March 24, 2025 • 62 mins
Podcast Synopsis
In this milestone episode of the Animal Training Academy Podcast, host Ryan Cartlidge is joined once again by the incredible Dr. Susan G. Friedman—a leading expert in behavioral science and animal training. A returning guest every 50th episode, Susan brings her extensive knowledge and decades of experience to discuss the evolving role of negative reinforcement in ethical training, recognizing subtle "no" signals from animals, and the power of behavioral science to create more informed trainers.
Listeners will gain a deeper understanding of:
✅ The importance of teaching animals to say "no" and trainers to honor it
✅ The ethical application of negative reinforcement in animal training
✅ Sub-threshold training techniques to reduce stress and improve communication
✅ The impact of non-linear contingency analysis in understanding complex behaviors
✅ Why positive reinforcement training has been so successful—and the next frontier of voluntary medical procedures
This episode is a must-listen for anyone passionate about progressive, evidence-based training methods. Whether you're an animal trainer, behavior consultant, or just fascinated by the science of learning, Dr. Friedman's insights will challenge your thinking and push the boundaries of what's possible in ethical animal training.
🔗 Want to learn more? Be sure to check out Dr. Friedman’s resources at www.behaviorworks.org and explore the wealth of courses available through her work.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
Welcome to the Animal Training Academy podcast show.
I'm your host, Ryan Carledge, and I'm passionate
about helping you master your animal training skills
using the most positive and least intrusive approaches.
Here at ATA, we understand that navigating the
vast challenges you encounter in training requires a
(00:27):
comprehensive base of knowledge and experience.
It's common to face obstacles and rough patches
on your journey that can leave you feeling
overwhelmed and stressed.
Therefore, since 2015, we have been on a
mission to empower animal training geeks worldwide.
We've aided thousands in developing their skills, expanding
(00:51):
their knowledge, boosting their confidence, and maximizing their
positive impact on all the animal and human
learners they work with.
We are excited to do the same for
you.
Simply visit www.atamember.com, join our vibrant
(01:12):
community, and geek out with us.
And of course, in the meantime, enjoy this
free podcast episode as we explore new ways
to help you supercharge your training skills, grow
your knowledge, and build your confidence so that
you can craft a life that positively impacts
(01:32):
every learner you encounter.
We will kick off today's episode, number 250
of the ATA podcast show, and I'm thrilled
to continue our tradition of having the wonderful
Dr. Susan Friedman, one of the most significant
(01:54):
influencers on my animal training and behavior journey,
join us every 50th episode.
Susan, it's fantastic, as always, to have you
back with us, and I'm incredibly grateful for
you always making time for us here at
Animal Training Academy.
Yeah, you can see, and maybe the audience
can hear, I've got this gigantic smile.
(02:16):
I am so excited for your success to
have this level of reach.
250 is an incredible number.
Congratulations, and thanks for including me in that
joy.
Yeah, it's nine years, I think, ATA's celebrating
its 10th birthday this year, a decade of
(02:37):
improving the lives of learners all over the
planet of all different species.
We've been fortunate here at the Academy to
have you and Rick Heister join us multiple
times since episode 200, and episode 200 was
(02:58):
released on May the 9th, 2023, so nearly
two years has passed since then.
That was a very popular episode.
Lots of people reached out to me and
said how valuable and helpful it was for
them with the things we talked about.
We talked about functional assessments and intervention designs.
(03:19):
We talked about negative reinforcement.
We talked about nonlinear contingency analysis, and then
when discussing the topics that you'd most like
to cover today, you mentioned some of the
same subjects, negative reinforcement, nonlinear contingency analysis.
Thinking back to that episode, number 200, with
negative reinforcement, we talked about how when an
(03:41):
animal says no by avoiding or escaping something,
that behavior itself is reinforced negatively.
And we talked about how this highlighted the
importance of teaching animals an appropriate way to
communicate their discomfort rather than resorting to undesirable
behaviors like ones, for example, we might label
(04:01):
as aggressive.
Some of the key takeaways I took from
that recording a couple of years ago was
that animals should have a clear and safe
way to express discomfort.
Trainers should recognize when behavior is motivated by
the removal of an aversive stimulus, and considerations
of the ethical use of negative reinforcement involves
(04:23):
giving the learner control rather than coercion.
We then talked about the distinction between ethical
applications of negative reinforcement versus coercive applications, such
as forceful handling, air pinches, or prong collars,
where I think some of the examples we
used, and how the goal should always be
to reduce reliance on coercion and increase voluntary
(04:46):
participation and training.
So I'm super interested, and I know the
listeners will be as well, to hear how
your thoughts have continued to evolve over the
last few years on this topic.
Yeah, you know, your list of the things
that we talked about and that you got
from it is really extraordinary.
(05:07):
So I so appreciate that when we talk
about something, you take it and streamline it
and are able to describe it back in
even more meaningful ways than I gave it
to you the first time.
So that description that you just did is
(05:28):
really the full story.
Really great.
It's such a luxury to work with and
talk with people who are so much on
the same wavelength that when you say something,
they can elaborate on it and make it
even better.
So thanks for that.
Yeah, the discussion continues.
(05:49):
It remains as a main, shiny thing for
me to continue to figure out how are
we going to use negative reinforcement well?
Where does it come in?
And so I keep refining my ideas and
understanding.
(06:11):
When we agree that animals have a right
to say no, we're saying that we will
honor the no by backing away.
