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    NATIONAL FORUM OF EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION JOURNAL

    VOLUME 26, NUMBER 3, 2009-2010

    LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION:

    HOW A CHICKEN CAN HELP TEACH

    OPERANT CONDITIONING

    Mary Ann Hooten

    Frank Hammonds

    Troy University

    ABSTRACT

    Students often find it difficult to learn the basic principles of operant conditioning. For

    example, many students confuse negative reinforcement with punishment. For this

    reason, several authors have evaluated the effectiveness of various methods of teaching

    such concepts as reinforcement, punishment, and extinction. For the current study, thefirst author created a video detailing how to teach a chicken to discriminate between

    playing cards in such a way that this behavior could be incorporated into a card trick.

    This video was then evaluated in introductory psychology classes. The video resulted in

    greater retention of the material covered than did lectures alone.

    any instructors have likely encountered difficulty in getting

    students to learn the distinctions between positivereinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive

    punishment, and negative punishment, as well as other basic terms

    associated with operant conditioning. This is distressing since the

    definitions required in most introductory psychology classes are sosimple. Shields and Gredler (2003) found that participants did not

    perform well when attempting to answer questions regarding

    reinforcement and punishment. They observed that students wouldoften define negative reinforcement as punishing bad behavior. They

    were able to improve student performance in this area by utilizing

    interactive demonstrations, providing written and verbal feedback forstudent responses, and by having students complete exercises.

    M

    4

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    5 NATIONAL FORUM OF EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION JOURNAL__________

    Lukas, Marr, and Maple (1998) had students train animals at a

    zoo. This probably improved the students understanding of the

    material. In addition, students reported enjoying the training and mostof the students spent more time training the animals than was required.

    While training at a zoo may not be practical in all cases, this highlightsthe usefulness in finding something the students enjoy.

    Best and Batsell (1998) demonstrated taste-aversion in a

    classroom setting using 2 adult albino rats. The students enjoyed these

    demonstrations and rated them as valuable learning experiences.However, as the authors pointed out, many students do not have access

    to live animal demonstrations of conditioning procedures.

    Another approach that has been used was to incorporate a

    service-learning activity to help teach the principles of operant

    conditioning while assisting with a social cause. McDonald (2005)described how students trained dogs in animal shelters to becomemore adoptable, thus resulting in benefits for the students, shelter staff,

    the dogs themselves, and their potential new owners.

    While it can be very beneficial for students to have hands-on

    experiences in animal training, this may not always be practical. In

    cases where it is difficult to get students to animal shelters or the zoo,an alternative approach might be to incorporate video of this type of

    training. According to Eskicioglu (2003), instructional techniques that

    involve multimedia, such as video, can improve performance of lower

    achievers and increase interest in learning. Baggett (1987) found thatstudents performed better on an assembly task when presented with a

    combination of video instruction and practice than with practice alone.

    Based on these findings, the current study investigated the

    effectiveness of a video created by the first author. This video was

    designed to help students learn basic terms such as reinforcement,punishment, and shaping. The video shows a 4-month-old male Dutch

    Bantam chicken being trained to peck at a certain playing card, the

    queen of hearts, and not to peck at other cards. This behavior was later

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    Mary Ann Hooten & Frank Hammonds 6

    incorporated into a card trick in which the chicken appears to know

    which card a person has drawn from the deck. This video was

    designed to be fun for the students and was intended to be a practicalsubstitute for a live in-class demonstration of conditioning.

    Method

    There were 126 participants in this study who were enrolled in

    four different sections of a General Psychology course. The sectionswere taught by three different faculty members.

    The study was conducted using a between-groups design,where two of the sections watched the video first and then listened to a

    lecture on the principles of operant conditioning. The other two groups

    listened to a lecture on this subject first and then watched the video.

    Two tests were given to each group to measure knowledge of

    operant conditioning and other information. One test was administered

    after watching the video and one after listening to the lecture. Thesetwo tests were identical in that they each contained the same 9 factual

    questions related to operant conditioning and 2 questions related to

    student perceptions of teaching an animal a trick. The only differencebetween the two tests was that the test that was administered after the

    video also contained 3 questions that measured the students attitudes

    about the video. Individual student scores on the test after the video

    were compared to the scores on the test after the lecture.

    Results

    A paired samples t-test was used to compare the scores from

    the test given after the lecture and the test given after the video.Results indicated that, regardless of condition, the mean score on the

    video test was higher than on the lecture test. The mean score of the

    video test was 71.38 and the mean score of the lecture test was 64.0.

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    7 NATIONAL FORUM OF EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION JOURNAL__________

    This was a found to be a significant difference (p < .000). However,

    the mean score on the test was highest after viewing the video and

    watching the lecture at 73.86 which was significantly different fromthe lecture only test (p < .000) but not significantly different from the

    video only (p = .170).

    A second analysis was conducted on each of the 9 factualquestions to examine differences between percent correct after

    viewing the video only, after listening to the lecture only, and after

    viewing the video and listening to the lecture. Table One displays thefindings.

