Clicker Training and Permissiveness

I've read about many people in this forum that have gone from traditional correction based training to operant conditioning training, the funny thing is, I can't recall anyone that went the other way, I wonder why that is.

Isn't the answer inherently obvious? *grin*

Perhaps postive training is considered more permissive in relation to traditional correction-based training because
(ideally) unwanted behaviour does not occur and consequently is not punished/corrected? I think if someone was not aware of the management aspect of positive training, it would just look like the dog is being rewarded constantly (which may seem "permissive"?)
 
I also wanted to comment on this (OT) point :
 

ORIGINAL: houndlove
I know there's some debate about whether a NRM is positive punishment or not. To me I see it as a marker of impending negative punishment just as the clicker as a marker of impending positive reinforcement. By itself it's nothing. It's just a noise...

 
I think a NRM can act as a conditioned punisher, just as a click (or reward marker) can act as a conditioned reinforcer- stimuli can assume some of the properties of a consequence through repeated association. 

I don't think one can go from 'traditional correction-based' to 'operant conditioning-based' training. The dog is being conditioned either way. Traditional trainers relay on operant conditioning!

Gee  I thought everybody knew the whole world works on operant conditioning []  Can't help it,,, that is what happens when one is a radical behaviorist. sorry I just could not resist.

Gee I thought everybody knew the whole world works on operant conditioning Can't help it,,, that is what happens when one is a radical behaviorist. sorry I just could not resist.

[][][][][][]

ORIGINAL: Chuffy
to be TOTALLY positive is very very hard and in some households just isn't practical or workable.  That's OK.  But (I'm going out on a limb here) the flip side of the coin is that the less able you are to read and manage the dog, the more aversives become necessary.  If in everyday situations an owner tips more towards the aversive side than the positive, I would suggest they don't have the time to manage a dog properly, or they are just plain lazy and/or ignorant and should either change their ways for the sake of the dog or let it go to a home where it will be valued and treated kindly.  In short, I am saying that not only is permissiveness directly counter productive in clicker training (or any positive method) it is also  a form of "cruelty" which is why it niggles me so much when positive trainers are labelled with it.

Not only do I heartily concur with Kim's posts above, except that I do think the perception of NRM's as punishers rests with individual dogs, I love the word "niggles". []  I am about the least permissive dog owner alive.  However, when I request that my dogs do something, there are three things I look for before I decide my dog is "blowing me off" and simply being disobedient.  First, has he heard my request?  (Even humans can get so preoccupied that they tune out voices.) Second, does he understand the request?  Third, is there any scary thing about that could cause "intelligent disobedience"?

I want to know -have I really taught him that "lie down" means just that, or did I inadvertantly reward him when he would lie down but get right up - if the reward came as the dog was rising, he could easily interpret "lie down" as "when the humans says lie down, I go on the floor but then I get back and halfway up is where they want me to be because they said good boy and I got a cookie".  So, the poor dog does that, thinking that's what was asked, and gets some jerk pushing his back to the floor for his trouble.  That is not permissive, for sure, but it's unfair. 

This is an interesting thread for me because I'm currently trying to work out how permissive one can be and still have a well-behaved dog. I look at my hare, who I CAN'T be anything but very permissive with, and we have a great relationship. The obvious problem with it is that he rarely has to do anything he doesn't want to and if he does have to do something he doesn't want to, I can expect to have to physically force him if I can't outwit him. In my mind, I don't think there's a way around that with a hare because there's nothing in the world he wants enough to stick his back foot out for me so I can cut his nails. I've tried conditioning him to accept it, but he won't, not even from me. He just can't put himself in such a vulnerable position.

However, dogs are not hares, and they don't mind putting themselves in vulnerable positions for their people. I wonder if permissiveness is necessarily a bad thing. I heard a conversation second-hand with a man who had a dingo as a pet. The man said that dingoes were not like ordinary dogs. He said, his dingo girl was his equal - his best mate rather than the traditional dog-and-master relationship. He said it had to be like that because it was the only way to build a respectful relationship with her and actually get anywhere.

Recently, I have wondered if maybe that isn't the way we should be treating all animals we live with. The relationship that man had with his dingo was a very special one, as is the relationship I have with my hare. I grumble at my hare when he's annoying me, but it doesn't make much impression on him. He knows it's all empty and has no consequences for him that he need worry about. When he doesn't want me to pat him tonight, I respect that and leave him alone. When he wants something better than hay, I go pick him some grass. When he wants to go hide under my bed, I let him do that for as long as I'm there to supervise him. When he doesn't want to get flea treatment today, I put it away and do it another time when he isn't so against it. I can do things to him he doesn't like and he'll forgive me, but only because I've spent so long making sure he knows that I generally won't force him to do anything he really doesn't want. The most aversive thing I've done to him is paint bitter-tasting chew repellant on his litter tray to try to break him of the habit of ingesting hard plastic, and I only did that because the habit had formed as a response to mild stress and possibly boredom while I was away and turned into a compulsion that was demanding to distract him from.

