A FIELD OF APPLIED ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY

KELLER AND MARIAN BRELAND Lonsdale, Arkansas

CENT developments in behavior theory from a neighbor's flock and were destined for the have made possible a new field of ap- stew pot. We used a hen-sized stage, some spe- K plied psychology. This new field has yet cially constructed props, and a solenoid-driven to be finally christened. It might be called the automatic feed hopper for dispensing reinforce- field of applied animal psychology or the field of ments in the form of scratch grain. behavioral engineering. We consider it an excel- One hen played a S-note tune on a small piano, lent example of how the findings of "pure" research another performed a "tap dance" in costume and can be put to practical use. shoes, while a third "laid" wooden eggs from a The core of the field is the work of the neo- nest box; the eggs rolled down a trough into a behaviorists, which has so ordered the facts of basket—the audience could call out any number behavior that many of their experimental data and of eggs desired, up to eight, and the hen would lay those of earlier workers have become immediately that number, non-stop. applicable to the engineering of animal behavior. The basic operation in all these acts was re- We have found most useful the systematic formu- inforcement at the proper moment in the behavior lation presented by B. F. Skinner in The Behavior sequence, by presenting the chicken with a small of Organisms. This body of theory has made it amount of scratch grain from the solenoid-operated possible for us since the spring of 1947 to develop hopper. During the training period, successive ap- a flourishing and expanding business concerned proximations to the desired behavior, and com- with the mass production of conditioned operant ponent parts of the final pattern, were reinforced. behavior in animals. During performances, longer ratios or more elab- Applied animal psychology brings together the orate completed patterns were reinforced to keep two formerly unrelated fields of professional ani- the behavior at a high level of strength. mal training and modern behavioral science. The During the ensuing year, three sets of these acts field is new in that it represents, we believe, the were prepared and shipped all over the United first application of systematic behavior theory to States in the hands of men who had had only one the control of animal behavior. We are now in a or two days' training. The birds played thousands position to outstrip old-time professional animal of performances without a single failure, except trainers in speed and economy of training. In for an occasional sluggish performance due to ill many instances we can use automatic training health or overfeeding. The acts proved to be un- methods. We can apply to our training the data precedented crowd-stoppers at the fairs and feed- of comparative psychology, utilizing new tricks, store "Openhouse" events where they played, show- new animals. We can turn out multiple units— ing to as rnany as 5,000 people in a day. 200 "Clever Hanses" instead of one. Furthermore, The success of these acts led to the development the systematic nature of the theory puts us in a of a trained pig show, "Priscilla the Fastidious Pig," position to advance to new and more elaborate be- whose routine included turning on the radio, eating havior patterns, to predict results and forestall breakfast at a table, picking up the dirty clothes difficulties. and putting them in a hamper, running the vacuum So far, all our applications have been made for cleaner around, picking out her favorite feed from the purpose of advertising exhibits for General those of her competitors, and taking part in a quiz Mills, Inc. We developed first a series of trained program, answering "Yes" or "No" to questions chicken acts, which were used for county fair booth put by the audience, by lighting up the appropriate exhibits in the Midwest, for the purpose of adver- signs. tising farm feeds. These acts were performed by Priscilla was likewise shown at fairs and special a group of two-year-old hens which had been culled feed-store events and conventions throughout the 202 A FIELD OF APPLIED ANIMAL PSYCHOLOGY 203 country. She also appeared on television. She are shipped out with the chicks and provide the was even more successful than the chicken acts at only necessary instruction. This act has been a jamming fair booths and feed-stores with specta- perennial favorite and we have trained more than tors. The pig act was in use almost steadily from 2,500 chicks to fill orders for this display. the fall of 1948 to the summer of 1950. It was We have developed two variations on the baby necessary to train a replacement about every 3 to chick act. One uses a projector to present adver- 5 months, since the pigs rapidly became too large tising copy, with an endless chain of baby chicks for easy shipping. After training, the pigs were in motion around it. The other variation substi- turned over to their handler, usually a General tutes for the ramp a series of steps onto which the Mills' feed salesman, who had had one or two days' chicks must jump. instruction at our farm, or in the field under our A calf was trained for the General Mills' booth supervision. at the International Dairy Exposition at Indianapo- In addition to teaching handlers to manage the lis. "Larro Larry" took part in a quiz program by animals on the road, we have twice taught instruc- lighting up "Yes" and "No" signs, as did Priscilla tors to do the basic training of the animals and the Pig, and played "Bull in the China Shop" by assist with the instruction of the handlers. Both systematically upsetting an elaborate display of experiences in training instructors were successful dishes, to the great alarm of the passing crowd. and demonstrated clearly that people with no A turkey act has been developed in which mem- special psychological background can learn the bers of the audience play a game with the turkey. methods and theory behind our animal training The bird is placed in a display case and has access procedures. One instructor was a woman college through an opening to part of the miniature play- graduate who had taken her degree in statistics ing field. The turkey is trained to rake a steel ball and sociology. The other was an average male off this field into his goal. The audience player is high school graduate, whose only specialty had given a long pole with a magnet on one end and been radio repair work. Both acquired in a few tries to guide the ball along the playing field into weeks most of the techniques of training the ex- his goal before the turkey wins. Various barriers isting acts, and enough of the theory and nature are placed along the playing field to make_the game of the process to train new acts on their own. more difficult for both players. Our next development was a baby chick act. Additional