When a lot of animal trainers and pet owners begin to train their animals they immediately begin to implement operant conditioning. According to our textbook, the practice of operant conditioning includes the use of both positive and negative consequences after a voluntary response emitted by the organism. Furthermore, operant conditioning utilizes reinforcement and punishment. Reinforcement is anything that increases the chances of a response occurring, while punishment is anything that follows a behavior that reduces the possibility of that behavior occurring again in the future. My family recently got a Brittany Spaniel puppy and, as we begin to train him, our first intention was to use operant conditioning, rewarding him with food as soon as he sits, lays down, or comes when called (a source of positive reinforcement). However, after learning about operant and classical conditioning in class, I wondered why classical conditioning is not used more, or referred to as often when training animals. There are actually some negative aspects to operant conditioning when considering training an animal. One of the major issues I found is the inability of people to always supply an animal with something it likes in time for the consequence to have a relationship with the behavior. For example, sometimes when we let our dog outside without a leash and when we ask him to come we do not have any treats or desirable toys with us to give him as a reward. We end up running back inside to get him a treat, but is that delay between the behavior and the reward too long for the dog to form the association? There are some cases when operant conditioning is not ideal, and it is more successful to use classical conditioning.
Many individuals would not initially consider classical conditioning as a desirable way to train their animal, however, I think it is a lot more effective in some circumstances. Classical conditioning is often used by animal trainers for two reasons: One, to condition or train autonomic responses, such as the drooling (in Pavlov’s experiment), producing adrenaline, or reducing adrenaline (calming) without using the stimuli that would naturally create such a response; Second, to create an association between a stimulus that normally would not have any effect on the animal and a stimulus that would. Classical conditioning can be an extremely useful training method for an animal that you cannot easily supply with something it likes or dislikes. For example, if you were trying to train a Dolphin to jump while it is in the water, the chances that you could give the Dolphin a fish fast enough after it performs the behavior are pretty low, it is highly likely that the fish will start to sink. Additionally, some dog trainers utilize classical conditioning by repeatedly pairing the sound of a clicker with the taste of food and eventually the sound of the clicker alone will begin to produce the same response that the taste of food would. Also, classical conditioning can be useful to train your dog to respond to verbal cues or hand gestures. In fact, you can “teach” your dog to associate words with their actions relatively easily. If your dog is sitting and you say, “sit” whenever you observe him sitting he will begin to associate the word with the behavior. Overall, operant conditioning and classical conditioning have both proven to be useful ways to train an animal. In many situations, deciding which method to use depends on the type of animal, or the preference of the individual training the animal.