And then we also need to have the
skills to shape the yes to be able
to build, to teach new skills.
So that's become kind of the saying that
(06:32):
I am working with that I'm trying to
build towards is honor the no and shape
the yes.
So what does that look like?
We can teach people to better observe the
no when it occurs, that they reinforce by
(06:55):
moving away, negatively reinforce nos that are milder,
earlier forms of the no, the precursors.
So what you've got is animals communicating no
with just an ear twitch instead of a
full on growl.
And we can think about different ways of
(07:17):
using negative reinforcement to honor the no.
For example, ready for some examples?
Okay.
For example, I've identified in my trying to
analyze the possibilities that there are ways of
negatively reinforcing a no, moving away to honor
(07:40):
the no or removing the tool or lowering
the criterion for what we're asking for.
We can either do it with a sub
-threshold approach where we move away.
And as we go forward towards the animal,
we strive to never trigger the big no
(08:03):
or any no.
And those two sub-threshold ways, one way
is what Joe Lang has been describing for
us, which is a time-based procedure.
We move forward, stay there for three seconds
or some short number of seconds, and then
we back away.
(08:24):
And then we go a little more forward,
wait for about three seconds and back away,
never triggering the no until we can get
close enough that the animal is no longer
saying no.
That's one version of using negative reinforcement to
honor the no.
Another one is a contingency, not time-based,
(08:48):
where we move forward, only sub-threshold, never
triggering the no.
And we wait until the animal does a
behavior that shows an increase in their calm
affect, lower arousal, and then we step back.
So now instead of waiting a few seconds,
(09:10):
we're waiting for a calmer behavior or another
calm behavior.
And I'll give examples with animals in a
minute, and then we step back.
And then, of course, there is the third
procedure that is over-threshold, that we don't
recommend, where you trigger the full-on no
(09:31):
response.
Imagine a dog just, you know, out of
its mind growling and straining at the lead,
and you wait for them to calm down,
and then you move away.
So those are the some—when we say honor
the no with negative reinforcement, don't just work
through the no or don't force the animal
(09:52):
to give up the no.
You know, what does matching that function, negative
reinforcement, look like?
So let me quickly give you examples with
animals, then I'll turn it back to you
for more questions, Ryan.
For example, if we have a bird that,
you know, flies to the mesh when you
(10:14):
approach to drive you away.
So we see that there's high intensity, they
bang the mesh, their feathers are up, their
eyes are flashing.
So those are all the emotional behaviors that
are tracking your close proximity.
Rather than waiting for that animal to calm
(10:37):
down, the sub-threshold approach would be to
only go as close as that bird remains
calm.
Wait for three seconds, back away, and then
repeat as we move slightly forward.
That would be the example of that over
-threshold behavior.
You got too close.
We would consider that an error in the
(10:57):
procedure, and you should move away.
We could talk about it with dogs.
So, for example, or anything, really.
We've used it with elephants, giraffes.
If the animal shows you that they're calm
while you're working on the hoof until you
bring out the knife, then you would remove
(11:18):
the knife.
And then you would have to bring that
knife back in with some procedure to get
the yes.
So would it be, you know, some kind
of time-based procedure, or would it be
contingent on a calmer behavior?
So those are some of the things we're
talking about when we talk about matching the
function of the problem behavior when it's negative
(11:39):
reinforcement.
How can we use negative reinforcement to teach
the animal that saying no is not necessary,
not in its favor, and that saying yes
would be the more reinforcing alternative?
Did that make sense?
I feel myself kind of losing my own
thread as I describe it this way.
(12:00):
What do you make of that information?
I'm grateful for you being on our show
and being willing to lose your thread as
we talk about these things.
Absolutely.
I think having the three uses of negative
reinforcement is helpful to think about time-based,
(12:21):
contingency-based, or over threshold.
And I'm curious as you're talking, what are
you seeing in your work?
Because it's been two years since we did
episode 200 where we touched on this topic
as well.
I mean, it still is front of mind
for you.
And I'm curious if the reason being is
you're seeing stuff as you go out there
(12:42):
and work with trainers and work in different
communities.
It's keeping this really relevant for you and
important to talk about.
What is the biggest challenge you see with
professional trainers?
Is it a limit of application, a limit
of knowledge?
Is it because people are using this sub
-threshold more than other tools?
People are not reasonably understanding negative reinforcement.
(13:07):
What are you seeing that's keeping this so
relevant for you?
Amazing question.
I think what makes it so relevant to
me why I'm spending time in this area
is because people don't see the nose.
They don't see the nose until they become
really loud.
So we have animals leaving the training session
(13:28):
now that we've given them the freedom to
just walk away and find their reinforcers elsewhere.
We see animals escalating to the point of
a giraffe smacking a trainer with its head
or an eland kicking.
So even now when I look at some
(13:49):
of the videos that I use in LLA
as great examples, I'm starting to see like
within the first two seconds of the video,
there was a no that we missed entirely
because it was very, very small.
So I think the biggest, maybe it's not
a challenge, but the biggest contribution, helping people
(14:14):
change what they do, is recalibrating their eyes
to see these precursor behaviors of no, so
that the animal never has to escalate to
these obvious, intense, high response cost or even
dangerous versions of no.
(14:34):
So it's catching that no early and then
knowing what to do about it.
And so building observation skills.
And how, so I don't know how to
ask this in a way that's going to
represent the muddle thoughts that I have, but
how have we got to here?
