Operant Learning Quadrants

We discuss Operant Conditioning all the time, its the foundation of how horses learn! But one aspect we often overlook is the difference between natural and contrived learning and the emotions that come with each. We know and understand that operant conditioning is happening all the time in the background without us even noticing or thinking about it.

Natural learning happens very fluidly, the quadrants are very blurry, they are happening all the time to various degrees. A simple example is that if a horse is in the sun and bugs and feeling uncomfortable (aversive) the horse seeks the shade to be cool and less buggy (relief). Are they seeking the shade (adding shade) or avoiding heat and bugs (subtracting aversive)? Well its a blurry fuzzy line of both of them. The negative reinforcement is still avoidance, the positive reinforcement is still seeking, but it doesn't carry big, huge, dramatic emotions or alot of aversive associations. The horse controls their exposure to the stimuli.

Contrived learning, training, is not a natural environmental situation. Its induced by US. We control it, the horse doesn't. The horse KNOWS that we are controlling the stimulus, not them. That we are modifying their behavior. They know we control the exposure to the aversives and appetitives and WE are being conditioned with what we add to the equation. Are we bringing aversives or appetitives to our classical conditioning? When we control the appetitives and aversives its different than if those same things happen naturally or if YOU make them happen.

If a person made you stand in the sun and bugs and only decided when you can get access to shade, you aren't thinking of the sun or bugs as the aversive, you are thinking of the person controlling them as the aversive. The person in control is being conditioned as the aversive, not the relief. It creates and includes emotions of resentment and frustration that don't exist in the same situation in a natural setting.