So, I don't know. Maybe being permissive is not a bad thing. You have to think of ways to get inside your dog's head and make doing what you want or need him to do into what he wants to do. And I think the habit of always checking if there are good reasons why your dog is misbehaving, like spiritdogs said, is an excellent one. I'm not sure how far I can go with permissiveness yet, but I think I will be testing that with my next dog. I could think of nothing finer than having the kind of relationship I have with my hare, with a dog. What's the worst that can happen? I end up with a brat that runs the household. I hope I'm not so clueless that I won't see that coming from a mile away if it is, and ease back on the permissiveness. The man with the dingo didn't have a very obedient dingo, just like I don't have a very obedient hare, but he accepted it as the price to pay for the relationship he had with such a special animal, just like I do with Kit. I guess the question is, how much obedience do I feel is absolutely necessary to insist upon? And if I don't insist on obedience every single time, what will the consequences be? I think I'm going to have suggestions and commands. Commands for vitally important, must-obey-now things, and suggestions for everything else.

Well, I don't think that not being permissive is necissarily antithetical to a partnership relationship. I wouldn't say I'm "permissive" with my husband nor he with me. We ask each other to do things that the other doesn't really want to do all the time and getting an answer of "No thanks I'd rather just sit here on my bum and let you toil" is really not generally acceptable.
 
I wonder if there aren't some better words to use here. Saying I'm not "permissive" with my husband sounds weird. It I think assumes automatically a superior-inferior relationship in its connotation. To be "permissive" you have to actually be in a position of power and just choose to not use it.
 
I'll admit that I tend to feel a little ookie about words like "command" and "obey". You don't "command" your kids, you ask them to do something. And I've never liked the term "obey" applied to kids either (didn't grow up in a Judeo-Christian household, never had the whole obey father and mother commandment drummed into me). I like maybe "comply" better. The fact of the matter is that we like to pretend that we can remove choice and free will from our dogs and we can't. They are autonomous beings, they make their own choices, they always have an option. Training like you can remove that from them is putting your head in the sand and setting yourself up for some real disappointment. I'd rather my own training terminology better reflect the fact that my dogs make choices, and I set things up so that the choices they make are also the choices I like. But then on the internet no one would know what I was talking about, so I use the accepted terminology.
 

Clicker training is simply one "training" method.
 
Whether or not somone takes this method into the "Positive Only" relm, has far more to do with human motives, group-definition of what is "good" therefore *I* am "good", and acceptance and validation from other humans...than it has to do with direct social communication and what is in the dog's best interest.

Whether or not somone takes this method into the "Positive Only" relm, has far more to do with human motives, group-definition of what is "good" therefore *I* am "good", and acceptance and validation from other humans...than it has to do with direct social communication and what is in the dog's best interest.

I understand where you are coming from, but I disagree, Angelique, for two reasons.

1. I came to positive reinforcement because I had a dog that couldn't handle correction-based training. It had nothing to do with me--I don't personally have a problem correcting dogs... it's just that it didn't work on this dog. It made things much worse. I made this decision after evaluating what had already been tried.

2. And besides, it's often easier and more efficient to manage a dog's environment than it is to deliver a punishment. Take getting into the garbage. I work in a park, and there is an office where lots of dogs come to work every day. The people who work in the office do nothing to manage the office environment for the dogs--there are low wastebaskets filled with muffin wrappers, important files and purses on the floor, etc. And so they spend a lot of time every day chasing around and yelling at dogs. They would get a lot more work done if they just put the garbage cans and files up on desks, but the folks in the office don't feel as though they "should have to do that."

In this situation, who is acting with their own human motives and ideas about what is "good" or "correct" in mind? The person who would just manage the environment, or the folks who stubbornly yank dogs' heads out of garbage cans day after day?

It seems to me that you are equating "positive only" with some ideas about what "positive only" means that don't really apply. It really isn't about treats and being "good." It's about knowing what you want out of your dog. It is fundamentally about power. Much more, IME, than correction-based training is.

