For over 20 years I taught a senior level Learning & Behavior college course. The topic that consistently led to the most confusion was negative reinforcement (-R). While many learning theories and ideas seemed logical and sensible to most students, negative reinforcement (as both a term and a concept) was often a sticking point. I see that same confusion for many animal trainers. That’s a shame, because negative reinforcement is a very powerful and effective way to change behavior. Unfortunately, it also has the possibility of being misused in damaging and unethical ways.
I believe that negative reinforcement is one of the most misunderstood concepts in operant conditioning because the term itself seems like an oxymoron. We typically think of the definition of negative as something bad. In the world of learning theory, negative actually means “to remove or take away something”. If you keep this in mind everything that follows begins to make more sense! We also need to consider the actual meaning of the term reinforcement when we discuss learning. Reinforcement is a consequence that is meant to increase a behavior. So negative reinforcement is something that is removed or taken away in order to increase behavior. Once the language and definitions are properly sorted out then we can move on to the good stuff; how to use it to change behavior.
This webinar will cover what negative reinforcement is and how it works, the related concepts of pressure, release, & relief, human & animal examples in the real world, the possible fallout & ethical issues associated with -R, and several basic training protocols. So get your training nerd hat on and come geek out with me about negative reinforcement!
Instructor: Deb Jones, PhD
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