Don’t Shoot the Dog by Karen Pryor, (04) Untraining: Using Reinforcement to Get Rid of Behavior We Don’t Want, Notes

Post date: Jul 5, 2020 12:57:12 PM

Don’t Shoot the Dog by Karen Pryor

(04) Untraining: Using Reinforcement to Get Rid of Behavior We Don’t Want - There are eight methods of getting rid of problem behavior:

• 1. Shoot the animal. This method eliminates the doer. It teaches the subject nothing about the behavior.

• 1. Punishment (this almost never really works) - punishment is a clumsy way of modifying behavior. Most of the time, punishment does not work at all. When we try punishment and it does not work, it only leads to escalation in punishment. The hideous thing about punishment escalation is that there is absolutely no end to it.

     1. Punishment does not coincide with the undesired behavior, it occurs afterward and sometimes in a court of law, long afterward. The connection to the deed and the punishment is lost. While prompt punishment may stop an ongoing behavior, it does not cause any particular improvement to occur. The best punishment can do is possibly change the motivation--the behavior alters to avoid future punishment. It may work with a child but this is more than most animals can understand.

     2. Evasiveness increases rapidly under a punishment regime. Repeated or severe punishment also has some nasty side effects: fear, anger, resentment, resistance, even hate in the punished one, as well as the punisher. These mental states are not conducive to learning.

     3. Punishment has the best chance of halting a behavior in its tracks if the behavior is caught early, so that it has not become an established habit and if the punishment itself is a novel concept for the subject. If using punishment, arrange things so the subject sees the aversive as a consequence of its own actions, and not as something associated with you.

     4. Punishment often constitutes revenge. Punishment helps to maintain dominance. When tempted to punish first ask: Do we want the behavior of the subject altered? If so, it is a training problem and we need to remain aware of the weaknesses of punishment as a training device. If we truly want revenge, then we need to seek more wholesome reinforcers for ourselves. Guilt is a form of punishment that was developed by the human race. We cannot shame animals into behaving. Guilt is not very effective at altering behavior because at the moment we are performing the deed we later feel guilty about, we are usually feeling impeccably fearless. Anytime we feel guilt and want to punish ourselves, remember that it is a method 2 solution and hardly effective. To get rid of the behavior we feel guilty about, we will have better luck with one of the more effective methods or a combo of more effective methods other than self punishment.

• 1. Negative reinforcement - removing something unpleasant when a desired behavior occurs. A negative reinforcer is any unpleasant act or stimulus, no matter how mild that can be halted by changing one’s behavior. The stimulus becomes a negative reinforcer only if it is perceived as unpleasant by the recipient and the behavior is modified. Negative reinforcement can be used to shape behavior so long as reinforcer, the behavior that involves ‘prodding’, ceases when the response is corrected. Negative reinforcement, by definition, includes a punisher and the unpredictable fallouts that come with punishment: avoidance, secrecy, fear, confusion, resistance, passivity, and reduced initiative. Negative reinforcers are unpredictable because the strength of the aversive can only be judged by the recipient.

• 1. Extinction - this refers to the extinction of a behavior, a behavior that dies down by itself, for lack of a reinforcer. Extinction in human interactions best applies to verbal behavior--whining, quarreling, teasing and bullying.

     1. Bullying: If these behaviors do not produce results, they do not get a rise out of you, they extinguish.

     2. When a child whines, immediately let the child know that that doesn’t work for you. When the whining stops, be quick to praise. Deal with the behavior not the words. Ignore the behavior, not the person. Be weary of anything you do that might be reinforcing the behavior.

     3. Habituation is a way to eliminate unconditioned responses. If a subject is exposed to an aversive stimulus that it cannot escape or avoid, and which nothing it does has any effect on, eventually its avoidance responses will extinguish.

• 1. Train an incompatible behavior (especially useful for athletes or pet owners.) - A positive elegant method is to train the subject to perform another behavior physically incompatible with the one you don’t want. Feeling awful? Try method by getting out of the mind and into the body. Highly kinesthetic activity is completely incompatible with feelings of self pity.

• 1. Put the behavior on cue, then never give the cue.

• 1. Shape the absence: reinforce anything and everything that is not the undesired behavior. - Useful when there is nothing in particular we want the subject to do, just not what he is doing (differential reinforcement of other behavior.) Reinforce anything but what we don’t want.

• 1. Change the motivation - the most kindly and effective method of all. Eliminating the motivation for a behavior is often the kindest and most effective model of all. A person who has enough to eat is not going to steal a loaf of bread. To change motivation, one needs to make an accurate estimate of what the motivation is. One way to do that is to notice what actually helps change the behavior and what does not.

• • Motivation and Deprivation - a training device sometimes used to increase motivation is deprivation. The idea is that if an animal is working for a positive reinforcer, the more it needs that reinforced, the harder it will work. Good training creates high motivation.

  • Getting Rid of Complicated Behavior -

    • Biting Nails (symptom of stress and diversion) - displacement behavior. Because the behavior distracts momentarily, it is self reinforcing and a hard habit to get rid of. The best way to get rid of this habit is a combo of all four of the positive methods:

      • (Method 5) Learn to observe yourself when starting to nail bite. As soon as the hand starts the move up toward the face, jump up and do something else: some other tension reliever that does not allow for nail biting.

      • (Method 8) Reduce the overall stress in life. This includes slowing down and practicing more sauntering (gardening, long strolls, window shopping) types of exercise.

      • (Method 7) Shape the absence of the behavior by rewarding yourself with a ring or manicure as soon as the nail grows enough to be visible.

      • (Method 6) Put the behavior on cue: everytime the urge to bite occurs, instead of biting, write down the motivating factors. At the end of the day allow yourself to bite while quickly reviewing the list. Eventually lead biting time down to zero.

    • Chronic Lateness

      • (Method 8) The fastest way to conquer tardiness is by changing the motivation : decide that being on time is going to be the number one motivating factor, the number one consideration over all others.

      • (Method 5) Add training to an incompatible behavior like making it a goal to always arrive early (so that we have time to read our book.)

      • (Method 7) Shape the absence by rewarding yourself every time you make it on time.

      • (Method 6) Put the behavior on cue: deliberately choose events where being late would not be a problem, to plan to be late to. Deliberately being late may help extinguish being late when we have to or should be on time.

    • Addictions - Most addictive behavior doesn’t yield very easily to just one method. The subject may be the most effective trainer. Study all eight methods and find some way, with the exception of punishment, to engage in frequent application of every single one.