I'm Operant. How about you?

A lot of people who clicker train talk about having "Operant" dogs, or say they train "operant." And they're right. They are training using Operant Conditioning.

However, like I said in my other post, ALL dog training (and pretty much all people training too) is done using Operant techniques. Koehler, the Monks of New Skete, Diane Baumann, Bernie Brown, Karen Pryor and Sue Ailsby all use operant techniques, just based on different parts of the Operant spectrum. So a smart trainer understands the theory behind the foundations of our dog training.

Operant Conditioning means behaviors have consequences. And B.F. Skinner described four main quadrants of Operant training. It's really important to remember that the words we use for these quadrants are used with scientific definitions, not layman definitions. In other words, they don't mean what you might think they do. The four words are positive, negative, reinforcement, punishment.

Positive = adding something. (it does not mean pleasant, pain free, or happy)

Negative = subtracting something (it does not mean unpleasant or bad)

Reinforcement = increase repetition of a behavior (again, not necessarily pleasant, just an increase)

Punishment = decrease repetition of a behavior (does not mean painful or what I always think of, being spanked or hit)

The four quadrants of Operant Conditioning are:

Positive Reinforcement: Adding something to Increase a behavior.

Negative Reinforcement: Subtracting something (taking something away) to Increase a behavior

Positive Punishment: Adding something to Decrease a behavior

Negative Punishment: Subtracting something (taking something away) to Decrease a behavior

That's plenty of gobbledy-gook for this post. Suffice it to say, that for the most part, clicker training operates more in positive reinforcement and negative punishment than the other two quadrants. But all training does encompass all quadrants at some time or another.

—Robin