95

Sea lion training

Classical and operant conditioning have Use your knowledge of classical

long been used by animal trainers to conditioning to help Shawn train the
teach animals to produce the desired safari park sea lion to associate fish with a
behaviour on command. certain bucket.

Unconditioned stimulus Unconditioned response

UCS UCR

Artificial (neural) stimulus Conditioned stimulus

NS

Extension: in your explanation try to

Conditioned response CR
include a time schedule to produce
maximum learning.

Consider the following phenomena and explain how you will deal with them in your sea lion training.

· The CR (conditioned response) can quickly become extinct if food does not follow the presentation of the CS
(conditioned stimulus). This is because the bucket (in this case) predicts the arrival of food, if food does not
arrive, the association is no longer useful.
· Should a stimulus appear that is similar, but not identical to the CS (conditioned stimulus), the animal will elicit
the CR (conditioned response). This is known as stimulus generalisation.
· If during the conditioning procedure other similar stimuli are presented without being followed by the
UCS (unconditioned stimulus), then eventually the animal will only respond to the CS (conditioned stimuli).
· The animal has learnt to discriminate between CS and other stimuli. This process is known as stimulus
discrimination.

Now Shawn has successfully taught the sea lion to associate food with a certain bucket, he can begin
training him to perform tricks for the safari park audience. With the bucket present, Shawn’s sea lion knows
food is present. Desirable aspects of his behaviour can be reinforced, leading to tricks being developed and
performed on command.

The type of reinforcement Shawn should carry out this The reinforcement schedule
Shawn should use is: type of reinforcement Shawn should use is:
by:

because:
because:

. Lesson notes p.52

186 PSYCHOLOGY A2: THE TEACHER’S COMPANION FOR AQA ‘A’ published by Oxford University Press © 2010 Michael Griffin, Rosalind Geillis and Cara Flanagan