There are two types of conditioning we use in dog training: Operant (aka learning by consequence, or "Skinnerian Conditioning") and Classical (aka learning by association, or "Pavlovian Conditioning"). When we teach new behaviors, we tend to focus on Operant Conditioning. In this episode, Annie talks about the differences between these two kinds of teaching/learning, and reveals how, in many cases, Classical Conditioning can produce very reliable behaviors with little effort. Notes: AnnieGrossman.com/podcast26 - What vending machines can teach us about training "come" & "drop it" - Music: "Time Is On My Side" cover by Toast Garden - Sponsor: Train your inbox using SANEBOX! Get $15 off at SchoolForTheDogs.com/Sane Like this podcast? Leave a review on iTunes at SchoolForTheDogs.com/Listen or visit us on Anchor at SchoolForTheDogs.com/Anchor to support it with a monthly contribution of $0.99, $4.99 or $9.99 a month. Thanks!
---
Partial Transcript:

Annie:
Hello there, mammals. So I'd like to start this episode off with a little riddle. And uh, if you make it through this episode, you will be able to answer this riddle. So here it goes.
You're in a room. Let's say it's a pretty small room with two people. One is a baby and the other is an adult, let's say it's a man and he doesn't speak English and you don't speak his language. Now he's holding a basketball and you want to teach him the meaning of the words “drop it.” Now, so just to recap, we have three people in the room, you, a baby, a man who doesn't speak English and is holding a basketball and that's it. There's no dictionary that you can use to translate. There's no dry erase board that you can write a diagram on and you are not allowed to really do any kind of a miming in order to try and get him to drop it. You also cannot touch him. So that's the setup. What are you going to do?
Today's episode is specifically about teaching “drop it.” Of course we're going to focus on how to teach “drop it” to a dog, but teaching “drop it” to a dog is a little bit like teaching “drop it” to someone who doesn't speak your language and we're also going to talk about “come.” Now I know at a first glance it might not seem like these two behaviors have very much in common, but, again, by the end of this episode I think you will see what they do have in common and why I wanted to pair these two very important behaviors together.

Now before I get too much into the nitty gritty of teaching these two important behaviors, I want to do a little review of the two kinds of learning that I'm always talking about on this show and that are so important to dog training: operant and conditioning and classical conditioning.
So operant conditioning is what we tend to think about when we're thinking about dog training. Operant conditioning is really anything that fits into like a “if then” equation. If my dog's butt hits the ground, then I'll give him a treat. Or if my dog pulls, then we will stop walking. Of course, humans are very much affected by operant conditioning too, just think of everything in your life that you can put into this a kind of equation, right? Like, if I go to work, then I get paid...

Full Transcript available at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcasts/

---

Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/dogs/message
Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/dogs/support