I’ve been getting ready for our next animal training and behavior analysis science camp, which is happening this weekend. I’m looking forward to spending three days with Alexandra Kurland, Dr. Michaela Hempen, Dr. Jesús Rosales-Ruiz, Anita Schnee, and what I know will be a wonderful group of attendees.
I’ll be giving a presentation about the constructional approach and lessons that we can learn from the work of Dr. Israel Goldiamond. Here’s a quote from Dr. Goldiamond that I ran across earlier this week. The quote explains why punishment is often ineffective for changing behavior.
“If [the behavior] is eliminated, and if the critical reinforcer thereby also becomes unobtainable, we may get ‘spontaneous recovery’ of the [behavior] or other [behaviors] may become established, some of which may be less desirable.”
Israel Goldiamond 1974/2002
People often punish a behavior without considering what reinforcers were maintaining the behavior. However, if the animal is prevented from doing the unwanted behavior, the animal will seek out other ways to access the desired reinforcer.
For example, if a dog is punished for growling at strangers, the dog may stop growling but resort to biting, instead. Or, if your dog barks for attention, you may be able to use punishment to suppress the barking. However, your dog may invent some even more annoying ways to get your attention, such as pawing at your leg or chewing on the furniture.
When an animal is engaged in behaviors that you find yourself labeling as bad behaviors or problem behaviors, your first reaction may be anger or frustration. You start thinking about how to eliminate the behavior.
Instead, pause and think about the situation. Your animal is using their behavior to communicate their needs. Rather than resorting to punishment, can you figure out what your animal wants? Then, can you teach new behaviors or modify the situation so that your animal can access these reinforcers?
(Note: I’ve taken the liberty to change the word “operant” to the word “behavior” in this quote, which preserves the basic meaning but makes the quote more understandable to a general audience.)
I’ve always found that it is best to make sure that the unwanted behaviour is NOT reinforced by getting what they want. No ‘punishment’ just ignoring the behaviour
We took on a very demanding young dog, She had a very irritating bark and would bark until she got whatever it was she wanted. So when she bark we “ignored her” (very difficult). When the barking stopped, we gave her want she wanted. Started with a brief pause, and now she has learned to communicate her wants is a much politer way.
You might end up with the stinky kind of extinction, though. And it’s sort of missing the point- once you’re seeing undesirable behavior the most important thing (imo) is to make a plan for next time (management, antecedent arrangements, training out of context, etc)… what’s done is done. If it’s happening it’s already been reinforced. YOUR not reinforcing isn’t going to strengthen or maintain it… but it’s also not going to make it ‘go away’.
I guess I think this method can make things worse even though it’s not a positive punishment protocol
IF the unwanted behaviour was reinforced by your
behaviour (eg by your attention) when trying to stop it, then yes ignoring it works.
If it is something else, then simply try to remove whatever is causing it from you animal’s environment. Or in the same vein removing dog/child/cat from the environment that is causing it.
>> IF the unwanted behaviour was reinforced by your behaviour (eg by your attention) when trying to stop it, then yes ignoring it works.
Actually, I find that ignoring is often a really difficult way to change behaviors that are maintained by attention.
Ignoring may work to decrease the unwanted behavior.
However, if your attention was important for the animal, the animal will often engage in other behaviors in order to get attention. These behaviors may end up being even more annoying/frustrating for the human than the initial behavior.
For example, if a dog is jumping on a person to get attention, the person may ignore the jumping.
As a result, the jumping decreases.
However, now the dog starts biting and pulling at the person’s pants.
Rather than ignoring, I find that it is much more practical to teach the animal an appropriate behavior that they can do to gain access to the person’s attention.
~Mary
I suppose, I should have added, give your dog more attention when it is doing what you want 🙂
Though Milligram rather likes lack of attention so she can either escape or eat the cat’s food 🙁
Yes, great point, Jenny. There are definitely some situations in which our animals would like to avoid our attention so that they can engage in certain behaviors (like eating cat food!).
Thanks, Jenny and Leah, for stopping by and leaving comments!
Jenny, I see where you are coming from. Often people end up reinforcing unwanted behavior. Even if they just do this some of the time, it can lead to the behavior persisting and can be really frustrating for both the person and the dog.
I’m so glad to hear that you were able to teach your dog how to communicate her wants in a more polite way. One thing you said in your comment, though, was that it was often very difficult to ignore your young dog.
I think this is what makes situations like this so hard. We don’t want to reinforce the unwanted behavior, but it also may be very frustrating or even dangerous for us to just wait for the behavior to stop.
Leah offers some great suggestions for how to resolve this puzzle. We can often figure out when an unwanted behavior is likely to occur. Then, we can pro-actively teach our animal what to do and/or arrange the situation so that our animal is not practicing these behaviors.
For example, imagine a young large-breed dog that jumps on the children and their friends when they first come in the front door. Having the children ignore the jumping may be difficult for everyone involved. Instead, the parents could keep the dog on a leash or behind a baby gate when the children first arrive and also set up practice sessions with the kids so that the dog and kids learn how to interact with each other.