Is it because we've spent too much time
(14:56):
focusing on teaching positive reinforcement and not enough
time also talking about using negative reinforcement, which
has limited our ability to do the observations?
Again, this is really an incredible question for
me to ponder.
How did we get here that we're spending
so much time on thinking about how to
use negative reinforcement?
(15:17):
Not only how to use it well, but
when to use it.
When, for me, when is when the animal
says no.
That's when we pull it out of our
pack and say, OK, I'm going to honor
that no and move away.
And then your question is, how did we
get here that we're just now recognizing animals
(15:40):
are saying no and that we can respond
to those no's in order to get to
the yes?
I think it's partly because we we work
with animals often that say yes a lot.
We don't work with these really hard behaviors
that require animals to stand for a really
(16:01):
long time, relatively speaking, as with a blood
draw.
I mean, an animal might have to stand
for five, six, seven minutes for a blood
draw.
We weren't asking.
We weren't doing the behaviors that are requiring
so much of animals that saying no now
becomes part of the dialogue, part of the
(16:23):
conversation that we're having with with animals.
So we're asking for things like blood draws.
We're asking for things like radiographs, for sonograms.
We're asking animals to stay still with painful
procedures, potentially painful, like nicing and abscess out
(16:46):
of a giraffe's hook voluntarily.
So you see that question.
This is why I really adore working with
you as we do every 50 podcasts is
because that is a really important question to
have an answer to.
Why now are we talking about R-?
Are we saying here's the scenario where we
(17:10):
would move it from the top of the
hierarchy?
We would pull it down from the speed
bump and the caution sign, and we would
say, use it under this particular situation.
Why are we finding ourselves in situations where
animals are saying no to us?
And I think the main answer is that
(17:31):
our positive reinforcement training has been so successful
that we are now asking animals to be
partners in more intense medical procedures rather than
putting them into squeeze shoots or netting them,
toweling them or anesthetizing them.
(17:52):
That's huge.
When you start to ask when positive reinforcement
training has become so effective that you're now
asking for these, you're asking for more than
just shifting from A to B or to
move out to an area, interact with a
(18:14):
new enrichment item.
As we've asked for more and more because
positive reinforcement has shown us we can have
these dialogues instead of these command based monologues.
Now we're saying, hang on, because I'm seeing
that what we're asking is big enough that
(18:37):
the animals are saying no.
And we have to say, you can say
no.
And when you say no, instead of ignoring
it or saying, oh, gee, we're going to
have to anesthetize the giraffe because we can't
get past the no.
We're saying, wait a minute, here are strategies
to get past the no, honoring the no
(18:58):
and strategies to get past it.
So we can do these more.
They're not so more complicated as they ask
more of the animal to give more voluntary
behavior under increased duress to avoid doing things
that ultimately take away their power to be
(19:21):
partners, squeeze shoots and anesthesia.
So I'm able to better articulate this for
myself because I am guided by and lean
on the hierarchy and teach that to others
and negative reinforcement being above positive reinforcement.
And it's not and you can see that
(19:44):
I'm struggling to articulate this.
Is it not that we're choosing negative reinforcement
as a strategy, but we we need to
know how to use it because animals are
going to say no.
And then and then we need to real
time select that procedure.
Yeah.
So to add to what you're saying, and
I appreciate you having to walk lightly to
(20:05):
figure out where you can plant your feet.
We're now doing procedures with animals asking for
volunteer cooperative responses from them that are harder
than we have asked for in the past.
In the past, when we've asked for things
like health care and blood draws, we've done
(20:29):
it with more restraint.
We didn't we didn't ask for it to
be voluntary or for them to be partners
in our care.
Positive reinforcement training has been so successful that
we keep pushing that boundary of where we
can apply it.
And now we are actually doing voluntary blood
(20:52):
draws.
I mean, just stop and think about it
for a minute.
It's incredible.
And part of doing these more difficult behaviors
where we're asking for more, but still maintain
our goal of having a dialogue with the
animal, a partnership through these procedures.
(21:13):
Then we have to realize they may say
no more.
And what are we going to do when
they do?
So we say, OK, we're going to honor,
we're going to respect the no, which means
going up there and grabbing negative reinforcement.
That becomes respecting the no, because that's what
the animal is telling us in the dialogue.
(21:35):
When their ears pin back and their tail
starts to wish and their shoulders twitch or
they move their head away, they lean back.
All of those are saying you've now gotten
into a territory of partnership where you're leaning
on me more and it's getting uncomfortable.
(21:58):
So we can just ignore that and say,
well, we cannot train this behavior with this
individual with positive reinforcement.
So we're going to need to anesthetize them
or put them in a squeeze chute.
Or we can say, hang on, if we
honor the no, so we teach them there's
always an escape route.
(22:18):
We will hear the no and we will
respond to it.
And then we need to develop our skills
at competing with the no to get the
yes.
That's how we get animals that dance for
seven minutes for a jugular blood draw or
keep their head still on a target while
we give an injection.
(22:40):
Or while we work on their hooves in
ways that are not so comfortable, that are
not just brushing the bottom of the hoof,
but are knifing and rasping.
So if we're going to do that as
partners in these procedures, that breaks through to
kind of the next level of training.
(23:01):
Who would have thought 20 years ago that
you could get a voluntary blood draw from
a hyena?
You know, excited to see you, responding to
the head back cue and holding that for
seven minutes.
It is incredible, you know.
But if what you're asking is to just
(23:21):
move A to B in the morning and
then back to A in the afternoon, you
know, that's a very different level of shaping
behavior.
