Word: breland
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Keller B. Breland of Hot Springs, Ark. is a psychologist who applies modern scientific methods to training and understanding animals. The traditional training methods, he believes, are mostly wrong. Punishment and threats work only with such relatively "stupid" animals as horses. Praise is no good except with dogs. For most animals, the best system is an immediate reward of food, given for an action repeated over and over. Even bird-brained chickens and harebrained rabbits can be deeply conditioned by often-repeated rewards...
...Breland was personnel manager of Streater Industries outside Minneapolis, where he used his psychology on human subjects. He got interested in training animals by psychological methods, and was so successful with hamsters, pigeons, chickens and other unpromising trainees that he found he could sell them, when educated, to General Mills Inc. for use in advertising stunts. In 1947 he quit his human psychology job, and in 1950 he and his wife Marian moved to a farm in Arkansas, where they set up an animal school that has turned out more than 5,000 psychologically educated graduates...