March 5, 2021
In Defense of Negative Punishment: Teaching dogs patience at mealtime, stopping thumb sucking & more
How To Train Your Dog With Love + Science - Dog Training with Annie Grossman + Anamarie Johnson PhD (Formerly known as SchoolAbout this episode
Is all punishment necessarily bad? Nope! There are two kinds of punishment, and one of them is actually frequently used by so called "positive reinforcement" trainers like Annie: Negative Punishment. Here Annie breaks down what Negative Punishment is, talks about how it interplays with positive reinforcement, and explains its role in the "Elevator Game," which is a great exercise you can to do at mealtimes in order to teach a dog to not bum-rush the food bowl. She also reads from Behavior Principles In Every Day Life by John D. Baldwin and Janice I. Baldwin, which talks about a study in which parents used negative punishment at story time in order to discourage children from sucking their thumbs. Behavior Principles In Every Day Life by John D. Baldwin and Janice I. Baldwin, https://amzn.to/3qd8TXf Eileen Anderson on Extinction https://eileenanddogs.com/blog/category/extinction-2/ Other episodes and blog posts on this topic: Episode 65: Don't let your dog cry it out: On training dogs to be alone https://anniegrossman.com/2020/06/training/episode-65-dont-let-your-dog-cry-it-out-on-training-dogs-to-be-alone/10141/ Episode 47: A busy person's guide to operant conditioning https://anniegrossman.com/2019/04/training/episode-47-a-busy-persons-guide-to-operant-conditioning/10094/ The Big Bang Theory explains Operant and Classical Conditioning https://anniegrossman.com/2012/03/funnies/operant-conditioning-as-explained-by-the-big-bang-theory/4094/ Dog Training Lessons Learned From Watching Girls https://anniegrossman.com/2013/02/training/dog-training-lessons-learned-from-watching-girls-54375/7793/ --- Partial Transcript: [Intro and music] Annie: So a few years ago near where I live in Manhattan, I saw a woman walking a dog with a shock collar, like a really big shock collar, bright, I think it was like bright yellow. And she had the remote very conspicuously in her hand. And maybe I shouldn’t have done this, but I posted a photo of it, I think an Instagram stories of her with her dog and a shock collar. Like from the back, you couldn’t really tell who she was or who the dog was. Again, maybe I shouldn’t have done this, but turns out she was a client of another dog trainer that has a studio, not that far from a school for the dogs in Manhattan. And I ended up taking the photo down but not before there was some back and forth in comments if I remember correctly on this photo. Maybe it wasn’t in stories, maybe it was in the feed. Anyway, there were comments, kind of along the lines of how we as quote unquote positive reinforcement trainers don’t understand the importance of using all four quadrants of operant conditioning, and that — although I think this trainer referred to them as corners — that we, we really can’t be good dog trainers unless we understand and use all four corners, AKA quadrants. So operant conditioning, is the process of learning by consequence. If you do something, there is a consequence and the consequence can either be punishing or reinforcing. The consequence can be involving adding something or subtracting something. And if you’re adding something, we call it positive. Full Transcript available at SchoolfortheDogs.com/Podcast Get full access to Don't Be a Dick to Your Dog at dogtraining.substack.com/subscribe