Psychology has gone to the dogs – beyond sit and stay

Whether you have shared or share your life with a dog, you have likely heard of using psychology in dog training. We use psychology in all aspects of our lives, and it comes as no surprise that we also use psychology when training our dogs.  This article will be part 1 of a series of articles focusing on the psychology behind the dog and how we use it to train and communicate with our best friends.

What does Motivation have to do with my dog

In this article, I will start by defining some keywords used in dog training before diving into how they can be applied. Let’s start with “Motivation.” I think we all know what motivation is; it makes us go, which drives us to move forward and get things done. Some of us are motivated depending on the time of day, willingness to do things, energy level, personality, support system, reward system, etc.

In human psychology, we can divide types of motivation between extrinsic and intrinsic depending on whether either is derived from outside of the individual (ex: praise, money) or from within the individual (personal gratification for doing something). I am not expanding so much on human motivation as I would spend hours lecturing on it and instead, I will focus the attention on motivation in dogs.

What motivates dogs to do things? As in humans, I would expect a dog to do something for the internal gratification of doing it, and I would also expect a dog to do something, given there is a “reward” waiting for him/her at the end. After all, who wants to work for free?!

Dogs’ motivation varies greatly between dogs just like in people. Some dogs are more motivated to do things for food items, others are more motivated to do things for praise, others prefer toys, others yet prefer to be released from a behavior that is not as much fun, and others will do things just because they love to do it, they have fun doing it.

As you can already guess, motivation will help you train your dog, but the type of reward solidifies that motivation to work with you. To know what to use to motivate your dog find what works best for both.

The right level of motivation is important, depending on what you want to teach. For example, one of my dogs is so obsessed with tennis balls that I cannot keep her focused enough to work on basic behaviors; instead, I use kibble for basic behaviors and the tennis ball for accurate recall. Knowing what to use will help keep your dog focused and willing to partner.

Behavior

If you thought the definition of motivation was straightforward how about the definition of “Behavior”? What is behavior? It seems like a straightforward answer, but is it? Behavior is an activity that happens between any living organism and the environment. Behavior is not innate to an organism but an action that will only happen if there is an interaction. So, if I am hungry, this is not behavior; however, eating an apple is a behavior. Behavior is measurable because you can see the environmental change it causes. When I eat an apple, I reduce the number of apples in the environment by one. We cannot separate the organism from the environment, and it implies that, no matter what, the behavior will influence the environment. 

The beauty of behavior is that because it is measurable, we can study it. We can measure the effect a behavior has on the environment. Behavior analysts do just that.

What types of behaviors are there?

• Respondent behavior: any behavior that does not need learning to occur (food in the mouth causes salivation or a puff in the eye causes blinking) and the organism will predictably respond similarly when a stimulus occurs. Eventually, the response may gradually diminish (habituation), but we don’t need to get into that much detail now. Even though these fixed responses come in handy, an organism cannot survive without learning from the consequence of its actions. This is where a new type of behavior comes into play.
• Operant behavior: any behavior whose future frequency is dependent on the history of consequences. For example, when a child is playing with a puzzle game with square and round pieces that only fit in their appropriate holes, he/she is learning to fit the pieces into the correct holes. The future responses to the puzzle game are determined by how well the child did in previous attempts. 

These two types of behavior play an integral role in dog training, and we use both to help our dogs learn to navigate the environment. Let’s delve into operant behavior.

operant conditioning

So, we now know that operant conditioning operates in terms of consequences and those consequences only affect future behavior. We also know that behavioral changes are most sensitive to stimulus changes occurring immediately after or within a few seconds of the response. Think about how your dog responds to you when you give him/her a treat immediately after a request for a sit. The quicker you give the treat, the quicker your dog learns how to do it. If you waited 30 seconds, your dog probably would have left, barked, gotten up, etc., because you had not provided a quick reinforcer to his/her behavior. When you observe trainers teaching dogs, you will notice the quick reinforcement they use while the dog is learning a behavior.

To make it easier to remember, the word positive means adding something, and the word negative means removing something (It does not mean good or bad only addition or removal).

Reinforcement refers to any change that occurs after a behavior that increases the likelihood that the behavior will occur again.
Punishment refers to any change that occurs after a behavior that reduces the likelihood that the behavior will occur again.
A stimulus is anything that can trigger a physical or behavioral change.
So now let’s put it all together (slide 1):

– Negative Reinforcement is the removal of a stimulus (usually aversive) after a response that will increase the behavior’s future response or strength.
– Positive Reinforcement is the presentation of a stimulus (usually pleasant) after a response that will increase the behavior’s future response or strength.
– Negative Punishment is the removal of a stimulus (usually pleasant) after a response that will decrease the future response or strength of the behavior.
– Positive punishment is the presentation of a stimulus (usually aversive) after a response that will decrease the future response or strength of the behavior.

Trainers and humans generally use these consequences to increase or decrease behavior. My next article will address reinforcement and punishment in more detail.

References

Cooper, J. O., Heron, T. E., & Heward, W. L. (2019). Applied Behavior Analysis (3rd Edition). Hoboken, NJ: Pearson Education.

Mazur, J. E. (2017). Learning and behavior. New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.