{"id":21410,"date":"2025-02-02T19:10:32","date_gmt":"2025-02-02T20:10:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=21410"},"modified":"2025-02-02T20:31:57","modified_gmt":"2025-02-02T20:31:57","slug":"karen-pryor-guru-of-positive-reinforcement-is-dead-at-92","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=21410","title":{"rendered":"Karen Pryor, Guru of Positive Reinforcement, Is Dead at 92"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n

She was so successful at training dolphins that she began applying the same techniques to other creatures, including dogs \u2014 and humans.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

Karen Pryor once taught a hermit crab to ring a bell by pulling a string with its claw. She taught a cat to play the piano (ham was involved) and, most impressive, her mother to stop complaining on the phone.<\/p>\n

Ms. Pryor, whose experience as a dolphin trainer showed her how positive reinforcement could be used to train just about any animal, including horses, dogs, cats and people, died on Jan. 4 at a memory care facility in Santa Clarita, Calif. She was 92.<\/p>\n

Her daughter, Gale Pryor, said the cause was dementia.<\/p>\n

Ms. Pryor was a naturalist by nature, but she had not planned on a career as a dolphin trainer. She was an English major whose husband, a poet and helicopter pilot turned marine biologist, built the first marine park in Hawaii. Three months before it was set to open in 1964, the dolphins chosen to be the stars had confounded their trainers by not learning the tricks planned for them. Instead, they had taught their exhausted handlers to give them treats for nothing.<\/p>\n

The behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner had begun experiments with people and animals in the late 1930s, using positive reinforcement \u2014 what he called operant conditioning \u2014 as a way to elicit positive behaviors. (He famously taught a rat to spend money and a pair of pigeons to play Ping-Pong.) His principles had informed the nascent field of marine mammal training.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
\n
\n

The crew at Sea Life, the Pryors\u2019 soon-to-be-opened park, had been given a manual based on those principles. But the trainers had gotten bogged down in the scientific jargon. So Ms. Pryor took over.<\/p>\n

She learned the elegance of the technique, which involves waiting for a desired behavior \u2014 jumping, say, or retrieving an object \u2014 and then rewarding it with a treat. (That would be a fish, if you\u2019re a dolphin.) She learned about conditioned reinforcers: using a signal \u2014 a whistle, a hand movement, a clicker \u2014 to herald that a reward was on its way, and then using that signal to refine or shape a behavior or series of behaviors.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.<\/p>\n

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into<\/a>\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe<\/a>\u00a0for all of The Times.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.<\/p>\n

Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

She was so successful at training dolphins that she began applying the same techniques to other creatures, including dogs \u2014 and humans.Karen Pryor once taught a hermit crab to ring a bell by pulling a string with its claw. She taught a cat to play the piano (ham was involved) and, most impressive, her mother to stop complaining on the phone.Ms. Pryor, whose experience as a dolphin trainer showed her how positive reinforcement could be used to train just about any animal, including horses, dogs, cats and people, died on Jan. 4 at a memory care facility in Santa Clarita, Calif. She was 92.Her daughter, Gale Pryor, said the cause was dementia.Ms. Pryor was a naturalist by nature, but she had not planned on a career as a dolphin trainer. She was an English major whose husband, a poet and helicopter pilot turned marine biologist, built the first marine park in Hawaii. Three months before it was set to open in 1964, the dolphins chosen to be the stars had confounded their trainers by not learning the tricks planned for them. Instead, they had taught their exhausted handlers to give them treats for nothing.The behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner had begun experiments with people and animals in the late 1930s, using positive reinforcement \u2014 what he called operant conditioning \u2014 as a way to elicit positive behaviors. (He famously taught a rat to spend money and a pair of pigeons to play Ping-Pong.) His principles had informed the nascent field of marine mammal training.The crew at Sea Life, the Pryors\u2019 soon-to-be-opened park, had been given a manual based on those principles. But the trainers had gotten bogged down in the scientific jargon. So Ms. Pryor took over.She learned the elegance of the technique, which involves waiting for a desired behavior \u2014 jumping, say, or retrieving an object \u2014 and then rewarding it with a treat. (That would be a fish, if you\u2019re a dolphin.) She learned about conditioned reinforcers: using a signal \u2014 a whistle, a hand movement, a clicker \u2014 to herald that a reward was on its way, and then using that signal to refine or shape a behavior or series of behaviors.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21412,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21410"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21413,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21410\/revisions\/21413"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}