Tag Archives: reward

10/13/12

The #@*$ing Four Quadrants (Dunbar)

This post is part of the series in response to Dunbar’s 2012 Australian seminars. See index.

 

Dunbar has a clear opinion on the four quadrants of operant conditioning: Ditch them!  Dunbar feels we have entered into a time of ‘quadrant worship’ when, in reality, the quadrant was only ever designed to be a memory aid. The quadrants have also led to a division in the dog community, with half the people worshipping positive rewards and negative punishment (i.e. “positive trainers”), and the other half worshipping negative rewards and positive punishment.

 

Here’s a little theory:  In the quadrants, positive means “you give” and negative means “negate” or take away.

Dunbar used this table to illustrate the quadrants:

Start Stop
Reward Positive Reinforcement Negative Punishment
Punish Positive Punishment Negative Reinforcement

 

Dunbar thinks this is a complicated way of viewing things.  He says that the dog doesn’t assess anything other than “did the environment get better or worse?”  He believes dogs have a binary outlook to life.  They see things as good or bad. Continue reading →

06/17/12

Reward Training Techniques (Dunbar)

This post is part of the series in response to Dunbar’s 2012 Australian seminars. See index.

Dunbar described five reward training techniques:

 

 

Lure Reward Training
He called these ‘techniques that cause the behaviour’ and the ‘Plan A’ of dog training – that is, it should be the first option when teaching a dog a behaviour.  More about this method is outlined in my lure reward training post.

 

All or none reward training
Dunbar created ‘all or none’ reward training after thinking about dogs in shelter situations.  These dogs need to default to good behaviour, or just be ‘good’ without any verbal cues.  In all or none reward training, you just wait for the animal to do what you want, and reward it.  For example, if you have a dog on leash and wait long enough, they’ll eventually sit.  The term ‘all or none’ comes from the behaviour: He’s either sitting, or he’s not.  Dunbar advocates this way for inattentive or ‘crazy’ dogs, and suggests it should be the ‘Plan B’ in dog training.

 

Black and white working cross breed runs with a tennis ball in mouth.

Life rewards: Running, playing fetch. Much better than any boring treat!

 

Shaping (often with clickers) Continue reading →

11/2/11

McGreevy on Operant Conditioning

This post is part of the McGreevy seminar series. Click here for the index.

 

Please note: This article assumes some prior knowledge of operant or instrumental conditioning, as it mostly focuses on McGreevy’s comments on operant and instrumental conditioning, rather than on explaining these terms itself. If you are lacking a comprehensive understanding of Operant Conditioning, then I suggest this page from Crystal at Reactive Champion blog.  If you already have some idea of operant conditioning, come on in.  This may be confusing, but we can only hope it may add to your understanding.

Operant conditioning, also called instrumental conditioning, is when the animal’s voluntary response is instrumental (i.e. important) in establishing the consequence (i.e. reinforcement or punishment).  (By voluntary, we mean responses that the animal has control over.  Involuntary would be things like salivating or growing hair.)

McGreevy used the diagram below to consider operant conditioning.

Here, the ‘x’ marks the spot of neutral stimuli that does not modify behaviours.  That is, a neutral experience.  From here, stimuli can either be reinforcing and increase the probability of behaviours, or they can be punishing, and decrease the animal’s responses in question.  The purple arrows indicate negative punishment (-P) and negative reinforcement (-R).  Negative punishments use the removal of attractive stimuli to make a response less probable.  Negative reinforcements uses the removal of adverse stimuli to make a response more probable. Continue reading →