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, the
first 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.

M any instructors have likely encountered difficulty in getting

students to learn the distinctions between positive
reinforcement, 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 so
simple. Shields and Gredler (2003) found that participants did not
perform well when attempting to answer questions regarding
reinforcement and punishment. They observed that students would
often 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 for
student responses, and by having students complete exercises.

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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 most
of the students spent more time training the animals than was required.
While training at a zoo may not be practical in all cases, this highlights
the 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 become
more 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 that
students 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
 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 practical
substitute 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 sections
were 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. These
two 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 difference
between the two tests was that the test that was administered after the
video also contained 3 questions that measured the student’s 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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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 from
the 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 factual

questions 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 the
findings.

A third analysis was conducted to determine differences in two

specific 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, but
after watching the video, 96.8 percent answered affirmatively. This
difference is significant at the .000 level.

The next question that was analyzed in this manner was, “How
confident 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 “somewhat
confident”, 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 the
video. 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 nor
disagree, 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%
 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 the
class material on operant conditioning. For this question, 76.9%
responded either agree or strongly agree. These three attitudinal items
seem to indicate that the video was perceived as an enjoyable and
valuable addition to the class.

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

Percent Answering Correctly

Question Lecture Only Video Only Lecture & Video
Question 1: What type of animal
32.4 63.8 69.8
training uses food as a reward?
Question 2: Which technique
should be used to teach a behavior 89.7 93.1 94.4
that you want to have repeated?
Question 3: Which technique
should be used to eliminate an 44.1 46.6 70.6
unwanted behavior?
Question 4: Not reinforcing 42.6 75.9 67.5
behavior means…
Question 5: Reinforcing each and
every correct response is can a(n)
73.5 86 87.3
__________ schedule of
reinforcement.
Question 6: Reinforcing every other
or every 10th response would be
examples of a(n) ______________ 72.1 79.3 76.2
schedule of reinforcement.

Question 7: The Law of Effect 86.8 94.8 92.9

states ___________.
Question 8: Who is credited with 35.3 27.6 46.8
the Law of Effect?
Question 9: Rewarding successive
approximations of a behavior until
41.2 46.6 51.6
the desired behavior is
accomplished is called _________.
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Discussion

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

video resulted in a statistically significant increase in correct answers
by the students. This is particularly impressive since the video was
approximately 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 difference
was 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 insert
the 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 a
card 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 in
greater 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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REFERENCES

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

instructions: The effects of film and practice. Applied
Cognitive Psychology, 1, 183-195.
Best, M. R., & Batsell, W. R. (1998). A classroom demonstration of
taste-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 and
Hypermedia, 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 to
teaching operant conditioning. Teaching of Psychology, 30(2),
114-116.