Draw on your knowledge of positive and negative reinforcement, punishment, schedules of reinforcement, stimulus control training, discriminative stimuli, shaping, and biological constraints on learning to describe how you might use operant conditioning to train domestic animals (e.g., dogs, cats, horses, etc.) to perform desired behaviors.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Students' answers may vary.

Positive reinforcement. We may reward a kitten with a cuddle when it begins to use its litter box.
Punishment. We may squirt a cat with water each time it climbs on the furniture or the curtains.
Schedules of reinforcement. When training a puppy to sit on command, we might reinforce it on a continuous schedule at first to facilitate the acquisition of the behavior; we may then fade the reinforcement schedule, reinforcing it on a fixed- or variable-ratio intermittent schedule to make the behavior resistant to extinction.
Stimulus control training and discriminative stimuli. We might wish to train a cat to use an outdoor litter box rather than a flower bed; we might reinforce the cat for using the box but punish it for using the flower bed.
Shaping. When training a puppy to sit on command, we might reinforce successive approximations to the desired behavior. For example, we might initially reinforce even fairly general squatting motions; later we might reinforce only a full sit.
Biological constraints on learning. We may take advantage of species-typical behaviors to train animals. Examples include the tendency of cats to bury their feces, the tendency of some breeds of dogs to burrow, and so on.