Real Training vs. "Operant Conditioning" - by Roger Hild

There has been a trend in recent years resulting in substantial numbers of dog trainers jumping on a bandwagon they have chosen to call "Operant Conditioning." The practitioners of "O.C." are quick to make claims such as, "based on the latest scientific principles of how dogs learn." Such claims are misleading and dog owners should know that there is nothing either new or scientific about their message. Dog owners should also know that there are many trainers who offer better, more effective alternatives than the watered down version of training they are trying to promote.

True Operant Conditioning is a reasonably balanced four-quadrant model that attempts to explain learning in terms of the consequences related to an action. Within that 4Q model are the different contingencies of positive and negative reinforcement as well as positive and negative punishment. The "bandwagon OC" crowd practice what might more properly be called P.R.O.C. or Positive Reinforcement Operant Conditioning. Where true OC offers a reasonable chance of success through balance, PROC is a very protracted and unrealistic method to attempt to train. The results are mediocre at best and more often are simply disappointing. The motivation behind PROC is not to find a more effective way to teach something but rather it is driven by a commitment to a philosophy (with almost religious zeal) of abolishing all painful life lessons. These folks place their need for a feel good, "warm and fuzzy" approach to life above all else and try to pass it off as "animal-friendly" or "more humane." What it truly is: it is a selfish approach designed to place their own need to feel good above the learning needs of the student.

In psychological terms, conditioning means, "causing an organism to exhibit a specific response to a stimulus."1 This conditioned response must be reliable, highly predictable and reproducible. Any response (other than the "conditioned" response), any randomness or any failure to respond correctly, must be accounted for and explained. As has been explained earlier, there are several ways to cause the sought after response, using positive and negative consequences. By definition conditioning, particularly Skinners Operant Conditioning model, does not acknowledge or take into account any internal events such as thoughts, feelings, motivations etc. and therein lies its weakness. If these internal events are not acknowledged as contributing to the conditioning of the behavior, they cannot then be used to explain conditioning failures. Reliability of conditioned performance, (particularly utilizing only positive reinforcement) while often somewhat improved, is never quite the best that one would hope for or expect. When performance falters (as it frequently does) more conditioning will not solve the problem whereas addressing relationship related issues very often does.

The main problem with the theory of conditioning (and particularly with Operant Conditioning) appears to be in the understanding and application of the learning process. Operant Conditioning is simply one kind of conditioning (made famous by B F Skinner) which seeks to explain all behavior and learning in terms of the associations made between responses to stimuli and the resulting consequences. Although behaviorists believe all thought processes can be accounted for through associations of stimuli and responses, other psychologists strongly reject such an approach as inadequate to explain many kinds of behavior.

"Real Training," on the other hand, addresses the whole dog and not just the behavior. Along with utilizing all four quadrants found in the Operant Conditioning model, it also seeks to deal with all those areas that behaviorists refuse to acknowledge (such as choice, motivation, drive, and various mental/emotional processes). It acknowledges that, in addition to or regardless of, any conditioning, dogs make decisions and sometimes become contentious. Real training is about working with the dog to teach him what is expected – what choices to make and how to behave. It holds him accountable for the choices he makes. It acknowledges there is a difference between knowing and doing and that difference can sometimes represent a point of contention, rather than a lack of conditioning.

Training (for me) is as much about the interactive dynamics between student and teacher as it is about the subject being taught. In the process of learning (some of which will be a conditioning process) the student also learns about the teacher – aside from any tasks that are being taught. Often the emerging interpersonal dynamics will influence subsequent behavior far more than any single training/conditioning sequence. At some point, tasks will be performed as taught because a choice has been made to do so - not simply as the result of some stimulus-response reflex (read conditioning) action.

On the other hand, behaviorism and its tool (Operant Conditioning) is, "neglected by cognitive etiologists and ecological psychologists convinced that its methods are irrelevant to studying how animals and persons behave in their natural and social environment." Also of note in the same article: "The deepest and most complex reason for behaviorism's demise is its commitment to the thesis that behavior can be explained without reference to mental activity. Many philosophers and psychologists find this thesis hopelessly restrictive. They reject behaviorism because of it...."2 Nature vs. Nurture vs. Nomenclature or Excuses, Excuses, Excuses.

When a "conditioned behavior" begins to break down an explanation is called for. Back in the early 1960's "THE MISBEHAVIOR OF ORGANISMS," was written by Keller Breland and Marian Breland - Animal Behavior Enterprises, Hot Springs, Arkansas. In this article, the authors attempted to explain why these breakdowns occur. After having successfully conditioned a large number of various animal species under laboratory conditions they write: "Emboldened by this consistent reinforcement, we have ventured further and further from the security of the Skinner box. However, in this cavalier extrapolation, we have run afoul of a persistent pattern of discomforting failures. These failures, although disconcertingly frequent and seemingly diverse, fall into a very interesting pattern. They all represent breakdowns of conditioned operant behavior." 3

Further on in the same article they write:

"These egregious failures came as a rather considerable shock to us, for there was nothing in our background in behaviorism to prepare us for such gross inabilities to predict and control the behavior of animals with which we had been working for years. The examples listed we feel represent a clear and utter failure of conditioning theory. They are far from what one would normally expect on the basis of the theory alone. Furthermore, they are definite, observable; the diagnosis of theory failure does not depend on subtle statistical interpretations or on semantic legerdemain - the animal simply does not do what he has been conditioned to do." 3 They go on to label this breakdown as "instinctive drift."

It should be noted the "Operant Conditioning" that is referred to here is the same as the "PROC," I referred to earlier. The conditioning was primarily positive reinforcement and shaping along with "negative punishment," (a euphemism for removing rewards or "all bribes are off"). Blaming instinct for the breakdowns presents an interesting theory but it doesn't answer some important questions. Why, for instance, would the behavior condition in the first place if "instinct" would dictate otherwise? Why is this "misbehavior" first described only after the animals are moved into the "real world," and out of the sterile, boring environment of the behaviorists' laboratory?

Because of the unreliability of their training approach, OC practitioners (principally PROC trainers) have embraced "instinctive drift" and any other convenient terminology/excuse as reasons why reliability isn't possible. Explain rather than train, is becoming all too common. Management advice to cope with unacceptable behavior is becoming more and more the norm and is turning our homes into modified zoos for our semi-wild companions.

Real dogs live in real families in real communities and perform real functions; they are quite different from the theoretical dogs and laboratory rats that inhabit the behaviorist's textbook. Real dogs don't need explanations or excuses, they don't need management only approaches, real dogs need real training.

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2 Graham, George; "Behaviorism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2002 Edition)

3 "THE MISBEHAVIOR OF ORGANISMS," Keller Breland and Marian Breland (1961)

Animal Behavior Enterprises, Hot Springs, Arkansas. First published in American Psychologist, 16, 681-684.