Let’s Learn Training Terms: Negative Reinforcement

Negative Reinforcement: When “negative” isn’t necessarily bad.

As we move forward in our training terms, today we’ll tackle Negative Reinforcement.  Quiz time!  Do you remember the four parts to Operant Conditioning?  They are:

1. Positive Reinforcement
2. Positive Punishment
3. Negative Reinforcement
4. Negative Punishment.

Remember – don’t get caught up on the words themselves, because they might not mean exactly what you first think 😉

Related: Let’s Learn Training Terms: Positive Reinforcement

Recap of Training Terms:

According to Wikipedia:

A stimulus is something that causes a physiological or psychological response:

• Stimulation
  • Stimulus (physiology), something external that influences an activity
  • Stimulus (psychology), a concept in behaviorism and perception

And don’t forget: “positive” and “negative” do NOT mean “good” or “bad”.  You have to think in more mathematical terms, here: POSITIVE = ADDITION, NEGATIVE = SUBTRACTION.  Operant conditioning is all about the addition or removal of a stimulus into the environment and how that effects the frequency of the behavior.  Now, reinforcement and punishment refer to a consequence that cause a behavior to occur more or less frequently: REINFORCEMENT = CONSEQUENCE CAUSES GREATER FREQUENCY; PUNISHMENT = CONSEQUENCE CAUSES LESS FREQUENCY.

Now, let’s follow the definitions again to see that Negative Reinforcement occurs when the removal of a stimulus (usually seen as unpleasant) is rewarding, therefore increasing the frequency of the behavior.  My favorite example to use for this is that annoying “ding-ding-ding” sound you get when you leave your keys in the ignition with the car door open.  Taking the key out of the ignition stops the sound (unpleasant stimulus), so you usually start taking your keys out of the ignition before you open the car door ;-P

Using Negative Reinforcement in Dog Training:

For dog trainers, you might see this a lot with remote collar training (sidenote: this is not the only way to use negative reinforcement, but it’s an easier one for an example).  First, let me remind you that in our company, if we use remote collars, we start at the lowest possible level that creates a reaction in your dog (we’re looking for an ear twitch, or the dog may think it’s a flea so they scratch).  Here’s an example:  you hold the button down to create a continuous shock (remember – it is very low) or vibrate. When the dog sits, you release the button to remove the shock.  It is therefore rewarding to sit because it makes the annoying “flea” stop “biting”.  While there are some other steps in there, this is the general concept.

Timing is important!

Did you catch the one thing that might be crucially important in the example above?  TIMING.  The timing of when you remove/stop the aversive stimulus is extremely important.  It’s important with ALL the examples I’ve given over the last few weeks, but in my personal opinion,  even more so with this method.

This term is one of the more confusing simply because it seems like a contradiction if you think of it in the “popular” sense of the terms.  Hopefully, I have cleared it up a bit for you so that it makes more sense 🙂

I hope that helped you learn this term a little better, and not have a bad reflex reaction to it anymore ;-P  Next week, we’ll look at Negative Punishment (I bet you’re getting the hang of this now – can you guess what this one is?)

Remember, our trainers are trained with our Multi-method Training System, so we can find the best way your dog learns 🙂  We always have you and your dog’s best interest at heart, because we want your dog to become a valued member of the family!

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