Left or Right: You make the call.

 

The chart above signifies something. First, you have to know that this is a standard celeration chart. The horizontal lines increase logarithmically. Meaning from the baseline to the first line is 10. From the first line to the second line is 100. Next is 1,000 and the final one is 10,000. The individual human in this study is doing an undesired behavior, such as self-injury, up to 100 times a day. More than 5 per hour. The left side of the chart shows the use of positive methods to control the behavior. (That is the meaning of “positive programming” in this example.) The chart below shows the full cumulative record after a change in treatment. It shows a dramatic drop in the behavior. What was the change? The introduction of contingent punishment in the form of skin-shock. Meaning if you do X (pound your eyes) you will be shocked. If you do not do X you will not be shocked.

So, according to the full chart (and common observation) the decades old myth that positive reinforcement can solve all problems is bunk. There is at least one behavior that does not respond to advanced, scientific methods.Likewise, the myth that punishment doesn’t work is false. An intelligent person would conclude that if a behavior has to be stopped, the procedure depicted on the left would be a bad choice. The chart on the right has taken a rate of up to 100 responses per day and dropped it to less than 1 and then to zero.( If you are a positive reinforcement advocate you would likely prefer that I not put this chart in context. Too bad. My master is veritas – truth for truth’s sake…and this is the truth.)  How about self-injurious behavior? Like a dog that fights violently to escape any confinement, thereby hurting itself? That is a common problem. It’s called separation anxiety. A similar problem can occur because of noise phobias. The animal panics and goes through sheet-rock, plumbing fixtures and rips itself up pretty bad in the process.

Now I would ask a few simple questions. Why would someone pick the chart on the left for anything? Would it be kind or ethical to block the treatment that stopped the behavior? Would it be evil to attack a practitioner who used the method that caused the reduction in the dangerous behavior? Is skin shock in the same league as a face ripped by nails as the dog goes through the sheet rock at the back of a toilet, trying to escape? Is skin shock as invasive as a tooth broken off in wild panic trying to get through galvanized steel plumbing pipes? I have no answers for you other than to say that there are many behaviorists, modern trainers and “humane advocates” who prefer the chart on the left and attack any discussion or use of tools that would lead to the chart on the right. That being said, which side are you on?

 

 

9 thoughts on “Left or Right: You make the call.

  1. I’m a member of the ‘choir’ so I did not need to be convinced that balanced training is the most effective approach. What was an eye opener for me, was the suggestion that this will work for behaviors such as separation anxiety and noise phobias. The drugs commonly prescribed for these behaviors are potentially killers. They are also mostly ineffective. I hope you will talk more about how you address these common problems.

  2. Becky, I will do that somewhat. A blog isn’t the place for specific instructions, but I will try to grant your wish. The drugs are used, not because they have ever been tested for effectiveness, but because the are profitable and veterinarian behaviorists have a lock on the market. They teach regular veterinarians to use them with as little as a single one-hour introduction at vet conferences. In lieu of any practical tools, general practice vets do what their behavior-expert colleagues have told them to do. – Gary

    • This is big news to the people who only use positive reinforcement. People who have been using balanced training, i.e. combination of both positive and aversive, have known this all along.

      The subject of using drugs was brought up. I am fine with the use of drugs for medical conditions but almost exclusively against the use of drugs for behavioral issues. An example is a mal we took in the beginning of this year from a local shelter. The first time I saw the mal he was up on the lap of the shelter owner and she was completely feeding in to his every whim. Just reading this particular dog I said; “You need to get that dog off your lap and stop coddling him. This dog needs separation and to be taught that he receives praise and affection on our terms not his.” She ignored me and assured me he was just fine. Unknown to me was that the shelter owner had already seen some problems with this dog and had placed him on Xanax.

      Two weeks later she called me and ask if I could help her. The dog had bitten two people and snapped at others when they attempted to push him off after he had crawled up on their laps or jumped up on them for affection. Her in-house shelter trainer (who I sized up day one as knowing very little about dogs) suggested the dog be euthanized.

      We took the dog in and spent the next two weeks slowly decreasing his Xanax intake as safely as possible. During this time we received several inquiries as to how the training was going and we continually said; “We cannot begin the training until we can see the true dog, and we can’t see that until he’s completely off the Xanax.

      Once off, the training began and in no time he became a well adjusted, loving and obedient Mal. He’s such a good dog we decided to adopt him as our own and he has not even hinted at biting anyone since we took him in over 10 months ago.

