essay 5 paragraph

How to Train Your Pet

Have you ever wondered how the animals you see on TV and in movies are trained to perform such amazing tricks? Many of their trainers use a technique based on the teaching methods developed by behavioral psychologist such as B. F. Skinner studied techniques for reinfofrcing desired behaviors in animal. Animals can be taught many sophisticated tricks using Skinner’s techniques. If you want to teach your pet to do a trick, you must understand the technique psychologists call “shapping”. Shapping means reinforcing, or strengthening, behaviors that you want to encourage. Here is how you can use his techniques to train your pet to do tricks.

The first thing you must do is choose your subject. You can pick any household pet, such as a cat, hamster, parrot, or dog. For example, suppose you want to teach your dog to do a trick. Next, choose a reward. Food is usuallythe easiest reward to use. Keep in mind that in order for food to be an effective reward, your dog has to be hungry. Don’t try to teach him a new trick right after he has easten a big meal. Also, a reward is most effective when it is given at the same time that the dog performs the desired trick. Since you will not alwayse be able to give the dog food as quickly as yyou would like to, you will ned to develop a “conditioned reinforcer.” You can do this by connecting the food with something else, such as ringing a bell, in this case, the sound the bell makes is the conditioned reinforcer.

You are now ready to begin conditioning the dog to respond the bell. Get out about 40 small dog biscuits. Toss a few of them to your dog, one at a time, at a rate of about one or two biscuits a minute. As soon as the dog begins eating the biscuits, ring the bell and then throw him another biscuits. Wait about 30 seconds and then repeat the steps. When you ring the bell, do not make any other sound or movement. Give the biscuits only when the dog is standing in the place where he gets his food. When your dog reaches the point where he goes to the food place whenever you ring the bell, you are ready to begin teaching him the trick.

As this point, you need to choose the trick you want to teach. An easy tricjk is teaching your dog to roll over. Shape the dog’s behavior by reinforcing anything thyat resembles the behavior you are trying to teach. Begin by reinforcing any attemp to lie down. Then reinforce any movement of his body when he is lying down. Every time you reinforce any of his behaviors that resembles rolling over, immediately give him a biscuit and ring the bell. In this way, he will begin to associate the sound of the bell with the trick. Continue reinforcing closer approximation of rolling over with the biscuits and the bell. During the teaching session, do not toouch the dog, talk to him, or in any way. Distrack him. A normal dog, according to Skinner, will learn the trick within five minutes.

As you can see, it is really not very difficult to train your pet to do a trick. It is only a matter of a little time and some effort. Once you have established a conditioned reinforcer, you can easily teach your dog a new trick bby shapping his behavior. Remeber, though, that if you want to teach your dog another trick, you must eliminate the first behavior bby no longer reinforcing it. Eventually, he will stop rolling over and will be ready to learn something new.