Quote:
"Negative reinforcement, on the other hand, generally comes after an act which the trainer cannot predict. If your dog urinates on the floor, and you then hit the dog, will it associate the punishment with the bad behavior? Likely not, because it was unaware that punishment was likely before it urinated--and even if the association is made, how does the dog know what alternative behavior will receive a positive reward? Urinary retention is a more common result that learning to go outside to urinate. Moving the urinating dog to an appropriate location, combined with positive reinforcement, is much more likely to achieve the desired result. Understanding this critical difference between positive and negative reinforcement in training is an important step in learning how to train domestic animals."
I couldn't quite believe that that could be all he had to say about -R so had a look at the site. I found a bit more on "training with -R" and it was just as garbled!
Oh well, thanks Suz for posting the site. I'll have a look at some of the other stuff on there as it looks a useful resource (on the subjects he knows about!)
oops, so it is a bit dodgy.
I looked at the bit on displacement behaviour and quite liked the references it lead me to (although there are others he missed out).
Suz
This message has been edited by illeroc on May 2, 2006 4:52 PM