The operant control of vocalization in the dog.
Vocal behavior can be shaped, scheduled, and chained just like any motor response.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers worked with one dog in a lab.
They used food to shape barking on cue.
Next they put the bark on fixed-ratio schedules.
Finally they chained the vocal response with other tasks.
What they found
The dog learned to bark when a light came on.
The bark stayed strong under FR-5 and FR-10.
Even in long chains the vocal response kept going.
Sound behavior followed the same rules as lever presses.
How this fits with other research
LANE et al. (1963) repeated the setup with humans and birds.
They also tracked pitch and loudness.
Schedules still controlled the vocal topographies.
Davison et al. (1968) later added response cost.
Extra words dropped when each word lost a coin.
The same schedule tools now fixed excess talking.
Critchfield (1996) moved from single barks to full conversations.
Shaping steered adult talk toward new topics.
The 1962 dog study opened the door for all these extensions.
Why it matters
If barking can be put on ratio and chain schedules, so can words.
Use FR schedules to build vocal persistence in early mand training.
Add response cost if rate gets too high.
Track pitch or volume when you need a clearer vocal target.
The basic rules shown in a dog still guide our work with kids today.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Control over the vocal responses of three dogs was established using operant-conditioning procedures. Several points of interest were observed in the data. First, fixed-ratio schedules of reinforcement generated a vocal response topography which was similar in detail to that of a "motor" bar-nosing response. Second, vocal responding was brought under the control of external visual stimuli as a result of differential reinforcement. Third, good stimulus control was maintained on a multiple schedule containing a vocal-response component and a bar-response component. Fourth, the stimulus control on the multiple schedule transferred with minimal disruption to a chain schedule requiring a sequence of 10 bar responses followed by 10 vocal responses. Fifth, because vocal and bar responses are not mutually exclusive, concurrent responding tended to develop on the chain schedule. These results were discussed with reference to the advisability of applying the terms operant and respondent to unconditioned behavior, and, particularly, to unconditioned verbal behavior.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1962 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1962.5-383