Author Ray LeBlond once said, “You learn something every day if you pay attention.” Everyday, your own dog might learn something new as well. Every time that you open the back door and give your dog a treat, he is learning. Every time you open the back door and do not give your dog a treat, and he barks at you, expecting you to return to him with a doggie’s decadent delight, it is learning as well. Learning requires certain conditioning for any given reaction.
Of the two types of conditioning, the first is Classical Conditioning. (Silverman, p. 202) Developed by Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) accidentally during an experiment with his salivating dogs, Pavlov isolated the salivary glands of the dogs, directly connected tubes to them, and recorded the amount of salivation. At one point, he noticed that the dogs began to salivate at the sight of the food used in the experiment, and eventually salivated at the sight of the experimenter that had been feeding them. Later, with the use of his newly discovered Classical Conditioning, Pavlov trained his dogs to salivate at the ring of a musical note.
There are four parts to Classical Conditioning, and those are the unconditioned stimulus, unconditioned response, conditioned stimulus, and the conditioned response. (Silverman, p. 912) The unconditioned stimulus (US) is a stimulus that is a given and automatically produces a consistent response. The unconditioned response (UR) is the automatic response to an unconditioned stimulus. (Silverman, p. 886) The conditioned stimulus (CS) is a neutral stimulus that, for experimental purposes, is presented to an organism with an US for the purpose of developing a conditioned response (CR), which is evoked by the UC. According to David C. Edwards (p. 135), the conditioned stimulus does not immediately elicit a conditioned response, for the process of conditioning has not yet been fulfilled, but does produce an orienting reflex which grows into the conditioned response.
Classical Conditioning can be applied in many places, especially in the animal training occupation. (Braslau-Schneck) Classical conditioning is very important to animal trainers, because it is difficult to supply an animal with one of the things it naturally likes (or dislikes) in time for it to be an important consequence of the behavior. In other words, it is hard to supply the subject organism with the conditioned response while it is in action, like throwing a fish to a dolphin while it is flipping. To solve this problem, the trainer may use a clicker or whistle as a means of getting an action, and then rewarding the dolphin with a fish afterwards.
Two other principles concerning Classical Conditioning are extinction and spontaneous recovery. Because conditioned responses do not last forever, if the conditioned stimulus is repeatedly shown without the unconditioned stimulus, the conditioned response will eventually fade away and is said to have become extinct. (Edwards, p. 137) If a period of time intervenes between extinction and a new session of reconditioning, the response that was previously extinct may spontaneously recover to full strength
The other type of conditioning is called Operant or Instrumental Conditioning. According to Wikipedia, Operant Conditioning is the use of consequences to modify the occurrence and form of behavior. There are 2 main ideas in Operant Conditioning, reinforcement and punishment. Reinforcement refers to an action that causes a greater frequency in the desired behavior. Punishment refers to an action that causes a lesser frequency in the behavior.
There are also 2 different types of reinforcement and punishment, positive and negative. In these contexts, positive and negative refer to addition and subtraction. (Wikipedia) Positive reinforcement occurs when a behavior (response) is followed by a favorable stimulus (commonly seen as pleasant) that increases the frequency of that behavior. Negative reinforcement, on the other hand, occurs when a behavior is followed by the removal of an undesirable stimulus and results in an increase of that behavior.
Positive punishment is the result of administering a stimulus that decreases the amount of times the behavior reoccurs. And, just as NEGATIVE reinforcement removes a stimulus, and positive PUNISHMENT decreases the frequency of the behavior, negative punishment is the effect of removing stimuli and in turn decreasing the number or reoccurrences in behavior.
(Wikipedia) There are also a few factors that adjust the effectiveness of the reinforcement or punishment:
1. Satiation – The effectiveness of a consequence will be reduced if the individual’s “appetite” for that source of stimulation has been satisfied, and vice versa.
2. Immediacy – After a response, the more immediate the punishment or reinforcement, the more effective it will be upon the behavior.
3. Contingency – If a consequence (punishment or reinforcement) is not consistently administered after the response, it will reduce its effectiveness.
4. Size – The equivalence between the size of the consequence and the size of the behavior influences the effectiveness of the consequence upon the behavior. If the behavior is difficult and the reward is low, the behavior might not be performed, but if the action is simple and the reinforcement is high, the behavior has a much better chance of being performed.
This paper is just a brief description of the deep, intricate world of Classical and Operant Conditioning. Hopefully, this has shown a bright light over the basics which are required for learning.
Sources
Silverman, Robert E.. Psychology. United States of America: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1971.
Edwards, David C.. General Psychology. 1st. United States of America: The MacMillan Company, 1968.
Stacy Braslau-Schneck, An Animal Trainer’s Introduction to Operant and Classical Conditioning, Wag’N’Train
