Operant conditioning is consequence-based learning, in which the pleasant or unpleasant consequences of the dog’s behavior create the learning opportunity. It is broken into four quadrants: positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment, and negative punishment.
- Positive = Adding
- Negative = Subtracting
- Reinforcer = Increasing behavior
- Punisher = Decreasing behavior
These quadrants are important because they help you develop creative solutions for problems within training, which means you can adjust your training to fit your dog’s needs when you are having difficulty with certain behaviors. So, if one way isn’t working, you have other methods to pull from to achieve the same result.