Author Archives: Steven Tyler Hartnett

Operant Conditioning

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There is saying that you can not teach an old dog new tricks.  I completely disagree and can attest that it is undoubtedly possible to teach an old dog new tricks.

When I was about 10 years old or so, my family got a dog as a rescue.  We decided to name him Pablo.  Since he was a rescue, we did not know his exact age, but the kennel that we got him from estimated he was about 6 or 7, which is pretty much in the middle of a dog’s life.

I never owned a dog before, so immediately the first thing I wanted to do was to get him to listen to me and perform tricks.  At first, he was completely petrified of being around me.  I assumed this was because Pablo most likely had a rough life before he joined our family.

When he began to feel comfortable around me I gave him treats to show that I could be trusted.  This is the first step I took in attempting to train Pablo through operant conditioning.

Operant conditioning results in training and association through behaviors and their outcomes.

After rewarding Pablo for simply coming near me he associated myself with a tasty treat and therefore began to like me. My next step was getting Pablo to sit down on my command.

This proved difficult because Pablo seemed unresponsive unless I had a treat with me.  In order to get past this, I used shaping.  Shaping rewards behaviors that are close to the desired behavior.  For example, as soon as Pablo would look at me attentively I rewarded him with a treat.  Eventually, after a few days I was able to get his attention without the assistance of a treat.

Now that I could consistently get Pablo’s attention I needed to get him to sit on my command.  I began my giving the verbal command “sit” then applying pressure to his back.  The first couple days I basically had to force him to sit.  Every single time his rear end hit the ground I rewarded him with a treat.  Doing this, I hoped, would help him create an association between sitting and being rewarded.

After performing many trials, I eventually conditioned Pablo to sit on my command every time.  Even though Pablo has since passed away, he proves that through operant conditioning and repeated trials that it is definitely possible to teach an old dog new tricks.

My First Memory

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Looking back on my first memory, I feel it is with out a doubt a memory that I formed on my own.  Despite the information we learned in class, I am adamant that my memory is accurate and is not a result of hearing the  story over and over again.

In January of 1996, I was a year and a few months old when the Pittsburgh Steelers played the Dallas Cowboys Super Bowl XXX.  On this day I believe I formed my first episodic memory.   Looking back on that day, I can remember specific events happening that correspond to the result in the football game.

My family, all loyal Steeler fans, desperately wanted the Steelers to win.  Sadly, they lost the game.  Because of this, I remember my parents and some visitors of theirs over our house screaming and yelling the entire day.  Furthermore, I can recall rolling around on the floor on top of a black and gold blanket with chips in dip next to me, a staple at any self respecting Super Bowl party.

I feel as if this memory was undoubtedly formed on my own and not simply as a result of stories being told or looking at pictures.  I believe this because nobody in my family likes to talk about when the Steelers lose, they would prefer to remember the good games and tell me about them instead.

Despite the fact that I was just a little over a year old, and that we learned that the earliest accurate memories for children form much later than that, I hold true to the belief that my memory of the traumatizing event of the Steelers losing in the Super Bowl is extremely accurate and formed entirely on my own recollection of the day.

Illusory Correlation in Sports

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In many instances humans look to outside sources in an effort to explain a relationship between two variables.  Frequently, the relationship one perceives has no connection and in reality is just simply an overestimation of how often an event occurred.  Events such as these are called illusory correlations.   I feel that this phenomenon is especially true in the world of sports.

For example, my dad and I over the past summer went golfing multiple times.  On every single one of our golf outings together he insisted on wearing his sun glasses.  He wore his glasses no matter the sun conditions and time of day: clear, overcast, cloudy, midday, late afternoon.

Neither of us are experts at golf and therefore the results of who would win could be described as random and unpredictable.   However, one day I was absolutely destroying my dad through about 6 or 7 holes out of our usual 9 hole half-rounds that we would play.  He was playing so terribly he had to find something to blame his failures on. So, he decided to take off his sun glasses for the last few holes.

Miraculously, my dad came back to defeat me, staging an incredible comeback.  In my estimation, the comeback was attributed to my collapse over the last few holes and not any improvement in the play of my dad.  On the other hand, my dad believed that the ONLY reason he came back was because of him taking off his sun glasses and thus leading to an improvement in his play.  He could not see past the idea that him taking off his sunglasses somehow was the missing piece in him becoming the next Tiger Woods.

I insisted to him that the comeback and his sun glasses clearly had no relationship at all, citing that he had defeated me multiple times while wearing his sun glasses.   My argument was to no avail as my dad was adamant on the illusory correlation that taking off one’s sun glasses can turn them into a world class golf star.