Re: What are 'preference testing' and 'operant condtioning' ?

So far as I am aware preference testing has no specific meaning in animal 
behaviour other than engineering a situation where an animal has to make a 
choice eg. between pathways in a maze for a rat or between coloured 
objects for a bird and then recording its choice (preference).

Operant conditioning was a term devised by early Behavioural Psychologists 
and popularised by B.F.Skinner as he believed that this was the most 
important form of learning for animals and humans. It occurs when an 
animal voluntarily OPERATES on its environment and learns to associate 
that operation with a specific result. The result can either make the 
learned association stronger resulting in the original action being 
repeated which is called reinforcement or have the opposite effect which 
is punishment. 

Operant conditioning differs from Classical Conditioning which is where an 
animal or human learns to associate an event with an involuntary response.

Both of these will be discussed at length in any general Psychology 
textbook.