    A third analysis was conducted to determine differences in twospecific questions related to the video. The first of these questions

    asked, Is it possible to teach a chicken a card trick? Before seeing

    the video, only 72.2 percent of participants answered affirmatively, butafter watching the video, 96.8 percent answered affirmatively. Thisdifference is significant at the .000 level.

    The next question that was analyzed in this manner was, Howconfident are you that you could teach an animal to perform a trick?

    Before watching the video, 32.5 percent reported that they were very

    confident, 57.9 percent reported that they were somewhatconfident, and 9.5 percent reported that they were not at all

    confident. After viewing the video, these percentages increased to

    43.7, 53.2, and 3.2 respectively. This difference was significant at the

    .001 level.

    The fourth and final analysis examined frequency distributions

    of the three item designed to measure student attitudes towards thevideo. The first item asked participants to rate their level of agreement

    with the statement, I learned a lot from Chanticleer the Amazing

    Rooster video as either strongly disagree, disagree, neither agree nordisagree, agree, or strongly agree. Out of the 126 participants, 70.6%

    responded as either agree or strongly agree. For the second item, I

    enjoyed watching Chanticleer the Amazing Rooster video, 70.0%

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    Mary Ann Hooten & Frank Hammonds 8

    responded either agree or strongly agree. The final video-related item

    asked participants to respond to the following statement, Watching

    Chanticleer the Amazing Rooster video helped me to understand theclass material on operant conditioning. For this question, 76.9%

    responded either agree or strongly agree. These three attitudinal itemsseem to indicate that the video was perceived as an enjoyable and

    valuable addition to the class.

    Table 1Percent of Students Answering Each Question Correctly in Each Group.

    Percent Answering CorrectlyQuestion Lecture Only Video Only Lecture & Video

    Question 1: What type of animal

    training uses food as a reward?32.4 63.8 69.8

    Question 2: Which technique

    should be used to teach a behavior

    that you want to have repeated?

    89.7 93.1 94.4

    Question 3: Which technique

    should be used to eliminate an

    unwanted behavior?

    44.1 46.6 70.6

    Question 4: Not reinforcing

    behavior means42.6 75.9 67.5

    Question 5: Reinforcing each and

    every correct response is can a(n)

    __________ schedule of

    reinforcement.

    73.5 86 87.3

    Question 6: Reinforcing every other

    or every 10th response would be

    examples of a(n) ______________schedule of reinforcement.

    72.1 79.3 76.2

    Question 7: The Law of Effect

    states ___________.86.8 94.8 92.9

    Question 8: Who is credited with

    the Law of Effect?35.3 27.6 46.8

    Question 9: Rewarding successive

    approximations of a behavior until

    the desired behavior isaccomplished is called _________.

    41.2 46.6 51.6

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    9 NATIONAL FORUM OF EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION AND SUPERVISION JOURNAL__________

    Discussion

    The results clearly indicated that, compared to the lectures, the

    video resulted in a statistically significant increase in correct answersby the students. This is particularly impressive since the video wasapproximately 12 minutes long and the lectures were approximately

    45 minutes long. While the results showed that the video and lecture

    together produced higher scores than the video alone, this differencewas not significant. This was true regardless of the order in which the

    lecture and video were presented. This suggests that this video would

    make an effective supplement to, or could even replace part of, a

    lecture regarding operant conditioning and that instructors could insertthe video at the beginning of end of their lectures as they saw fit. In

    addition to the increased test scores, after watching the video students

    were more likely to say that it was possible to teach a chicken to do acard trick and were more likely to say that they themselves could do

    so. It is possible that this increased confidence could result in a greater

    willingness to attempt to apply operant conditioning and/or result ingreater interest in the subject. This study joins those mentioned above

    in that the component added to lectures resulted in higher test scores

    and was enjoyed by the students. An advantage of this video is that it

    requires much less time than the techniques used in the other studies.While it is difficult to compare a video to working with live animals at

    a zoo, this video is much less expensive and more practical than some

    of the activities used previously.

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    Mary Ann Hooten & Frank Hammonds 10

    REFERENCES

    Baggett, P. (1987). Learning a procedure from multimedia

    instructions: The effects of film and practice. AppliedCognitive Psychology, 1, 183-195.

    Best, M. R., & Batsell, W. R. (1998). A classroom demonstration oftaste-aversion learning. Teaching of Psychology, 25(2), 116-

    118.

    Eskicioglu, A.M. (2003). The ideal multimedia-enabled classroom:Perspectives from psychology, education, and information

    science.Journal of Educational Multimedia andHypermedia, 12(2), 199-221.

    Lukas, K. E., Marr, M. J., & Maple, T. L. (1998). Teaching operant

    conditioning at the zoo. Teaching of Psychology, 25(2),112-

    116.McDonald, T.W. (2005). Teaching and learning operant principles in

    animal shelters: Perspectives from faculty, students, and shelter

    staff.Journal of Instructional Psychology, 32(4), 310-321.

    Shields, C. & Gredler, M. (2003). A problem solving approach toteaching operant conditioning. Teaching of Psychology, 30(2),

    114-116.