Week Two
Welcome to Week Two! The theme this week is Frustration. We all feel frustration, and so do our dogs. It is important to have a plan for how to recognize frustration and also to have a plan to deal with it. This week we will be layering work into our on/off paradigm too!
Homework:
Recall in Drive
Frustration plan
WHAT IS TRAINING?
Training is a process where a trainer sets a learner up to obtain new behaviours and understand when, where and how to do those behaviours. There are well known principles and theories and laws that govern how learning occurs. Understanding how learning applies from both the learner and the trainer point of view can give you a unique understanding of what will happen when you develop and train through a training plan.
To begin with, it is important to know some basic information. We will be dealing mostly with OPERANT CONDITIONING in this workshop. Operant conditioning is the body of knowledge that encompasses the kind of learning that happens when the learner controls the outcome in an event. There are many other types of learning that happen; CLASSICAL CONDITIONING for example refers to the kind of learning that happens when you make an association between one thing and another.
CONCEPTS TO KEEP IN MIND:
Positive refers to any “thing” the trainer does or adds.
Negative refers to any “thing” the trainer stops doing or withholds.
Positive and Negative refer to elements that are controlled by the trainer.
Reinforcement refers to anything that strengthens the behaviour.
Punishment refers to anything that weakens the behaviour.
Reinforcement and Punishment refer to the elements that are experienced by the learner.
Extinction is the term used to describe what happens when a behaviour ceases through a lack of punishment or reinforcement. When people advocate “ignoring” a behaviour, they are advocating withholding both punishment or reinforcement and only attending to the learner after the behaviour has extinguished.
Secondary is a term used to describe anything that predicts a reinforcer or punisher. An example of a secondary reinforcer is a clicker. An example of a secondary punisher is when a parent counts to three before administering a punishment. Secondaries are also known as “bridges” or “markers”.
Superstitions are behaviours that are learned incidentally to the behaviour being trained. For example if a dog turns his head to the left as he is sitting, might think that he must turn his head when he sits. Most superstitious behaviour is benign, however, some superstitions can prevent the learner from moving forward through a shaping sequence to the next logical step.