Or you're going to shape a show behavior.
That's a very different level of training than
asking an animal to stand still while I
knife and abscess.
(23:42):
Can it be done with positive reinforcement?
Who knew?
Part of the answer is yes.
If, first, you honor the no.
Does that clarify?
Yes, it does.
I think.
So it's because we're been so successful with
positive reinforcement that we're starting to ask what
(24:05):
else is possible.
And we're starting to ask for behaviors that
might be labeled as harder, more uncomfortable.
And so as you just finished up there
with part of the answer is yes, we
can do this with positive reinforcement as long
as we honor the no.
And so then we need those different parts
(24:27):
of the hierarchy to strengthen our likelihood of
success.
That's right.
And it should really be no surprise that
we can go up and down, because in
all three articles and all of my presentations
and podcasts, I've always described the hierarchy, not
(24:50):
as a recipe, but as a guideline and
that you can move up as needed.
You just need to make sure that moving
up is necessary.
And how do we make sure?
Well, I mean, one guideline is to ask
other experts what their opinion is and to
not work alone, making these decisions in a
(25:12):
vacuum.
So I think that is very much part
of how we got to say, here's an
example of where you would go up, fetch
out negative reinforcement.
And then I think everybody agrees who's talking
about this.
You get to positive reinforcement as quickly as
possible.
I've not met anybody suggesting that it escalate
(25:34):
to punishment, positive punishment or negative punishment.
That's where we're at.
And really, Ryan, I just want to say
again that this question you've asked me is
so important for me to have thought through
is how did we get here?
We haven't used negative reinforcement in our work
for years.
(25:55):
How did we get here?
And I think at least part of the
answer is we're training more harder behaviors.
From the animal's point of view, we're asking
for more.
You the listener, no doubt this is going
to be helpful for you.
I know that it's helpful for me.
And also, I love that I did LLA
(26:17):
for the first time in 2010.
So 15 years now since I was just
lucky enough to do that with you.
And even now, just to hear you talk
about moving up and down.
Every time I talk to you about the
hierarchy or about functional assessments, there's some other
bit that my learning history and my genetics
(26:40):
and who I am as a learner up
until that point has always been in front
of me, but hasn't been as clear.
So just giving little bits there that have
always been included in the things that I've
read multiple times over the last 15 years.
I just get clarity right now in this
conversation.
So I'm glad I asked that question.
I'm sure it's definitely going to be helpful
(27:02):
for our listeners as well.
We talked about three ways that we can
work with negative reinforcement, which were time-based,
contingency-based, over-threshold.
Where the over-threshold would not be recommended.
No.
And then some might also give food, for
(27:23):
example, if they get a no.
So does that fit in your thinking?
It really does.
That's one of the challenges.
I don't know that challenges is a big
word.
I would say this is one of the
interesting bumps in the road that people have
shown us they're experiencing, and that gives us
(27:43):
an opportunity to think it through.
One of them is just observing these subtle
no's.
People just don't see them.
The best way to see them is to
look at video.
It is not real time.
So I want to give that tip.
A video.
And then we stop, start, and continue with
that video.
We look, and then we play it again.
(28:03):
Stop there.
Did you see that change in weight?
That's where you should have put down the
target stick or whatever.
So we're actually going over video.
It's a very important strategy.
And then this other kind of, in my
opinion, it's an obstacle to using these techniques
(28:24):
well in this circumstance, is that people will,
you know, let the animal, give that animal
the space and the autonomy to step back.
And then they'll also give a positive reinforcer.
They'll also give a piece of food.
So right now I'm envisioning a giraffe, who
I have a lot of opportunities to learn
(28:45):
from in my zoo consulting and working with
the great Amy Schill's great innovator.
So let's say the giraffe has its foot
on the block, and we see a little
tell, a little no, like an ear flick.
So we might encourage that animal to step
back or move our hands right away and
(29:05):
step back.
And then people will also not only remove
hands, but they'll offer a cracker.
And we've realized that if you do both,
it's hard to compete with teaching the new
skill, because the net gain for saying no,
if you'll allow us to talk in this
(29:27):
kind of metaphorical way, the net gain for
saying no, is that only you get to
have the hands removed and step away, but
you also get the cracker.
That's sort of the bundle.
Then the bundle for coming forward and keeping
your foot on the block for hoof care
is just the cracker.
(29:48):
So we see that there is kind of
a differential gain and loss equation here that
we have to account for.
So our recommendation is to let negative reinforcement
reinforce the no and save those positive reinforcers
(30:09):
for the yeses, so that now the bundle
of reinforcers for yes is the food, hopefully
working with a love trainer, solving problems, all
the things that we can put into that
bundle of reinforcers for the yes.
Praise, like if you're working with a dog,
(30:32):
it might be the food, treat, praise, petting,
all of that for the yes and for
the no, hands off the negative reinforcer.
You can see that this is related to
all of the seeds that grew from Emily
and Ava and Peggy is those start behaviors.
(30:55):
That's what we want to teach is the
start behaviors, the stop behaviors, and the continue
behaviors.
We want all three of those in the
repertoire of the animal.
Now that we're asking for hard things like
blood draws.
And so that means we need to teach
them.
(31:15):
We teach start behaviors when the animal leans
forward and invites us in and we reinforce
that.
We teach stop behaviors when an ear twitches
rather than kicking us by removing our hands
or stepping away.
