So, Pavlov says that once an association is made it doesn’t fade just because you teach something knew. That should trigger a reaction of ‘who doesn’t know that’? Lots of people –\u00a0everyone from behavioral scientists to modern, scientific dog trainers and educators think that is a false statement. They think that if you see a problem behavior, the way to get rid of it is to teach something else. They have a number of pet names for this process, based on the concept of ‘differential reinforcement.” Differential reinforcement means you select which behaviors you will reinforce and ignore those you don’t like. That is also called “shaping” \u2013 a term coined by B.F. Skinner himself. There are several problems with this term and concept.The first thing to realize is that there is no ‘shaping’ with positive reinforcement unless other behaviors are punished. If that word makes you think of abuse, you are likely unintentionally abusing the word. It simply means some event that causes a suppression or stopping of a behavior or simple association. At least for the duration of this article, think of punishment as the brakes on a car that suppresses movement. In order to truly understand behavior you have to be able to say reinforcement and punishment without adding some kind of emotional connotation. In the case of shaping, the full name of its complimentary effect is ‘differential punishment’. This means that you select which behaviors you don’t reinforce. How tough it that? In ‘shaping’, one behavior is reinforced while all other behaviors are ignored \u2013 which punishes the likelihood that they will occur.<\/p>\n
Now for the pet names. You will now know why I had to define the term ‘differential reinforcement’ These acronyms represent about 75% of the ‘solutions’ offered to virtually every behavior problem.<\/p>\n
DRO – Differential Reinforcement of Other Behavior
\nDRA – Differential Reinforcement of Alternate Behavior
\nDRI – Differential Reinforcement of Incompatible Behavior
\nDRL – Differential Reinforcement of Less Behavior<\/p>\n
You can see they all describe a means of creating a preference for one behavior over another. The intent is to stop an existing behavior by replacing it with something else. Here is where we starting seeing an oddly unscientific bias. All of these terms describe trying to suppress a behavior. Though there is a term that describes that process \u2013 punishment \u2013 it is not referenced. Instead, these terms use the term ‘reinforcement’ \u2013 the behavioral effect that increases behavior. They want to stop a behavior by suggesting a process that increases behavior. Why would scientists describe a process that increases behavior (differential reinforcement) when they want to shape behavior and use the same term to describe a situation where they want to stop a behavior? That really doesn’t make sense. That doesn’t mean there isn’t reason for this distortion. It’s all about the image.<\/p>\n
They can’t say that ‘shaping’ is a process that requires positive reinforcement and negative punishment. That blows the claim of teaching with exclusively ‘positive’ methods. (Why that would matter is another issue) So, they conveniently leave out a reference to the punishing effect of shutting down reinforcement for all other behaviors intended to make them decline. Then, when they decide they want to make a behavior decline, they continue to use terminology that describes the process from the perspective of positive reinforcement. Oy vey! My brain is hurting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So, Pavlov says that once an association is made it doesn’t fade just because you teach something knew. That should trigger a reaction of ‘who doesn’t know that’? Lots of people –\u00a0everyone from behavioral scientists to modern, scientific dog trainers and educators think that is a false statement. They think that if you see a problem behavior, the way to get rid of it is to teach something else. They have a number of pet … Continue reading