What's the difference between operant conditioning as it applies to a goldfish or a dog? Actually, nothing. The basic principles of operant conditioning apply to ANY animal. But obviously, we don't train a goldfish and a dog the same way! When we design a training/education program, we must also take into account the animals' cognitive abilities and genetic/physical abilities and interests, and to me, this is where ethology comes in.
This past week I read "If Dogs Could Talk" by ethologist Vilmos Csanyi. To quote Csanyi, ethology "relies on analyzing the genetic architecture of natural components of animal behavior." Reading this was fun and mind-opening, especially in light of what I know about operant conditioning. The author provides here a wonderfully humane opportunity for behavior scientists to expand our views, and focus on elements of untrained animal behavior that aren't so easily explained by the more simplistic approaches to operant conditioning.
Relying on university research as well as his own family-dog anecdotes, Csany provides evidence that dogs can pose questions, imitate (in Csany's view anyway), cooperate for a communal (almost moral?) good, follow rules, and express themselves. Although we might often say that "dogs live in the present" (and Csany also expressed this view), reading this book opened my thinking to the ways that dogs actually do predict the future, and remember the past (they trust, they fear) and in fact, have a social intelligence that is not enormously different (and this is a major thesis of the book) from that of human children.
Example: Today, my husband and I had to move a ton of firewood. Once the dogs were in the yard with us, Dandylion immediately went running to the fence, and squeezed under it (in spite of my calling out after him, "No! Lion come!"). Tigerlily had followed him, but hearing me call she stayed inside the fence, following Dandylion's progress with great enthusiasm and interest as he trotted parallel with her along outside the fence, near the snowcovered road.
I called to Albert with a frightened voice, "Help! Lion blends in perfectly with the snow! If a car comes by they'll never see him, and he's showing off for Tigerlily!"
Albert hurried down the driveway to collect Lion while I stayed with Tigerlily (to make sure she didn't yeild to her obvious temptation and follow after him). Lion seemed to react to my frightened voice and Albert's excited movement, and he froze in place while Albert ran up, grabbed him, brought him back inside the house.
We decided that since Tigerlily had behaved, as long as she stayed without argument behind the north gate (well away from the road), she could stay in the yard and watch us move firewood.
I've never trained Tigerlily to stay behind the gate, but we put her there, gave her a completely untrained cue ("Stay behind the gate, and you can stay outside") (she knows the words "stay" and "outside") and without any further coaxing or prompting, she seemed to fully interpret this, and she watched us from behind the gate while we moved a cord of firewood. It amazed my husband and I, because ordinarily, she stands at that same gate, waiting for an opportunity to bust out. It really did appear that she understood that Lion had scared me (and she understood he was now inside the house), and she seemed to be able to add these events together into an "if –then" sort of comprehension. The gate was swinging freely as we went back and forth, and with no reinforcement except her own apparent cognitive understanding, Tigerlily followed the "rule" we had invented on the spot.
As Csanyi would say, this is only a story, but we're entitled to our stories…and like so many of our stories about dogs, it points towards a canine ability to reason that goes beyond simple operant conditioning, towards an ability to reason and make predictions in previously untested situations.
