So Many Choices: for trainers & for dogs
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Transcript of So Many Choices: for trainers & for dogs
Choices
Trainer’s choices include: What will you teach exactly ? How will you “get behavior”? Will you use R+, R-, P+, P-, Classical Conditioning?
Combo? What reinforcers? Kept where? Delivered how? How often? What are criteria for success? How will you change
criteria? How will you set up the training environment? How will you structure a training session? When will you add a cue? What cue? How will you judge if the behavior is fluent?
Trainer’s influences
Habit & practice your own reinforcement history
Role models in person, on TV, etc.
Education conferences, seminars, books, DVDs, etc.
Personal values*
You aren’t the only one making choices.
Dogs face hundreds of “choice points” daily.
Reinforce as many correct choices as possible.
FrequentlyPreciselyGenerouslyReally
Be a “choice architect.”
Manipulate environment so when dog is at choice point, she’ll choose correctly 80-90% of the time.
Jungle-path analogy (Jean Donaldson, The Culture Clash, p 51)
▲
Behavior humans prefer: Make easy
Behavior dog prefers: Make hard
SMR
Reinforce dogs’ choice points.
Set up the situation cleverly, then observe.
Pay attention! Notice correct choices.
Spend more energy watching the dog than luring, prompting or physically manipulating the dog.
This allows the dog to make free choices, without becoming dependent on your help.
Explain training to a novice in 30 seconds
Ann & Boomer
What’s
essential? What’s important? What’s irrelevant?
Back-chaining a behavior chain (e.g., soda fetch)
First, train each link to fluency & give each a cue.1 2 3 4
Cue last behavior several times; reinforce well.“4” R+
Cue preceding behavior, then final behavior; reinforce. Repeat until fluent.
“3” – “4” R+
Next add the preceding behavior, etc…“2” – “3” – “4” R+
Back-chaining core skills for the trainer
(Dog moves) Trainer Reinforces
(Dog moves) Trainer Marks Reinforces
(Dog moves) Trainer Sees Marks Reinforces
R = Reinforcement
Strive to create dozens of reinforcers for each animal you train.
“Our job is to maximize the efficiency of positive reinforcement.” BF Skinner
To be a reinforcer, a consequence must…
1. follow an action = be contingent on a response
Time
2. cause the action it follows to be repeated or occur more often
Function
“Should Kids be Bribed to do Well in School?”Time magazine, April 18, 2010, by Amanda Ripley
The more reinforcers, the better
Pavlovian conditioning: creates new conditioned reinforcers
CS + US B (reflex)
The Premack Principle:dog’s distractions = potent reinforcers
“reinforcement is the opportunity to exchange
a less probable activity for a more probable one”
Another source of R+
Cue must be familiar; behavior must be fluent Cue must have been trained with R+
Cues = conditioned reinforcers
Tertiary PrimarySecondary
“The Precious Cue”
Good news!Opportunity for dozens of additional
reinforcers
Essential for training links in behavior chains
Bad news! Don’t give cues simultaneous with bad behavior
Worst for dogs with few other ways to earn R+
Reinforcement maintains behavior.
“You have to floss only the teeth you want to keep.”
Your choice:1) positive reinforcement
= the addition of treats; satisfactionor
2) negative reinforcement
= the removal of aversives; relief
The opposite of reinforcement is…?
… no reinforcement. (Not punishment.)
Differential reinforcement requires you to avoid reinforcing errors. “refusal” to respond to a cue incorrect response to a cue imprecise movement (e.g., weave-pole entry)
“bad” behavior
M = Mark
Why bother?Because for animals, figuring out what behaviors “work” is harder if the reward is both:
1) the reinforcement &
2) the info about which behavior was correct
TSA analogy
Clicker functions
Conditioned / Secondary reinforcerStrengthens behavior
Cue or Sd
The occasion when going to the feeder is reinforced
Event markerPinpoints the desired behavior
Bridge Bridges time between behavior & treat Promise = reinforcement is coming
Clicks are the fulcrum
“There are two sides to the click: what happens before, and what happens after. What happens immediately before the click is a behavior the trainer would like to strengthen. What happens immediately after is an event the animal would like strengthen, such as receiving food. The click unites these two desires.”
Alexandra Kurland
www.theclickercenter.com
What weakens your marker?
It’s redundant/non-informative
It’s poisoned
It’s infected with too many anxious situations
You require more behavior after marks
It marks non-behavior
Marking precisely…
You can’t take a click back
Timing improves if you can predict behavior
This is a function of seeing well
Mean simple reaction times for college students
= ~0.19 sec for visual stimuli;
= ~0.16 sec for sound stimuli
www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime/index.php
S = See
Seeing is influenced by…
Preconceptions & labels“Who would you be without your story?” Byron
Katie
Judgments & analysis“Don’t think, just look.” Ludwig Wittgenstein
Talking & prompting
The audience effect
Seeing practice
“To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle.” George Orwell, 1968
1) “Surprising Studies of Visual Awareness” (DVD)
Simons, Daniel (2008)
www.viscog.com www.theinvisiblegorilla.com
2) Watch videos of animals moving, in slow motion
What precedes the “S”?
Your decision: Search pattern for a specific clickable behavior
Your attention: Human brain processes one-half of one millionth of sensory data it receives.
Consciously choose to filter in correct behaviors.
Your set-up: Strongly influences the dog’s behavior
S = Set-up: the other “S”
Control the environment not the dog
Limit dog’s activities & access
Much good training is undone by allowing dog to rehearse bad behavior outside training sessions.
dog barks out front window at passersby dog lunges at another dog on hurried walk in busy
park
Reactive dogs often need to be confined, especially early in retraining program.
Careful set-up pays off.
Ideally, distractions becomes cues for correct behavior
Morton’s recall video Rusty & Charlie responding to a “mock knock” In my car, Effie looking at me when she sees a
dog
Best if distractions are added late in training sequence, as “new cues”
Getting behavior
Trainers want to change behaviors.
But we can’t manipulate behavior directly.
We can manipulate events immediately before a behavior: antecedents
Or we can manipulate events immediately after a behavior: consequences
A B C
Ten ways to “get behavior”:
1) Physical pressure (“molding”)2) Prompting3) Luring 4) Targeting5) Capturing6) Shaping7) Classical conditioning (e.g., music trick)
8) Removal of inhibitors9) Modeling/mimicry (for primates especially)
10) Verbal instructions (for humans who share language)