And we teach continue behaviors by only continuing
(31:37):
to reinforce while the animal is showing us.
I'm going to throw in another term, assent
behaviors related to consent behaviors.
But consent, at least in this country, is
a legal term.
So there's another term for working with learners
that can't sign a contract, and that's assent.
(31:59):
So we're looking for all three, stop behaviors,
start, stop, and continue.
And continue is described so beautifully by Anna
Linehan, who works with Joe Lang, whose nonlinear
analysis course I took.
So this is like the third course I've
taken and many more second course and many,
(32:21):
many seminars online where she says to reach
really the highest standard.
We need those no behaviors.
Those are the stops.
We need to start behaviors, which is an
animal, you know, enthusiastically showing with their behavior.
They want to proceed working with us.
(32:41):
We've got to see those and continue behaviors.
And then those are assent, the start and
continue are assent behaviors.
And when the animal says no, stop, then
assent has been withdrawn and we need to
stop what we're doing.
So I'm thinking of it.
(33:02):
Yeah.
You know, in human, in human feedback, the
team feedback, we've talked about this.
I think it started with a man named
Philip Daniels.
I can't find original writing of his, but
everybody attributes this to him.
The what do I want you to start
when we work together?
(33:22):
What do I want you to stop doing?
What do I want you to continue doing?
That stop, start and continue theme has been
in the human resources world for a very
long time.
And it's well used across all the different
people who are consulting and coaching and so
(33:43):
forth.
And I realized the dot to connect whatever
you want to call it, saying yes, saying
no, saying start, start buttons.
It's back to that framework.
We want animals to have a history of
reinforcement for saying no.
That's where negative reinforcement comes in.
We stop what we're doing to say stop
(34:05):
and to say continue.
And when an animal can communicate all of
those to us, then we can ask them
to do really hard things.
Because they're either long duration stationing like a
blood draw or have care or like painful,
uncomfortable in some way, like dealing with a
(34:27):
hoof abscess or a wound.
Amazing.
Well, I'm glad I asked that question.
And I find myself really curious about you,
the listener and what you've been implementing and
how what we're sharing in this episode.
Share similarities with your application or differs.
(34:47):
Please feel free to reach out and share.
I'm super curious to know what everyone's up
to and how this information is landing with
everyone.
Let's move on, Susan, unless you have something
else you'd like to add about negative reinforcement
before we do, because I don't want to
talk about non-linear contingency analysis as well.
If I remember correctly, back to episode 200,
(35:09):
we discussed how behavior is not solely determined
by a simple, immediate ABC chain, but rather
by a network of interconnected contingencies.
The only change I would make in that
description is I would say may not, because
most often in my experience, that one linear
(35:30):
ABC is very informative.
And then we talked about, and I do
remember as I was writing this this morning,
to keep it fresh in my brain, not
because I'm completely unorganized.
I was thinking about that.
How do I word that?
Is it accurate to say that applies to
all behaviors or some behaviors?
(35:51):
So thank you for that.
I appreciate that.
And then when we talked about non-linear
contingency analysis acknowledges that multiple antecedents and contingencies
can interact in complex ways to influence the
behavior.
We talked about multiple examples in that episode,
including an employee arriving late to work.
(36:11):
And we talked about penguins in a zoo
context.
So just for everyone listening, if you want
to hear this stuff, I encourage you to
listen to episode 200.
You can do so after this episode, and
that will tie in nicely.
I'll link to it in the show notes.
And also, just while I'm talking about that,
I'll also link to episodes we did with
Amy Shields, who Susan was just talking about
(36:32):
with her work with giraffes, to hear about,
hear in her words as well, describe some
of the things that we've been talking about
today.
Maybe for now, though, can we just refresh
everyone listening, what we mean when we talk
about non-linear contingency analysis, and then how
your thoughts have evolved on this topic over
the last few years?
(36:53):
Yeah.
I mean, when I first heard Gold Diamond
on a CD that I have from 1977
or something, I couldn't make sense of it,
I have to say.
I just did not understand what we were
talking about.
(37:15):
And it's funny, because my mentor, Carl Cheney,
was Gold Diamond's TA, I think I might
have mentioned to you, which I get a
big kick out of.
And when I said that to him, he
said, yeah, it was always hard to understand
what he was saying.
Not only because he was saying things that
were very brilliant and very complex, but he
(37:36):
always had a cigar in his mouth.
And so he was talking around the cigar.
So that made me feel a little bit
better that when I started to listen to
these CDs I had of his contributions to
behavior analysis, I couldn't pick it up at
(37:56):
that time.
But when Joe Lang started to introduce it,
it started to not only make sense, but
become more important to my work and allow
me to connect the dots to the model
that I use, that didn't use the words
non-linear contingency analysis, but it was there
(38:19):
in the bucket that I called, I and
others called, distant antecedents.
That's what we mean there.
So if you think of the linear ABC,
the more immediately influential antecedents of the cue
(38:39):
and the context in which the behavior occurs,
and you think of the behavior in observable
terms, and you think of the influential consequences
that maintain the behavior, that is, reinforcers.
Then we go back to the distant antecedent
bucket and we say, I think of us
(39:00):
like being mini-me's and rummaging around in
this bucket for additional contingencies that are influencing
that linear ABC, then sort of the nucleus
of that complex of that cell or that
atom.
So what else might influence that so-called
(39:23):
problem behavior, or Joe calls it the disturbing
behavior?
Give it a name.
