Operant Conditioning and Police Dogs

The term operant conditioning sounds like a big deal but itreally isn't. If you are training police dogs you are using one or more sections of it, even if you don't know it.

This article aims to explain it in plain English and help you use it correctly when training police dogs.

Most of the confusion comes from how each of the four sections are named. They seem ass backwards at times. I'll sort it out for you.

As I said there are four pieces of operant conditioning. They are Positive Reinforcement, Negative Reinforcement, Positive Punishment and Negative Punishment. Before I break each section down individually, absorb this...

Reinforcement serves to increase the likelihood of the behavior in the future. Punishment serves to decrease the likelihood of the behavior in the future. Easy enough so far.

Positive does not always mean a good thing for your dog and negative does not always mean a bad thing for your dog.

Positive means we add something to the equation. Negative means we take something away from the equation.

OK, let's break operant conditioning down...

Positive Reinforcement

Since positive means we are adding something to the equation and reinforcement serves to increase the likelihood of the behavior in the future, this is a good thing for police dogs.

You say sit. Your dog sits. You give your dog a reward.

Positive reinforcement means giving your dog a reward.

Negative Reinforcement

Since negative means we are taking something away from the equation and reinforcement serves to increase the likelihood of the behavior in the future, this should be a good thing for police dogs, right? Not necessarily.

If we are taking something away, it had to be there first. In this section of operant conditioning we first apply pressure and then take it away when we get the behavior we want.

So if you have a choke collar on your dog and steadily pull the leash straight up, you are applying pressure necessary to make your dog sit. As soon as your dog sits, you turn off the pressure.

Negative reinforcement means you apply pressure and then remove it when your dog complies.

Positive Punishment

Since positive means we are adding something to the equation and punishment serves to decrease the likelihood of the behavior in the future, this is not a good thing from the dogs point of view.

You say sit. Your dog goes down. You jerk him into a sit with the leash.

Positive punishment is giving your dog a correction.

Negative Punishment

Since negative means we are taking something away from the equation and punishment serves to decrease the likelihood of the behavior in the future, you can't even guess at this one can you?!

This section involves the removal of a good consequence. Say you are using a food reward to train your dog to sit. You say sit, your dog goes down. You pull the food reward behind your back to deny access by your dog.

Negative punishment is withholding a reward from your dog.

If a more condensed explanation exists, feel free to send it tome. What a headache. I'll reduce it one more time to help it come into focus.