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.