Like I always say, we can call it
Dumbledore, but we need a name to communicate
it.
What else influences that?
That if we knew and addressed, we may
solve the problem behavior without even directly dealing
(39:47):
with that original linear contingency.
Or would just help us solve, work with
that linear contingency.
Okay, now this makes sense to me.
And so I started looking for examples of
this, looking for examples of where just working
(40:07):
to replace the problem behavior or teach an
alternative was very hard because there were other
things going on that I needed to deal
with to get smooth sailing in that linear
ABC.
And that's where that example of an employee
who always came late, reinforcing coming on time
(40:29):
is not enough.
I had to discover this other influential contingency
influencing her tardiness, which was that she needed
to get her kid on the bus at
the same time she needed to leave for
work if she was going to be on
time.
Solve the kid on the bus problem by
asking her to come in a half hour
later so she could be both on time
(40:50):
and parent or child.
And the problem of tardiness was solved not
by directly reinforcing tardy behavior, but by solving
a nonlinear contingency floating in our orbit that
was an obstacle.
Okay, now I have an example.
(41:10):
I've got it where it's going to be
useful to us.
And then Rick and I and the whole
Penguin team and Jason Breedle, names worth mentioning
because we're working constantly in teams.
So the I word becomes irrelevant and the
(41:31):
we word becomes relevant.
But I want you to know who we
is.
Who we is, I don't know how to
conjugate that right.
We'll deal with that after the podcast.
Realize that the problem of the penguins not
swimming.
If we only thought about that in a
linear way, it would lead us to do
(41:53):
what many penguin trainers were doing, which was
add reinforcers to being in the water.
So we compete with staying out by making
going in even more reinforcing, and that can
work.
So we have to get away from this
dichotomous, something's right, wrong, you versus me, this
confrontational thinking.
(42:14):
Some people do use supersized positive reinforcers to
get those penguins in the water, and it
works beautifully.
So let's not forget that because it does
work.
It can work, I should say.
But in this case, adding fish, we just
were not seeing immediate effects.
(42:35):
Something produced the exploration of a nonlinear approach,
we said.
What is reinforcing them staying out of the
water?
Which I don't think is the obvious question
to ask without having this nonlinear gold diamond
headset available to you.
(42:58):
We ask, what do the penguins lose if
they go in the water?
These are really great questions.
It's like your question that opened the podcast.
How did we get here?
Why are we talking about negative reinforcement?
We haven't needed to talk about it for
10 years.
So we ask that question.
What do they lose?
And we realize they lose the nest.
(43:19):
Okay, you've heard the story.
Just to refresh.
So a nonlinear contingency, that is another contingency
beside our basic run of the animals in
some way, are avoiding something by getting in
the water.
So we ask what?
Not enough.
(43:40):
Nest caves add nest caves more than there
are pairs of penguins.
And like a light switch, those penguins are
in the water without having to increase the
reinforcers.
Although a big increase did occur when we
started offering live trout.
But that was sort of another chapter in
this book.
It wasn't really part of the chapter whose
(44:02):
title is Penguins Not Swimming in the Multi
-Million Dollar New Habitat.
So that's how nonlinear analysis for me became
important to learn.
And so I started studying it.
I didn't just listen to a podcast here
(44:23):
or there.
No shade on a podcast is a great
place to get information.
But it's often just not enough.
You've got to dig in much deeper, spend
more time, even spend more money, taking courses,
reading books, until you get to a place
where you feel like you can authentically represent
(44:46):
the information well.
Or if you're going to discount it and
say, no, I don't advocate going down that
path.
You've got to be an expert in that
material to defend why you think it shouldn't
be used.
So where were you, in your personal opinion,
two years ago in terms of your authenticity
(45:07):
to teach this and describe this and to
teach this application?
Are you there now?
Were you not there then?
Are you still on that?
Do you still feel like you are?
I was there now.
And now what I'm working on is not
speaking in such absolutes and then showing why
(45:30):
not.
Not just saying it, but showing what the
alternatives are.
There are alternatives to negative reinforcement for the
stop communication that are positive reinforcement, better antecedent
arrangement, lower criterion for the behavior, stimulus-stimulus
(45:51):
pairing done in a modern way, which means
that it's a short burst of stimulus-stimulus
pairing to get an operant behavior to emerge.
I can talk more about that.
Have you had Kiki Iplon on to talk
about that?
She's been on one of our shows.
Yeah.
She's really worked hard to develop what that
(46:14):
looks like, stimulus-stimulus pairing, to get to
operant behavior, to get to the yes.
You can use differential reinforcement, which would have
been a standard move.
Differential reinforcement of an alternative or incompatible behavior.
I think I've listed the main ones.
(46:36):
So where I am today is to say,
here are the tools in the toolbox.
We don't want to deal with absolutes.
You must never use negative reinforcement.
You must always use positive reinforcement.
Nor do we want to say, so I'm
(46:58):
also rejecting these absolutes that say, you must
use negative reinforcement to honor the no, and
never use positive reinforcement when an animal says
no.
Yeah.
These absolutes are holding us back, and I
find them ridiculous and exhausting.
(47:19):
But I will say it's also exhausting to
figure out what the heck this is, what's
going on.
So I spend a lot of time, my
team and I spend a lot of time
reading articles, taking courses, listening to podcasts, and
(47:39):
then finding what sticks and what doesn't.
And demonstrating why the absolutes are the next
new obstacle to remove.
As you're talking, I'm reminded of a comment
on a Facebook post we had.
