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This section is designed to clarify the ways in which we consider
animal learning. The most important first step is to establish a
common language for all cases. Barriers to human learning are often
the product of a lack of clarity in the definition of terms. In the
course of researching this topic, it has become clear that many
excellent trainers are confused about the labels used by serious
students of what is usually called learning theory. Since one of the
chief goals of this presentation is to demystify animal training, it
is crucial that we agree on the meanings of words, especially
technical
'jargon'. This will allow us to consider principles in
animal training from a rigorous scientific perspective.
The definition of
learning
Broadly speaking, a stimulus is any detectable change in an
animal's environment. A response is any behaviour or
physiological event. Animals have innate or instinctive responses to
stimuli. Examples include the way newborn mammals move under the
influence of tactile and olfactory signals to find nipples and the
way squirrels bury their food when periods of daylight shorten.
The usual technical definition of learning or conditioning,
as it is more correctly described, is any relatively permanent
change in response that occurs as a result of experience.
Interestingly, this refers to a response and not a cognitive outcome
such as knowledge.
Not all changes in behaviour are a consequence of learning. The
reference to
a
'relatively permanent change' is added to exclude
modifications of behaviour due to motivational factors,
physiological variables or fatigue. A thirsty horse that drinks
despite having refused water five hours earlier has changed its
behaviour but is not considered to have learnt anything in the
interim. Instead its motivation to drink has changed as a result of
shifts in variables such as blood volume and the concentration of
sodium in body fluids. Meanwhile fatigue can change behaviour,
transforming a playful kitten into a snoozing ball of fluff but its
effects could not be described as relatively permanent.
Because the definition of learning has experience as a prerequisite,
it excludes permanent changes in behaviour resulting from maturation
or debility. So, when male puppies progress from squatting to leg
cocking, they have not learned that this new posture elevates the
smelly signal they leave for others but are simply maturing and
responding to increased levels of circulating testosterone. The aged
stag whose roar is ever weaker during the rut has not learned that
the hinds are unimpressed. The old muscles in his rib cage and belly
have just given up the ghost.
Instead of relying
solely on invariant behaviour patterns for survival, animals living
in constantly changing environments thrive if they are able to
respond to change. Learning allows animals to use information about
the world to tailor their responses to environmental change. By
avoiding pain and discomfort, animals can make their life more
pleasant. Invertebrates such as flies, slugs and ants show advanced
forms of learning when avoiding stimuli that have elicited pain
responses. Broiler chickens prefer to consume food that contains
analgesics presumably because it ameliorates the subjective state of
pain caused by chronic leg weakness. Similarly baboons have been
trained to self-inject psychotropic drugs which, it is presumed,
improve their quality of life.
We manipulate animals' experience to train them. Training
generally means drawing out desirable and suppressing undesirable
innate behaviours to institute novel responses.
Different approaches - Psychology
Vs Ethology.
The
original rules of what we call learning theory first came from the
laboratories of psychologists and behaviourists who used clinically
controlled, some would say sterile, stimuli. These days the study of
animal learning is increasingly the pursuit of cognitive
ethologists. These are the behavioural scientists who, when
considering the way in which a species processes information,
emphasise the importance of the environment for which a species
evolved and determine how the biology of a species can influence its
behaviour.
Both ethologists and psychologists now regularly
use the following terms:
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