If you’ve never heard of B.F Skinner, and you’re trying to train your dog with treats or tools, perhaps it’s time to jump into that pool and learn the good and the bad about Skinner. I urge people to actually sit down and read his books, versus reading trainers interpretations of what Skinner did.
B.F Skinner didn’t create the quadrants of dog training – trainers did based on bad analysis of his early works. The quadrants were developed in the 1980’s, and became the bible of dog training pushed hard by trainers such as Ian Dunbar and Grisha Stewart. Dunbar has since tossed the quadrants as a whole in the garbage where they belong, and Grisha moved on to a single quadrant – Positive Reinforcement.
B.F. Skinner didn’t believe in punishment, knew it wasn’t effective. So why is punishment and correction so prominent in the dog training world today?
In a conversation with Dr. Temple Grandin back in the 70’s – Skinner said “We don’t need to learn about the brain, we have operant conditioning.” This is the problem with dog training today, we treat dogs like they need to learn to communicate with us. That they need reward and punishment in order to learn. Skinner has been dead for 30 years now, and so much has changed since his death, we’ve learned so much about the animal brain – but why not the training world?
If you’re treat training, rewarding your dog for everything – then you’re using trainers interpretation of Skinners variation of Positive Reinforcement he used in a lab – not in his daily practice with people. If you’re using an e-collar/prong and you subscribe to punishment – then you’re following bad interpretation of Skinner. I firmly believe Skinner would be rolling over in his grave if he seen the state of dog training today.
Much of what Skinner did in a lab wasn’t supposed to be used in the training world but trainers managed to create the quadrants based on Skinners early career. I have never seen anything published in Skinners work like “positive punishment” or “negative punishment”. He did use negative reinforcement early on – an example of hooking a probe up to a dogs tail and shocking it til it performed some function. The removal of negative reinforcement was considered “positive reinforcement”. Again, how did this translate to real world?
The most prominent use of tools in the dog training industry seems to come from the balanced side of dog training – tools like e-collars, prongs, chokers, dominant dog collar etc. Muzzles – while not a bad thing – is represented in all sides of the training spectrum. Treats tend to be as well. But why are these tools becoming so prolific? Why is it that so many trainers can’t work with a dog without a prong or e-collar? We need to go back to the 70’s to B.F. Skinner – the God of behaviorism and where he really screwed up.
Skinner has been dead for 30 years (1990), but his legacy lives on in the dog. He believed that the brain was a “black box” that didn’t need to be investigated, that we have behaviour to study and that’s all we need is operant conditioning – which is a method of learning that employs rewards and punishments for behaviour. Many things have changed since Skinners death, we have new technologies that can map the brains of animals. New studies that are figuring out the way animals think and we really need to pay attention.
Enter Dr. Temple Grandin – Doctor of Animal Sciences and a heck of an impressive resume filled with degrees, papers, video etc. I’ve been following Temple for quite a few years, and would absolutely love the opportunity to meet her for a discussion about dogs.
Her ideology of “thinking in pictures”, I see it in Monty so often. For example, where I live is very quiet, we rarely see people in the hallways. If I get on the elevator 100 times, it’s empty 99 times out of 100. The picture in Monty’s brain is an empty elevator – but when someone is actually on that elevator – he suddenly reacts. It’s not an aggressive reaction, just startled – cause the picture changed.
In training, “thinking in pictures” works the same for dogs. Change the negative picture to a positive one, and you change the dog.
Robert Hynes Dog Training
Serving Edmonton, Alberta and surrounding areas.
admin@roberthynesdogtraining.com