CheLucero.com | Archive | Behaviorism and Training

Jul 29th, 2011

Positive Punishment

The base rate of any behavior for any organism increases or decreases based on the consequences of that behavior as perceived by that organism. In other words, punished (and non-reinforced) behaviors will decrease in frequency, while rewarded or reinforced behavior will increase in frequency. Punishment can be used to influence dogs (or human) behavior to [...]

Jul 25th, 2011

Generalized Reinforcer

A generalized reinforcer is a special type of secondary reinforcer (conditioned reinforcer) which is not linked to a specific primary reinforcer. All secondary reinforcers start out being linked to a particular primary reinforcer. You tell your dog ‘good girl’, and you give her a treat. At first, the phrase ‘good girl’ means nothing to the [...]

Jul 23rd, 2011

Establishing Operation

An establishing operation is a behaviorism concept which refers to an event or events (establishing operations) that impact the potency of a primary reinforcer. This can be thought of in a blunt sense as deprivation or satiation. A drink of water will be more rewarding to a rat (more reinforcing of the behavior that led [...]

Jun 16th, 2011

Operant Conditioning

Operant Conditioning is one of the two major legs in the science of behaviorism (the other being classical conditioning). Operant conditioning was defined by B.F. Skinner in 1938 in a paper entitled “The Behavior of Organisms: An Experimental Analysis“. Operant conditioning describes how organisms learn by interacting with their environment. Skinner outlined 4 different consequences [...]

Jun 16th, 2011

Secondary Reinforcers

Secondary reinforcers (an operant conditioning term) are neutral stimuli which reinforce an organisms behavior, just like a primary reinforcer. However, a secondary reinforcer (also known as a conditioned reinforcer) differs in that it is not intrinsically rewarding for a dog or other organism. A stimulus becomes a secondary reinforcer by being paired with a primary reinforcer [...]

Jun 10th, 2011

Primary Reinforcers

In behaviorism, reinforcers are motivational stimuli. There are two types of reinforcers: primary and secondary. Primary reinforcers are intrinsically motivating to an organism. For a given dog (recognizing that all dogs have some personal variation based on genetics etc), this might include things like running, fetching, playing tug of war, water, food (treats or meals), [...]