Animal trainers use language to describe behavior all the time. We may say an animal is motivated, stubborn, confident, jealous, anxious, dominant, cooperative, frustrated, or perhaps simply “not in the mood.” Sometimes these words are useful shorthand and help us communicate something about what we are observing. However, problems can arise when a label starts doing the work of an explanation.

For example, if I say an animal didn't participate because it “wasn't motivated,” what have I actually learned about why the behavior didn't occur? Or if I explain aggression by saying an animal is aggressive, have I really explained anything at all? These kinds of explanations can feel satisfying because they give us an answer, but they may also cause us to stop looking for the variables that could help us better understand the behavior.

This is where three concepts from critical thinking and behavior analysis can be particularly useful: hypothetical constructs, explanatory fictions, and circular reasoning. The terminology may sound somewhat academic, but the ideas are very relevant to what animal trainers do every day. Learning to recognize them can help us move beyond labels and ask questions that give us more useful information about behavior.

When Labels Become Explanations

A hypothetical construct is a concept used to describe or account for something that isn't directly observable. Terms such as intelligence and motivation can fall into this category. That doesn't necessarily mean these words have no value or that we should remove them from our vocabulary. What matters is what happens after we use them.

Suppose an animal fails to respond to a cue and we say, “He's just not motivated today.” That may describe our impression of what we're seeing, but if our analysis stops there, we haven't learned very much about why the behavior didn't occur. We could instead begin looking at variables we can observe. What else is happening in the environment? What consequences are available for responding? What happens if the animal doesn't respond? Has something changed since the last successful training session? Is another behavior producing an outcome that matters more under these conditions? Are aversive conditions present? Does the animal have the skills necessary to meet the current criterion?

Asking these questions doesn't require us to deny that there are processes occurring inside the animal. Of course there are. The issue is whether the explanation we've chosen helps us identify variables that can be investigated and potentially changed.

Explanatory fictions can create a similar problem. Imagine an animal behaves differently when attention is directed toward another animal and we explain the behavior by saying, “He's jealous.” Perhaps jealousy seems like a perfectly reasonable interpretation of what we're observing, but we can still ask what specifically changes when the other animal is present. What behavior occurs? What consequences have historically followed that behavior? Does the behavior produce social interaction, access to a resource, removal of the other animal, or some other outcome?

The word jealous may give us a story that seems to make sense, but a plausible story and a functional explanation aren't necessarily the same thing. This distinction matters because the explanation we choose can influence what we do next. If we attribute behavior to spite, stubbornness, jealousy, or an animal “testing us,” our training decisions may be quite different from those we make after examining the contingencies influencing behavior.

Recognizing Circular Reasoning

Circular reasoning can be especially easy to miss because it often sounds like an explanation. Imagine someone says, “That animal is difficult to train.” If we ask how they know, the answer might be, “Because he doesn't cooperate during training.” Why doesn't he cooperate? “Because he's difficult to train.”

We have gone in a circle. The behavior is being used to justify the label, and then the label is being used to explain the behavior.

We can do this with many familiar descriptions. An animal is aggressive because it demonstrates aggression, and it demonstrates aggression because it is an aggressive animal. An animal doesn't learn quickly because it isn't intelligent, and we know it isn't intelligent because it doesn't learn quickly. An animal doesn't respond because it isn't motivated, and we know it isn't motivated because it doesn't respond.

In each case, the explanation may feel complete, but we haven't actually identified anything that helps us understand the conditions influencing behavior. This is one reason I find operational descriptions so useful. Rather than saying an animal is “difficult,” we can describe what we are actually observing. Does the animal move away when the trainer approaches? Does responding deteriorate when criteria change? Does the animal remain engaged until a particular procedure begins? Does aggressive behavior occur when distance is restricted?

Once we describe what is actually happening, we have something we can investigate. We can look at antecedent conditions, consequences, learning history, competing contingencies, and the other responses available to the animal. We may not immediately know the answer, but at least we are asking questions that can move us closer to one.

Using Language to Ask Better Questions

The goal isn't to police every word animal trainers use or insist that we can only talk about things we can directly observe. Language is useful. Shorthand is useful. Interpretations and hypotheses can also be useful. What matters to me is whether the language we use opens the door to further investigation or closes it.

If I say, “This animal appears frustrated,” that observation may prompt me to look more closely at what has changed in the training session. Perhaps reinforcement has become less frequent, the criterion increased too quickly, or a previously effective response is no longer producing the same outcome. In that case, the description has prompted additional questions. If instead I say, “He's doing that because he's frustrated,” and frustration becomes the final explanation, I may stop looking for the contingencies that could help me understand and change the behavior.

As animal trainers, we are constantly making interpretations. That's unavoidable. We observe behavior, draw on our experience and learning history, and develop ideas about what might be happening. The important part is remembering that an interpretation is not necessarily a demonstrated functional relation. We can treat our interpretations as hypotheses and then look for ways to evaluate them.

When I hear myself or someone else say an animal is stubborn, unmotivated, jealous, dominant, difficult, or simply doesn't like something, I find it useful to ask what that statement is based on. What did the animal actually do? What happened before it? What happened afterward? What other responses were available? What consequences did those responses produce? What could we change to test our interpretation?

Those questions take more work than assigning a label, and sometimes they reveal that our first explanation was incomplete or even incorrect. But that is part of approaching animal training with a scientific mindset. We don't have to know the answer before we begin investigating, and there is nothing wrong with saying, “I don't know yet.”

Sometimes recognizing that an explanation hasn't really explained anything is exactly what prompts us to start asking better questions.