Any opinions on this??? Apparently it uses no ‘physical or psychological intimidation.’ I have a friend (seriously!) who really believes in it, but he’s also into some various woo stuff, too, so I’m inclined to immediately discount it.
so…what is it?
IMO, it depends on the dog. Some dogs do wonderfully with this sort of training, others…not so much.
Basically, it’s training using positive reinforcements only. Bad behaviour is ignored, good behaviour rewarded.
What like clicker training? it’s operant conditioning - a fairly established mammailian training method use by sea lion trainers, horse trainers, dog trainers, and once, by House MD to train a 2 year old. -The best thing about it is, it “trains the trainer” to be extremely observant of their animal.
I’ve used it with horses and in my opinion it is not a complete solution to horse training BUT it is an extremely effective technique for creating specific desired behavior, less effective at eliminating undesired behavior (except by replacement, which takes a while). As long as you pay attention and have very clearly formed goals in mind. A LOT of attention. VERY clear goals. Once I accidentally trained my horse to lick the target instead of touch it with her nose because I didn’t pay attention to what I clicked. Once you’ve made a mistake like that it’s a bitch to reshape the behavior. It took several months to undo the lick-the-target task which was formed in about 15 minutes. In the end I found it most effective to combine majority positive reinforcement with occaisional negative (firm NO, or stronger correction for dangerous behavior).
Dog trainers are kind of notorious for picking and choosing the bits of various training methods that they like, giving it a name and/or trademark, and dismissing the rest of the field. I googled up a Progressive Reinforcement Training Manifesto. It reads OK, but, like Hello Again, I’d be skeptical of a trainer that is trying to completely remove punishment from their repertoire entirely. (Oh, and clicker training kids - and adults! - is becoming more widely accepted, check out http://www.tagteach.com/)
Note that punishment can have a different definition in behaviorism than in casual use. For example, I mostly use positive reinforcement to train my dogs, but we also have a Scat Mat which gives a brief electrical shock (positive punishment) to keep them out of the kitchen. I’ve seen my dogs get shocked exactly once each, and we have actually turned off the mat entirely - its presence is now enough of a reinforcer to keep them out of the kitchen.
I work at a zoo, and all the animal training we do is couched in positive reinforcement, and built on a foundation of trust. Earl Snake-Hips Tucker, I’m sorry your friend is gullible, but in this case, perhaps you should give him the benefit of the doubt. If anyone is looking to learn more about animal training, I recommend Karen Pryor’s Reaching the Animal Mind.
(I currently train: rats, porcupines, hedgehogs, ferrets, fruit bats, rabbits, skunks, opossums, a crow and a parrot.)
Clicker training when done right, is amazingly effective in a very short amount of time
araminty, I’d have to agree.
I’ve also noticed that many people who swear by some particular training fad often have a very different idea than I do of what constitutes a “well-behaved dog”.
Some methods are worse for this than others.
My girlfriend’s dog is extremely food motivated, so positive-only training was pretty easy. The hardest thing to teach was not freaking out at cars, but now when they go by he just sits and waits for a treat, which is just his regular kibble. I’m not sure it would have been so easy with other did I’ve known.
Sorry, behaviorism nitpick time! The Scat Mat is a differential stimulus for punishment (a stimulus that signals that punishment will occur), not a reinforcer.
This is standard in training dolphins too, which I had a bit of experience with. The same Karen Pryor also wrote an interesting book, Lads Before The Wind a memoir of her experiences as the head dolphin trainer and curator at Sea Life Park, Hawaii. She discusses some of the training techniques there too. (I met her and various others in the field at various marine mammal trainer conferences over several years, in the early 1980’s.)
ETA: She also has interesting anecdotes about training penguins and river otters.
Are “time outs” and reprimanding with the word “no” allowed in this training method? If so, then it sounds pretty much like what we do with our rescue pup, and it works well (at least with him. He is treat-motivated, toy-motivated, and doesn’t like being left away from his humans.)
I only use positive reinforcement to train. I will use very mild negative reinforcement in cases of time-critical lifesaving, like if one of the dogs lunges at the cat as he zooms by on his night-time crazies, I’ll yell “NO!” But that’s about the size of it.
Nitpick of a nitpick. This is classical conditioning, not a punishment. Operant conditioning has punishments and reinforcements, classical conditioning only has stimuli and responses.
Reinforcement training can achieve amazing results. However the part about only using reinforcement and never punishment is better suited to animals other than dogs. There are some animals who could respond violently to a punishment or give up. Dogs are pack animals and dogs in the wild use punishment all the time. If you are trying to eliminate a behavior quickly, punishment is probably going to work better, however too much punishment can damage a relationship with a dog so it should be used sparingly.
Hmm, I think I disagree. The dog avoiding the kitchen due to the Scat Mat is operant, not classical conditioning. Classical conditioning pairs a previously neutral stimulus with a punishing/reinforcing stimulus, causing the neutral stimulus to become a punisher/reinforcer. The first step of clicker training- pairing a treat with the clicking noise- is classical conditioning because it causes the click noise itself to becoming reinforcing. An example of classical conditioning involving a punisher might be pairing a shock with a bell ring, causing the subject to flinch every time they hear a bell ring, even if no further shocks are applied.
In the case of the Scat Mat, the electric shock was not paired with any other stimulus. Instead, a 3-step contigency was involved: antecedent: Dog sees/smells food in kitchen, behavior: Dog walks over Scat Mat, consequence: Dog gets shocked. This is positive punishment (as araminty noted), because the dog will now avoid the behavior of walking over the Scat Mat into the kitchen. The Scat Mat is a differential stimulus for punishment because the dog sees it and realizes that punishment will occur in the presence of the Scat Mat.
Actually, in this case, yelling “NO” is not negative reinforcement - it’s positive punishment. Negative reinforcement refers to removing an aversive stimulus to increase a desired behavior.
Please provide citations for this. I need to get that literature at the library.
My wife is convinced the only humane training is via reinforcement and has stated repeatedly that, if/when we get a shepherd (in the distant future when the current canines are gone and we’re tired of traveling) she will “Not put up with you hitting a dog for any reason, ever.”
I’ve noticed, however, that her small dogs either don’t respond to commands or respond slowly. And they constantly test their limits at sneaking out or stealing food.
In contrast, I come from a background of training with both reinforcement and punishment; positive food and hugs and petting, as well as negative spanks, sharp noises (hand-clapping), and shouts (“No!” “Halt!” etc.). My family’s methods seemed more effective; the shepherds my family raised responded instantly to words and gestures and only had to learn once where the property ended and which foods to avoid. Has modern dog psychology deemed them outmoded? Is breed/size a factor?
–G?
Like a dog without a bone
An actor out alone
Riders on the storm
. --Morrison, Manzarek, Krieger and Densmore (The Doors)
. Riders on the Storm
. L.A. Woman
Errr…yeah. Although I think of it more as a “warning” than a punishment.
More or less.
In particular, although the following isn’t directly about punishment, it bears on our attitudes toward it: dominance theory about dogs has been significantly re-thought, and it controversial at best.
I have tried it and it didn’t help a bit with my boxer’s jumping problem. But neither has anything else, so I am at my wits end. She just HAS to jump on people!
I feel like you’re anxious about the term “punishment” - it has negative connotations, for sure, probably because of its use outside of animal training contexts… but since we’re all behavior experts here 
we should be able to use the correct terminology.