B.F. Skinner, the famous theoretical behaviorist, used the term operant conditioning
to describe the effects of a trainer’s particular action on the future occurrence of an animal’s behavior. Four quadrants make up operant conditioning.
The Four Quadrants of Operant Conditioning Training
If you think for a moment that “negative punishment” is a redundancy and “positive punishment” is an oxymoron, you’re not alone.
Understanding the Application of the 4 Quadrants
Quadrant 1
Positive Reinforcement: When one of our Akita’s, Jade, was still quite young, she assumed the begging position by twisting her head slightly clockwise and letting out a soft bark. She did this spontaneously and on her own, without any coaxing on our part. Naturally, we thought it was cute, so we would give her a treat, which increased the behavior. We periodically reinforced that behavior by giving her a treat. Nine years later, she still twists her head and lets out a soft bark to get a treat.
Quadrant 2
Negative Punishment: You’re watching TV and your dog drops his ball in your lap hoping you’ll throw it. Instead you get up and leave (removal of something pleasant), which will decrease the behavior.
Quadrant 3
Positive Punishment: Your dog jumps on you to greet you when you walk in the door; you don’t want him to jump on you so you spritz him with a fine spray of water or you raise your voice an octave or two and say No (adding something unpleasant), which will decrease the behavior.
Quadrant 4
Negative Reinforcement: You lift up on your dog’s collar to signal him to sit, and then you release the collar when he does (removal of something unpleasant), which will increase the behavior of sitting.
Clicker Training
Keller and Marian Breland created the foundation for the clicker training movement. In the mid-1940s, the Breland’s were the first to apply clicker training to training dogs. The movement didn’t become very popular until the early 1990’s when Karen Pryor began to give seminars on clicker training.
Clicker training is based on the concepts of operant conditioning. The dog is first trained to associate the clicker sound with getting a treat, a pleasant experience. After your dog associates the click with getting a treat, you have two options:
Option 1: You can wait until your dog voluntarily offers the desired behavior on his own, as in Sit. When he sits, you click your clicker, marking the end of the behavior, and reinforces his behavior with a treat. This option works well with extroverted dogs that offer a variety of behaviors in the hope that one of them will get them a treat.
An introverted dog, on the other hand, may show little interest in this game. His volunteering the behavior on his own can turn out to be a lengthy process for you and a stressful one for your dog — he may stop offering any behaviors and just lie down.
Option 2: With option 2, you will induce the desired behavior. Again, in the case of the Sit command, you will use a treat to get the dog to assume the sitting position, and when the dog Sits, you will click your clicker to mark the end of the behavior and give him his well-deserved treat.
With a clicker you can mark the end of the desired behavior with greater accuracy
than you can with verbal praise, which means a clearer communication with your dog. Clicker training is a wonderful tool; it does, however, require keen powers of observation and a split-second response (click). For more on clicker training, see Karen Pryor’s Reaching the Animal Mind: Clicker Training and What it Teaches Us About All Animals (Scribner).