acts using grown chickens have been Sixty to 100 chicks are trained for one show. Be- designed and used, two involving discrimination ginning at about one week of age, they are trained problems: the Card Sharp, who picks out a better for about 10 days. The show is run with about 10 poker hand than a member of the audience, and the or 12 chicks on stage. Each runs up a ramp or in- Old Shell Game, in which the chicken picks out the clined plane to a platform from which he can reach shell with the bean under it; and two contests be- a feed hopper. He "roots" the top chick off, grabs tween two birds, a High Jump contest, and a a bite of feed, then in turn gets pushed off by the Strength of Pull test. Another automatic act was next in line. As he goes, he falls onto a tilting pan created by training a hen, on a very high fixed and is deposited onto the stage floor, accompanied ratio, to beat a toy drum for hours at a time. We by the sounding of a chime and flashing of a trade also trained a hen in some bizarre contortions; the name sign. This sequence of behavior results in hen twisted her neck to one side and over her back an | endless chain of baby chicks running up the so that she appeared to be looking frantically in ramp and sliding off. When the group becomes all directions at once. This was billed as "The sleepy, they are replaced by a fresh batch, and the Civilian Aircraft Spotter" or "The Atom Bomb show can thus go on indefinitely; it has actually Neurosis." We have done a few experiments and been used about 12 hours a day in most cases. some developmental work on rats, hamsters, guinea This act is our first "packaged act." It is de- pigs, ducks, pigeons, rabbits, cats, dogs, and crows. signed to run virtually automatically. It requires There are, obviously, innumerable other possi- only the attendant to keep the feed hopper full bilities in the field of advertising exhibits. One is and change the group of chicks on stage when the perfection of the "packaged act," the fully auto- they become sleepy. No special training is re- matic unit which can be shipped anywhere, set up quired for the attendant; mimeographed directions in a store window or convention booth, and oper- 204 THE AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGIST ated day in and day out with no more instructions thought of. More psychologists, grounded in the than are necessary for the operation of any ma- theory, are needed to advance the technology and chine designed for such use. One adaptation of the explore the undeveloped portions of this program. automatic act is the animated display—show win- Furthermore, once the technology gets under way dow advertising in which live animals take the and the business develops, there will be active need place of puppets and robots. for academic psychologists to do the background However, probably the biggest applications exist research necessary for full development of the pro- in the entertainment world. Here we can take over gram. And, of course, as psychologists continue to the formal animal training involved in the standard do basic research using animals as subjects, one animal act for stage, circus, and movies, and do it by-product will be new and better methods of ap- faster, cheaper, better, and in multiple units. It plied animal psychology. is possible to create new acts, whole new circuses, Two types of problems have cropped up repeat- in fact, using unusual animals and unusual acts, edly in our efforts. (1) Apparatus problems have and again do it cheaply, quickly, and in numbers consumed much more time than problems con- limited only by time and production facilities. Tel- nected with the behavior. The apparatus must be evision offers unusual opportunities. We can in- suited to the physique of the particular animal, vade the field of night-club entertainment with must be durable enough to stand ,up under cross- novel small animals. We can sell or rent trained country shipment, and must be foolproof enough animal units to hospitals, doctors' offices, waiting to be operated by relatively untrained personnel. rooms of various sorts, or even to private indi- (2) We need to know the answers to various "aca- viduals, supplying instructions on care and mainte- demic" problems, such as "What sort of fixed ratio nance. will an animal sustain on a response made to a Another important application of animal psy- disappearing manipulandum, a key available, for chology is the training of farm animals. Farm dogs example, only every three minutes?" "What would and horses could be rendered much more useful to constitute an adequate reinforcement for a hamster, the average farmer if they were given appropriate to sustain performances over several hours without training. Farmers could themselves be instructed satiation?" "What are the emotional character- in training and handling their own animals. istics of rabbits and guinea pigs—to what sort and The training of dogs for the blind could prob- magnitude of stimuli will they adapt, and what is ably be done on a larger scale, more rapidly and the nature of the curve of recovery from such an efficiently. One of the big problems of the "Seeing adaptation?" Eye" institution was obtaining instructors. The The study of these and related questions—in difficulty was, apparently, that the first masters of short, the re-examination of the whole field of com- the art did not have a sufficiently precise theoreti- parative psychology in this new light—by psycholo- cal formulation in training the dogs and hence could gists who have available the facilities of an animal not pass the information on to new instructors. laboratory, would greatly speed up the development They then encountered another problem in instruct- of the applied field. ing the blind to handle the dogs and met numerous In conclusion, we feel that here is a genuine field failures here in adapting client to dog. Many of of applied psychology, old as "group living" and these failures could now doubtless be avoided. "parenthood" in its subject matter, but new in Dogs, of course, can be trained more readily with method and approach, which psychologists can en- the new methods in all the traditional fields of ter with promise of financial reward and a sense of canine service to mankind: hunting, guarding chil- accomplishment and ultimate benefit to the science. dren and property, and detective work. Military For we all know that there is nothing as convincing use of dogs in such tasks as guard duty and carry- to the layman of the worth of a discipline as ing messages can also be made more effective. achievement, and the present field offers the psy- This, then, seems to be the general outline of a chologist a fine opportunity to demonstrate control promising new field which we have only begun to of his subject matter. explore. It is so vast, we feel, that we cannot be- gin to develop one-tenth of the projects we have Manuscript received March 26, 1951