dogs would make an association.
This trick is one of my favorites. I also use positive reinforcement on my dog, however he’s not technically mine. I am raising a dog for a service dog organization and I have been training him for the past year and a half. However, when his training is over he goes to help someone else. In the course of the year I have trained him to lay under my feet on buses, sit through exams, stay wherever I put him, put pressure on someone if they are stressed, and be okay with all loud noises (sports games, fireworks, gunshots, motorcycles). All of this was done with positive reinforcement (treats) as a primary reinforcer, and a clicker as a secondary reinforcer. He’s still in training, but has come a long way because of how well positive reinforcement training works. Dogs are a great example of how we use operant conditioning to change how they react to things in their environment.