      I used to be surprised by the people I ran into who were in the business of ‘dog training’ yet really knew very little. Then I started being surprised by all the credentialed ‘Animal Behaviorist’ I met who really knew very little about animal behavior or how to change it. Then I became surprised at all the Vet’s who suggested meds for every single little problem.

      Today, nothing surprises me.

  3. Becky, Gary’s solutions to some of the problems you described are brilliant and effective. The most important things I have learned about training and behavior I learned from Gary. Now, when I am working with a dog that has been put on meds one of the first things I do is talk to the vet and start on weaning the dog off of the pills.

  4. I saw this comment under your graph on a FB page, but I agree with it: “No baseline. Even with a single subject experimental design, this shows absolutely nothing.”
    No one can argue that punishment is not effective. Nor can they argue that it’s often even more reinforcing to those who perpetrate it on others. That seems to be what has happened to you. It has nothing to do with dog training, which, if science is accurate, can ALSO be accomplished without physical force.

  5. Dog Diva, I have no idea what your first paragraph refers to. The chart in this article quite clearly shows a baseline. Your second comment is a specious argument on several levels. First, punishment stops behavior. Why would someone continue to use punishment if there is nothing to punish? I certainly don’t.

    However, you reveal another dirty little secret. “Positive” ideologues are afraid that if they used punishment they would become monsters. That is because they are ignorant of the amoral nature of reinforcement and punishment. You use the term physical force as if it is not desirable. Only a context can determine that. A surgeon puts physical force on a scalpel to slice through tissue. An EMT may break a person’s leg to get them out of a burning car. An animal control officer may roughly yank a dog out of a filling drain culvert with a rabies pole.(Been there, done that) because the consequence of “no physical force” is damaging to the human or animal.

    As for your statement about the accuracy of science you are mistaken. What passes for behavioral science isn’t science. I have laid out the logical case for that statement in several places in this blog. If you are serious about the topic I suggest you do some reading. My question to you is, what if science isn’t accurate? You don’t really know, you are merely passing along what you’ve heard. So, what if they can’t control all behaviors with positive programming as this chart suggests? Here’s a direct quote from an applied behavior analyst working with mentally disabled people.

    “Here in my current position, I often struggle with years and years of ‘reinforcement’ procedures that still have my students breaking their own noses and requiring 2-person holds – often on a daily basis, and an absolute resistance to even discussing the possibility of using a punishment procedure.”

    So, Diva, what’s your choice? Broken noses and man-handling forever or a transitory punishment procedure that is far less invasive than the surgical repair of a routinely broken nose?

  6. I am so glad to see you reference the Standard Celeration chart. I have been following the Precision Teaching folks for years, have tried charting some simple behaviors, and just know in my heart that this is something the dog training community could use.

  7. Linda, I am sorry to disappoint you but no one in dog training knows about standard celeration charts or would know what to do with them. That includes all forms of animal behaviorists, veterinarian behaviorists or ‘behavior counselors’. Realistically the critical solution to the vast majority of problems is to stop the behavior immediately. Look at the nose dive the chart takes once punishment is introduced. That is the pattern most valuable for someone doing behavior modification with dogs. So the chart has too much left-right tracking to be of any use. When behavior analysts lose their fetish for rate of response of a single operant there might be some benefit to using their perspective. Don’t hold your breath. The best they can do is precision teaching – which examines only rate of response as the determinate for tracking a single behavior. As the do not use aversive control they cannot chart the effects of stopping a behavior almost immediately. If you recall, the chart is designed to go from zero to 10,000. A number that would represent the effects of punishment would require 100 test organisms and would yield a number that would be very low and include a decimal. Like 2.831 applications of a punishing stimulus to stop a behavior. As the behavior then disappears it’s not coming back if you do it correctly. I can’t think of a way that a chart would help predict that.

    • Oh, I am not holding my breath! (I first ran across the PT community more than 15 years ago.) I do think there is value in using the chart to convince people that the approach they are taking to resolve a problem is NOT working. What is so striking about your chart is the difference between the left and right sides, and how clearly it shows the impact made by the introduction of a punisher. If nothing else, counting the frequency of occurrence is a start, since I suspect very few trainers actually really keep those sorts of statistics.

      But I also think there is value to using the chart to determine whether training is effective when teaching new behaviors, and that is the place where I see it being most effective with most trainers.

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