And the comment was from somebody, and I
(48:00):
don't know them, and if you're this person
and you're listening to this podcast, shout out
to you and gratitude for providing an opportunity
for us all to learn.
The Facebook post was about something to do
with how to get unstuck if you're hitting
rough patches in your training.
It's a little PDF we've put together.
(48:21):
And then the question pops up, says, what
do you think about crate training?
So unrelated, or this person might have been
stuck in that space.
And I said something along the lines of,
we lean on Susan Friedman's hierarchy of behavior
change interventions.
We treat each animal as an individual, and
we'll go from there based on the learner
(48:42):
in front of us.
But I get the sense, that might just
be my sense and might not exist in
reality, that that wasn't quite adequate in what
the person was looking for.
So I'm acknowledging my own potential for growth
here and learning how to articulate what you're
talking about, how to articulate this, not to
talk in absolutes and to help.
(49:03):
That's not what I'm saying, to help others
see that in the answers that I provide
to them.
What I'm curious, if you're seeing that as
something that's holding us back, what might you
have to share with our listeners in terms
of how we can be the most effective
teachers when teaching those, like clients in their
(49:23):
house with their animals, who might be quite
at a level of understanding that makes it
really challenging for them to take in that
information?
Yeah, I think it does require expertise to
remove the absolutes and to explain why.
(49:44):
So we just removed an absolute when you
fed back what we had talked about last
time, and you had something that intimated always,
and I said may, about whether or not
there will be nonlinear.
There won't always be.
Most of the time, there are not in
our animal training, in my experience.
(50:07):
But I think that using examples really helps.
So I think it is also important to
give them the big framework, the meta framework.
We use the hierarchy to be thoughtful about
what procedure we use.
We're not just going to grab a procedure
solely because it's effective.
That's what the hierarchy does for us.
(50:29):
It encourages us to think first, to stay
with positive reinforcement or differential reinforcement as much
as possible.
And if we're going to go up, we're
going to think very carefully about it.
So that's what I want them to know
about why we keep saying the hierarchy is
useful.
What's it useful for?
(50:50):
It's useful for slowing us down and maintaining
the value that effectiveness is not enough.
It should also be the least intrusive approach
to training the crate.
And then I think giving examples is the
best we can do.
So we can say, for example – I
mean I have a video of Cesar Millan
(51:11):
teaching Marlo Thomas, an actress from old time,
to crate train her dog.
And he says, OK, get it in the
crate.
Close the door.
Good.
Doors closed.
Is it locked?
Yeah, good.
OK.
Come on.
We're going to go have a cup of
coffee for 15 minutes and then we'll come
back.
So there's that level of crate training that
(51:33):
is highly intrusive.
And I think explaining what we mean by
intrusive is important, too.
That means the animal has no control over
its own outcomes.
It can't get out of the crate.
And then on the other side of the
continuum, we have someone who says, I'm not
going to even ask my animal to be
in a crate.
I'm just never going to go away.
(51:54):
I'm never going to have a situation in
my home where the animal needs to be
crated.
I'm going to tell the Amazon guy to
leave the boxes at the end of the
driveway or whatever.
I'm just never going to open my door.
In the middle, then, are all of our
positive reinforcement solutions.
And we're going to learn to use those
(52:16):
first.
So that would be in the crate example,
shaping by approximation, selecting for behaviors that are
close.
We're going to have that conversation, which is
the big conversation.
Shaping is incredible.
And it does require very nuanced observation so
that you can catch the animal when it
naturally offers something closer to the end goal,
(52:38):
rather than having to produce the variability by
withholding.
So there's a lot in that.
And then we go from there.
So I think that having an example describing
the funny extremes and then explaining what we
do when we do it with positive reinforcement.
And then if, for example, I'm thinking of
(53:00):
let me think of her name.
It'll come to me.
She has a beautiful video on when negative
reinforcement makes sense.
So I'm thinking of, you know, like she,
Caroline.
It's two words shift.
Yes.
That's who I was thinking about.
Yeah.
(53:20):
Yeah.
So can we find her and honor her
by getting the name right?
Caroline Privia Chabot.
And I've worked at it.
Another thing to learn.
She she has a beautiful video on YouTube
where she says she explains that she works
with shelter cats.
So, you know, how would you teach a
(53:42):
shelter cat to get into a crate or
to get out of a crate?
It does involve allowing the animal to say
no, meaning stepping away.
That's negative reinforcement.
So I think the way that we talk
to people is, first of all, we have
to tell them it's not easy.
So if you came for just a simple
(54:03):
five cent answer, you came to the wrong
person.
And I would caution you if you find
the person who does that to come back
to us.
Number one, it takes effort and and time
to build that expertise.
But this is, you know, I think of
the that quote from St. Exubery, whose name
(54:27):
is French, and I've also said poorly that
we want to teach people not how to
build the ship first.
We don't want to give them hammers and
nails.
We want to show them and build a
love of the vast and endless sea.
So that's what we want to do first
is teach people to give them the experience
(54:47):
that leads to them loving the vast and
endless panorama of behavior change science with the
least intrusive method.
So when we talk about negative reinforcement, we're
not talking about using it because it's it's
we love negative reinforcement.
If we could keep aversive stimuli out of
(55:10):
the antecedent so animals don't have to say
no, that would always be our first best
choice is can you train this in a
way that the animal doesn't have to say
no?
That's number one.
Absolutely.
That's the least intrusive.
