Operant Conditioning

Developed by B.F. Skinner, it is a learning method (understood as "behavior modification based on experience") supported on the relationship between a given behavior and its consequence, so that the subject can voluntarily decide what behavior develop (operate) based on the result that it will report him.

This approach based on the consequence we obtain exists in all animals, including humans, and is governed by the following premise:

- One consequence perceived as positive after a particular behaviour is given, will cause that behavior to recur more often or  with more intensity (increase);

- One consequence perceived as negative after a given behaviour, will cause that behaviour to recur with less frequency or with less intensity, even extinct (decrease).

Ethology

Today I want to begin explaining some basics concepts about the study of animal behavior that later will be of great help when it comes to coach and train our animals.

Ethology is defined as "the branch of biology that studies the behavior of animals", so it is a discipline submitted to the principles that define scientific methodology.

Ethologists seek to understand the reasons that lead animals to behave in certain ways, combining laboratory and field work, combining disciplines such as ecology, neurology, anatomy and psychology. Although the study of animal behavior has been practiced since the beginning of time (it was useful to know, for example, what incited a lion to attack), its boom took place from the second half of the twentieth century when its findings started moving to the behavior of the human being as an animal species.

Exist within this specialty a series of names who, one way or another, have marked its evolution over time so it is interesting to know something about them: