Traditional vs. Operant: A Biologist's View

Karen Pryor

Learning what the operant trainer wants, on the other hand, is much more like learning how to forage or hunt. Having found out that goodies are available, the individual animal then discovers, bit by bit, various ways to extract them successfully from the environment (in this case, the trainer). It is a biologically appropriate way to learn, one to which nearly all creatures are predisposed. No wonder it is so much fun.

Traditional training, like any social interaction, is partly intuitive; operant training is not. Operant training takes much less practice, but much more thought. We arrived at this elegant method through an elegant method of our own: scientific research. But Mother Nature, I believe, knew it all along.

Karen Pryor was educated at Cornell University, with graduate work in zoology at the University of Hawaii, New York University, and Rutgers. She is also a Trustee of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies, and the author of many books and articles, including her widely renowned and read book Don't Shoot the Dog.

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