The second quadrant is known as positive punishment. This is also referred to as rewarding your dog. By giving your dog something they love (the positive) when they sit, they will sit more often in the future (the reinforcement). Remember positive means to add something and reinforcement means the behavior increases.

The first quadrant is the one you should focus on in your training: positive reinforcement. And you can use these quadrants to affect your dog’s behavior. These two dimensions combine to form the four quadrants of operant conditioning. Again, don’t think in terms of good or bad, but simply whether a given behavior becomes more or less common. This is known as reinforcement (anything that makes the behavior more likely) and punishment (anything that makes the behavior less likely). The second dimension is whether the consequence increases the frequency of the behavior or decreases it. Don’t think of it in terms of good or bad, just addition or subtraction. If you take away a toy, you’ve removed something. For example, if you provide your dog with a treat, you’ve added something. The first is whether you add something or remove something. But how does that work exactly? Well, operant conditioning works on two different dimensions. The Four Quadrants of Operant Conditioningīecause consequences drive behavior, training is all about controlling the consequences of your dog’s actions to influence the behaviors they choose to express. The scratch was an unpleasant consequence. Or if your dog bothers the cat and the cat scratches their nose, they will think twice about bothering the cat in the future. So, if your dog barks at you while you’re on the phone and you give them a bone to keep them quiet, your dog is likely to bark again next time you take a call. And dogs increase the frequency of behaviors with pleasant consequences and decrease the frequency of those with unpleasant consequences. Also known as trial-and-error learning, this is when dogs learn to associate their behavior with its consequences. What about all the active training you do with your dog? That’s where operant conditioning comes in. They have learned to associate the ringing bell with people outside the door.īut classical conditioning happens involuntarily. For example, when your doorbell rings, your dog gets excited because they anticipate a visitor on the front stoop. This phenomenon is known as classical conditioning or associative learning. They learned to associate the bell with the coming food, so even before their meal arrived, they were drooling with anticipation. When the dinner bell rang, the dogs salivated. You may have heard of Pavlov and his dogs. It’s based on the science of animal learning, and it’s incredibly effective.

But positive reinforcement training is neither a bribe nor a gimmick. To some people that sounds like a bribe, not training, and they want their dog to obey just because they should. The reward could be a toy, a game, or a treat – whatever your dog wants to work for. Positive reinforcement training involves rewarding your dog for the things they do right.

Pavlov dog training