Skinner’s construction of instrumental learning is contrasted with what the Nobel Prize-winning biologist Konrad Lorenz called “fixed action patterns” or reflexive, impulsive, or instinctive behaviors. Skinner and others said that these behaviors existed outside the parameters of operant conditioning, but were considered essential for a comprehensive analysis of behavior.

In dog training, the use of prey drive, particularly in the training of working dogs, detection dogs, etc., the stimulation of these fixed action patterns, relative to the dog’s predatory instincts, is the key to producing very difficult but consistent behaviors, and in most cases, do not involve operant conditioning, classical or otherwise. While evolutionary processes shaped these fixed action patterns, the patterns themselves remained stable enough to be shaped over the long period of time necessary for evolution due to their survival function (i.e., operant conditioning). .

According to the laws of operant conditioning, any behavior that is consistently rewarded, each time, will be extinguished at a faster rate, whereas intermittent reinforcement of behavior leads to more stable rates of behavior that are relatively more resistant to extinction. Therefore, in detection dogs, any correct behavior of indicating a “find” should always be rewarded with a tug toy or ball toss early on for initial acquisition of the behavior. Thereafter, fading procedures are introduced, in which the rate of reinforcement is “reduced” (not all responses are reinforced), switching the dog to an intermittent schedule of reinforcement, which is more resistant to non-reinforcement events. reinforcement.

However, some trainers are now using prey drive to train dogs and are finding that they get better results in dogs’ responses to training than when using operant conditioning principles alone, according to Skinner and his students Keller and Marian. Breland (who invented clicker training), break down when strong instincts come into play.