In correction-based training, your dog has a lot of agency--you wait for the dog to mess up, and then you correct it. If you go the "positive only" route, you go right to the root of that dog's agency and you let the dog make choices from a set that you have approved. Instead of asking himself, "garbage or toy?" the positive-trained dog is going to ask, "bully stick or bone?" Because that's all he's got.

You have to be much more strict if you are going to use "positive only" to good effect, and you have to be much more powerful. Instead of reacting to what your dog does, you have to proactively design your dog's environment around what you want the dog to do and not give the dog any other options. Instead of being a punisher, you become a worldmaker. This kind of proactive vision takes a much firmer sense of leadership than it takes to haul a dog out of the garbage can for the umpteenth time, IMO.

Positive only from another perspective.  I feel most folks switch because it is more effective.  I think more folks resist because it is more difficult and because we come from a culture which emphasizes the need for retribution.  I see this daily in my work....What is worse,  I see folks using strategies that clearly do not work (behavior does not change) but the punitive methods are continued....Only wait, they are only punitive (punishment) when they actually change the behavior.  So in reality these folks are systematically maintaining the behavior they wish to get rid of.
 
I find it incredibly difficult to get folks to shift to differential reinforcement approachs because  "well he should, he is old enough to have learned that".  Funny, the behavior suggests he has not learned "'that".

What is worse, I see folks using strategies that clearly do not work (behavior does not change) but the punitive methods are continued.

In my work observing teachers, I see this a tremendous amount as well. Like, people, yelling and punishing is clearly not getting you anywhere! You've done it for years and your classes are still out of control! I've recommended books, had (very polite, gentle) conversations, and they just can't seem to help themselves. Yell and punish, yell and punish. Not working. I think that particular behavior (on the teacher's part) continues (obviously) because doing that is incredibly rewarding. The yelling is a nice vent of frustration and the punishing fulfills a need for revenge on that little twit who derailed your class for the kajillionth time. But it's not really solving the problem.

"In addition, even trainers who claim to be Positive Only will use something to discourage a dog from repeating an undesirable behaviour - often something like negative punishment.  Say you train the dog to sit at the door and wait for permission to go out.  If his bum comes off the floor the door shuts.  "
 
I don't consider this to be an aversive. The dog gets rewarded (by going out) for performing the behavior (the sit) correctly, if he doesn't perform it correctly he doesn't get the reward.  What is the undesirable behavior that is being discouraged-- bolting out the door? it's being discouraged by teaching an incompatible behavior, sitting until released, not by using an aversive. Discouraging bolting out the door via an aversive would be something like slamming the door on the dog as he tries to bolt out, or using a leash to stop him, or screaming at him, or spraying water in his face.  
 

ORIGINAL: houndlove

What is worse, I see folks using strategies that clearly do not work (behavior does not change) but the punitive methods are continued.

In my work observing teachers, I see this a tremendous amount as well. Like, people, yelling and punishing is clearly not getting you anywhere! You've done it for years and your classes are still out of control! I've recommended books, had (very polite, gentle) conversations, and they just can't seem to help themselves. Yell and punish, yell and punish. Not working. I think that particular behavior (on the teacher's part) continues (obviously) because doing that is incredibly rewarding. The yelling is a nice vent of frustration and the punishing fulfills a need for revenge on that little twit who derailed your class for the kajillionth time. But it's not really solving the problem.

My coworker was telling me yesterday that one particular teacher used to yell at her daughter for vomiting in class.  The child has mild ADD and an anxiety disorder.  Once the teacher realized that, she provided a better lesson plan, stopped yelling, and - miracle - the kid stopped vomiting in class. Soemtimes you do get more with honey than vinegar.

ORIGINAL: mudpuppy

"In addition, even trainers who claim to be Positive Only will use something to discourage a dog from repeating an undesirable behaviour - often something like negative punishment.  Say you train the dog to sit at the door and wait for permission to go out.  If his bum comes off the floor the door shuts.  "

I don't consider this to be an aversive. The dog gets rewarded (by going out) for performing the behavior (the sit) correctly, if he doesn't perform it correctly he doesn't get the reward.  What is the undesirable behavior that is being discouraged-- bolting out the door? it's being discouraged by teaching an incompatible behavior, sitting until released, not by using an aversive. Discouraging bolting out the door via an aversive would be something like slamming the door on the dog as he tries to bolt out, or using a leash to stop him, or screaming at him, or spraying water in his face.  

I agree, and the door doesn't shut on his nose, it just shuts.  Works, too.  I can ask any of my dogs to "wait" before exiting crates, or going out doors, and they sit and look at me until I release them.