Tag: #shaping

Operant Conditioning – Shaping

Shaping is a type of operant conditioning that is used as a way to guide a subject’s behavior to have them do what you want them to do. In order to achieve this desired outcome, you must use successive approximations. Using these reinforcers to guide the actions means that you reward behavior that is nearing the desired outcome up to the point where that outcome occurs.

An example of shaping from my own life experiences occurred when I was training my dog to play fetch. First, I would train her to sit on the floor next to where I was standing by rewarding her with a treat. Next, I would train her to wait until I instructed her to run after the ball. After she successfully performed this step, I would again reward her with a treat. Once she was able to complete both of those previous steps consistently, I trained her to fetch the ball and return to me with it. Upon successful completion of these steps, she then received another treat. I then gave her an additional treat when she dropped the ball at my feet. Finally, I trained her that after giving me the ball, she should sit beside me again to wait for the next round of play. Once she performed this step, I would feed her another treat. Once she was used to regularly performing these steps, I would slowly start removing the treat rewards for each step. Eventually, she would play fetch following the steps outlined above without a reward.

In the example described above, rewarding my dog with treats was my way of using successive approximations to shape her to play fetch. During this training, the reinforcers I used were treats. I rewarded her with them whenever she completed an action that would lead to the overall behavior I wanted her to achieve: playing fetch. Rewarding her with those treats reinforced the behaviors that I deemed were important and useful to the overall goal.

Blog Post- Shaping

One of the many topics we learned in this unit is the concept of shaping. This concept can be seen in many people’s everyday lives with the example of training a pet. Shaping is the practice that reinforces guide behaviors closer towards a desired behavior. An example of this is training your dog to roll over and then rewarding them when they do the behavior.

I trained my dog to roll over through shaping. His favorite treats are bacon strips. So when I called him over I would bring the bag of bacon strips over so he could smell it. I would then have him lay down and I would hold a treat and tell him to roll over. It was very difficult to start because he did not know what I wanted. I had to physically roll him over then I would give him the treat. I worked on this with him once a day for a bout a week and we were slowly making process. It was almost two weeks when he finally listened and completed the task. I rewarded him with the treat after he did it by himself. He learned this and got better at it, the more we did it. My dog, Cornelius, was finally able to roll over on his own, as well as expecting a treat after he did it.

I did not know this at the time, but this was the shaping concept where I reward my dog for doing an action. This technique was the easiest one I found and also the fastest. This experiment was a success and the process was fun and this lesson in class helped me understand the process that I made my dog go through. I enjoyed learning this process and I want to teach my friends’ dogs to roll over, now that I know how to do it!