Strictly speaking, the title of this post doesn’t make any sense. Reinforcement strengthens behavior and positive reinforcement is adding something as a consequence to strengthen a behavior. So what the heck am I talking about?
One of the best ways to eliminate an unwanted behavior is to train another behavior to replace it. The technical term for this is Differential Reinforcement of an Incompatible behavior (DRI). It’s a very simple idea: find something that your dog cannot do at the same time as the unwanted thing, and then make doing that more rewarding.
Like many simple ideas, this is usually a lot easier to talk about than to actually implement in real life. What is the best behavior to use as a replacement? How frequently and for how long will you need to reinforce it? Are you simply replacing one annoyance for another? These are all questions that need to be considered. DRI is a thinking trainer’s tool – oftentimes it requires careful planning.
But there are plenty of examples of DRI working quite well in action. One of my favorites is using “Say Hi” for polite greetings.
Training a dog to approach a person and sniff their hand rather than jumping up on them is about as clear an example of DRI as you can find. Others use a sit or down stay as a solution for jumping up — which are good examples of DRI also — but I have found that “Say Hi” frequently works faster for a dog that is prone to over-arousal when she meets new people. It’s easier to get that type of dog to “do” something rather than to stay still.
Of course, DRI has a few pitfalls. One of them is hidden in plain sight, right in the name: Differential Reinforcement of an Incompatible behavior. Differential means reinforcing the alternate behavior and implies not reinforcing the unwanted one. In the “Say Hi” example, if people still reward jumping up with attention, chances are “Say Hi” (or sit or down stay) will fail.
DRI requires some reinforcement of its own. The new behavior needs to be well-trained and consistenly reinforced and the old, unwanted activity needs to be helped on its way out with either extinction or, if required some punishment.
Next: Gasp! I said a bad word! Punishment? Is it always bad?
Really good suggestion. I’m going to try this with Honey. And it looks like an easier command to train for humans.
I’ve been trying to get Honey to sit for greetings with mixed success. The bigger problem is that the people in my office starting saying “Sit, sit, sit” in a high excited voice while putting their hands all over her, reinforcing the arousal.
I’m not too worried about Honey; she’ll get it in time. But my co-workers? They’re a bit slow. I bet I can teach them to hold out their hands quietly with no more than a week’s practice. ; )
What I’d like to know is how to stop a dog from jumping up on the counter or eating cat poo. It doesn’t see you can teach an incompatible behavior for either of these scenarios.
You need Leave-it: http://www.dogspelledforward.com/my-dog-keeps-taking-stuff
One of my favorite sayings that a friend used for her jumping border collie? She would tell us … shun him like the Amish, which mean hands at our sides, bodies stiff, and turning away.
Ha! My sister the Amish romance author would love that one!
I have a series on behavior modification you might not have found yet. I need to integrate it into the blog but it was a professional series in one of the zoo training journals…lots of info shared in one place.
Glad to see you tackling this.
Here is the link if you want to post it:
==>>animal behavior training