Hockenbury Discovering Psychology 5th txtbk

Contemporary Views of Operant Conditioning217Operant Conditioning and Biological PredispositionsMisbehaving ChickensSkinner and other behaviorists firmly believed that the general laws of operantconditioning applied to all animal species—whether they were pecking pigeons orbar-pressing rats. As Skinner (1956) wrote:Pigeon, rat, monkey, which is which? It doesn’t matter. Of course, these species havebehavioral repertoires which are as different as their anatomies. But once you haveallowed for differences in the ways in which they make contact with the environment,and in the ways in which they act upon the environment, what remains of their behaviorshows astonishingly similar properties.However, psychologists studying operant conditioning, like those studying classicalconditioning, found that an animal’s natural behavior patterns could influencethe learning of new behaviors. Consider the experiences of Keller and MarianBreland, two of Skinner’s students at the University of Minnesota. The Brelandsestablished a successful business training animals for television commercials, tradeshows, fairs, and even displays in department stores (Bailey & Bailey, 1993; Breland& Breland, 1961). Using operant conditioning, the Brelands trained thousands ofanimals of many different species to perform all sorts of complex tricks.But the Brelands weren’t always successful in training the animals. For example,they tried to train a chicken to play baseball. The chicken learned to pull a loop thatactivated a swinging bat. After hitting the ball, the chicken was supposed to run tofirst base. The chicken had little trouble learning to pull the loop, but instead ofrunning to first base, the chicken would chase the ball.The Brelands also tried to train a raccoon to pick up two coins and depositthem into a metal box. The raccoon easily learned to pick up the coins but seemedto resist putting them into the box. Like a furry little miser, it would rub the coinstogether. And rather than dropping the coins in the box, it would dip the coinsin the box and take them out again. As time went on, this behavior became morepersistent, even though the raccoon was not being reinforced for it. In fact, theraccoon’s “misbehavior” was actually preventing it from getting reinforced forcorrect behavior.The Brelands noted that such nonreinforced behaviors seemed to reflect innate,instinctive responses. The chicken chasing the ball was behaving like a chicken chasinga bug. Raccoons in the wild instinctively clean and moisten their food by dippingit in streams or rubbing it between their forepaws. These natural behaviors interferedwith the operant behaviors the Brelands were attempting to condition—aphenomenon called instinctive drift.instinctive driftThe tendency of an animal to revert toinstinctive behaviors that can interfere withthe performance of an operantly conditionedresponse.Keller and Marian Breland’s “IQ Zoo”B. F. Skinner’s former students Keller andMarian Breland moved their animaltraining business from Minnesota to thewarmer climate of Hot Springs, Arkansasin 1951. By the 1960s, the Brelands' "IQZoo" was one of the most popular roadsideattractions in the U.S. Among its nonhumanstars were basketball-playing raccoons,reindeer who operated a printingpress, ducks who played the piano, andchickens who danced, walked a tightrope,and played tic-tac-toe. Beyond entertainment,the Brelands were pioneers in thedevelopment of animal training and behaviormodification techniques. MarianBreland was one of the first psychologiststo use positive reinforcement to teach basicself-help skills to people with developmentaldisabilities and also helped trainmarine mammals for the U.S. Navy (Bihm& Gillaspy, 2007; Bailey & Gillaspy, 2005).