09/02/2023
What are Operant and Classical Conditioning, and why do we look at addressing the underlying emotional state that triggers a behavior using Classical Conditioning before we think about teaching a dog to do a specific behavior using Operant Conditioning?
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It is NOT all operant!
In light of recent discussions around the "it is all operant" narrative, which often seeks to undermine any consideration of an animal's emotional responses, and after seeing a few recent examples of how things can go horribly wrong for dogs and people when trainers only focus on the operant, I wanted to update and re-post this article on understanding Counter-conditioning, which I wrote a couple of years ago.
Desensitization and Counter-conditioning is a common protocol for working with dogs to overcome fears, phobias and reactivity. However, reading accounts of how people carry out counter-conditioning often reveals a fundamental error in practice and a misunderstanding of what counter-conditioning actually means.
When an owner is faced with a concerning behaviour, such as reactivity, it is natural to want to change the behaviour. The problem comes in when trainers assisting such owners focus on changing behaviour alone and neglect to consider what is causing that behaviour in the first place. I often hear trainers who don't know (or don't want to know) much about emotions, make claims such as "addressing reactivity is no different to teaching a dog to sit". The fact that this is simply not true is demonstrated repeatedly by the complete hash of things that such trainers make when they try to "train" away aggressive responses with operant conditioning alone. Yes, you might be able to reinforce and strengthen an alternate response, but unless you have first addressed the underlying emotional state that triggers the behaviour and have considered the overall welfare and wellbeing of the dog, you will simply be putting a Band-Aid on a festering wound.
What trainers who focus purely on the operant miss, is that in the context of helping a dog to overcome reactivity, counter-conditioning refers to a CLASSICAL CONDITIONING procedure and not an operant conditioning one.
In laymen’s terms, what does this mean? Classical conditioning is the association of one stimulus with another. It is where an animal learns that one event or stimulus predicts the arrival or another. For example, putting on running shoes predicts going for a walk, the doorbell predicts visitors etc. These events have nothing to do with the dog’s own behaviour – they just happen and the dog learns to connect them. By connecting them, the dog forms emotional associations with the initial stimuli: for example, putting on running shoes means nothing to a dog in and of itself, but because it always predicts a walk for the dog, the joyful or excited emotions associated with going out become associated with the predictor of this event and the dog gets excited when he sees the shoes being put on.
Counter-conditioning in the context of addressing reactivity, relates to CLASSICAL counter-conditioning and refers to replacing the old negative association of an event with a new positive one i.e. instead of the appearance of other dogs or people being a predictor for something bad happening, they become a signal for something pleasant, so that the dog FEELS completely differently about them.
However, many trainers who are solely focused on the operant (the dog's behaviour) or do not understand what counter-conditioning actually means, try to immediately require a specific behaviour from the dog when working to resolve reactivity. So, for example, if a dog is reactive towards other dogs, they would expose the dog to another dog and then want to reinforce the dog, ONLY IF the dog remains calm or sits or does a focus exercise. This is not classical counter-conditioning. This is operant conditioning i.e. reinforcing a specific behaviour. In this case, the dog is being expected to make a choice as to how to respond and the “correct” response is then rewarded.
Why is this a problem? It is a problem, because it is not addressing the fundamental issue – the emotional state of the dog. If a dog is reactive or trying to avoid encounters with other dogs, it is the result of the dog feeling bad around other dogs. The point of counter-conditioning is to CHANGE the way that the dog FEELS, because if this changes, the motivation for the unwanted behaviour is eliminated. In proper CC, the dog is not expected to do anything at all. We do not expect the dog to look at us, we do not expect the dog to sit, we do not expect the dog to lie down, walk on a loose lead, stay, not tense up etc.…. We are not putting pressure on the dog to meet some expectation, we simply want to teach the dog that the sight of the previously scary thing now predicts something wonderful e.g. mountains of treats or a favourite toy. If we place an expectation on the dog to perform some behaviour, we can unintentionally pressure the dog into “behaving” without actually changing how the dog feels. If those underlying feelings are still a problem, the unwanted behaviour will recur, because the root of the problem has not been dealt with. In fact, we can actually make the situation more dangerous, because we are "hiding" the truth and may end up pushing the dog into a situation where they react really badly, because we have disguised their feelings with a "nice" behaviour.
Starting from a place of expecting the dog to DO something, is unnecessary and can hamper efforts to help the dog feel better as quickly as possible. Classical conditioning is extremely powerful – it is a subconscious process which is incredibly effective and lasting. Interfering with this process by only following up the sight of the trigger with the food or toy IF the dog performs a behaviour, weakens the association of the trigger with good stuff. We need to stop being so obsessed with making our dogs work for everything and realise that they don’t have to earn the right for us to make them feel good about stuff they are unsure of. Every time that the trigger appears, the treats or toy should appear IMMEDIATELY – it is contingent on the appearance of the trigger and NOTHING else. Our job is simply to deliver the stuff that will create a positive association, not make the dog do something!
Now of course, we don't want to repeatedly expose the dog to a trigger in such a way that they experience extreme fear and become really reactive and then throw treats at them - that is not going to work, because the negative emotions associated with the trigger at that point will overwhelm the dog's interest in food or play completely and they will not even realise that something pleasant has been offered after the appearance of the trigger. That is why counter conditioning is usually paired with systematic desensitization i.e. introducing the trigger at a low enough intensity (greater distance, smaller duration, least movement, lowest noise level etc.) so that the dog notices it, but does not have an extreme emotional (or behavioural) response - then gradually raising the intensity while attempting to keep the dog under threshold at all times.
Operant conditioning and differential reinforcement (rewarding an incompatible behaviour e.g. rewarding focused attention on you rather than staring at a trigger) has a place, but that place is AFTER a good amount of DS & CC. Start by changing how your dog feels and take the pressure off of them to perform, until they are at a point where they are so comfortable, because of the positive associations you have built up, that making good choices is easy!