But if we do need to work with
an animal that's experiencing what we're doing with
(55:32):
intrusively, then negative reinforcement has a place because
it's a way that we honor they're saying,
no, we don't just push them around.
So I think when you're talking to people
and you say, well, how do you train
a crate to say, well, we adhere to
the intervention to the hierarchy of least intrusive
and positive reinforcement doesn't give them enough information,
(55:57):
but it is the beginning is the first
five steps of the path.
And then you have to tell the rest
of the story.
Well, I like the that you added in
there.
If you want a quick fire answer, then
you've come to the wrong person.
I like that.
Yeah.
I mean, for me, that's a very big
tooth.
(56:18):
Well, looking at the time, I wrote down
loads of notes from Susan and I talking
before we push record, talking to you, the
listener of the show.
So I could keep going and going and
going.
And I really want to, but we've been
going for about an hour.
So let's head towards wrapping it up there,
(56:40):
Susan.
Before we do, though, unless you have anything
else you'd like to add and you feel
hasn't been, you haven't had the opportunity to
share based on what we've talked about.
Oh, thanks for that.
Last, last licks.
I don't really think so.
You know, it's just a very, very exciting
world that we're living in.
And the science that helps us explain learning
(57:02):
and behavior is is itself so thrilling and
so exciting.
So I just hope that if nothing else,
we we excite people to look more, talk
more, try other things, you know, and enjoy.
Well, additionally, luckily for you, the listener of
(57:25):
the show, if you do want to learn
more from Susan, from BehaviorWorks, it does not
have to stop at this podcast episode.
There are other learning, multiple other learning opportunities
that you can get yourself involved in.
Susan, could you share with everyone what learning
(57:46):
opportunities BehaviorWorks has coming up?
OK, places people can go to learn more
about our work and what we can help
you with www.behaviorworks.org.
And then there not only are there probably
thirty five, thirty eight articles that might be
(58:06):
of interest to you written for lay people.
There's also some veterinary book chapters that I've
written available to you there.
And then take a look at the courses
that we offer because we offer many more
courses.
Now, of course, there's LLA, which is our
flagship living and learning with animals, a course
that we adore and love our students.
(58:28):
And then there's how research works.
Christy Alligood is teaching how movement works.
Laurie Stevens is teaching.
We've got Nicole Fowler-Sandowski teaching how retrieving
works without retreat, without really killing anything.
But all the great behaviors of the retriever.
(58:49):
We've got Kiki Yablon doing an exciting book
club, reading Skinner books about behavior, I think
was the last one.
And we have a journal reading group.
Christy Alligood runs to be able to learn
how to read those journal articles.
I hope I'm not forgetting anybody, but it's
all listed on the website under courses.
(59:13):
And the other thing we have is career
connections where people who are interested in becoming
trainers who are behavior analysts or behavior analysts
who are interested in becoming trainers can talk
with Christy and I about how to build
that bridge the way that we have.
So I think that's the story.
(59:34):
And then just all my podcasts and hope
to see some of you on the road.
Clicker Expo is coming up in March in
Chicago.
And yeah, busy, exciting, happy life.
Disseminating science.
What could be better?
Are you reinforcing?
Yeah.
The 250 episodes keeps bringing me back.
(59:57):
Me too.
It's bringing both of us back and a
lot of other people who are so grateful
that you've built this, this reach for people
to get information that they need and to
become more empowered.
And then to pay it forward to empower
others.
It's wonderful, right?
We're loving those ripples.
Thank you to the listener for spreading them.
(01:00:19):
We will link to everything Susan's mentioned in
the show notes.
One last time from myself and on behalf
of all who have been listening, we really
appreciate you taking the time to hang out
with us at ATA Susan.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Hope to see you at 300.
(01:00:39):
And thank you so much for listening as
well.
This is your host, Ryan Cartlidge, signing off
from this episode of the Animal Training Academy
podcast show.
We hope today's conversation inspired you and equipped
you with new tools for your trainer's toolbox.
Remember, every challenge in training is an opportunity
(01:01:01):
to learn and sharpen your animal training geekery.
Embrace the rough patches, learn from them and
keep improving.
And don't forget the path to growing your
skills and expanding your knowledge continues beyond this
episode.
Visit www.atamember.com to join our supportive
(01:01:26):
membership where you will find a community of
trainers just like you.
Together, we're making a huge positive difference in
the lives of animal and human learners worldwide.
Until next time, keep honing your skills, stay
awesome.
And remember, every interaction with an animal or
(01:01:48):
human learner is your opportunity to create ripples.
We're here cheering you on every step of
the way.
See you at the next episode.
Welcome to the Animal Training Academy podcast show.
I'm your host, Ryan Carledge, and I'm passionate
about helping you master your animal training skills
using the most positive and least intrusive approaches.
Here at ATA, we understand that navigating the
vast challenges you encounter in training requires a
(00:27):
comprehensive base of knowledge and experience.
It's common to face obstacles and rough patches
on your journey that can leave you feeling
overwhelmed and stressed.
Therefore, since 2015, we have been on a
mission to empower animal training geeks worldwide.
We've aided thousands in developing their skills, expanding
(00:51):
their knowledge, boosting their confidence, and maximizing their
positive impact on all the animal and human
learners they work with.
We are excited to do the same for
you.
Simply visit www.atamember.com, join our vibrant
(01:12):
community, and geek out with us.
And of course, in the meantime, enjoy this
free podcast episode as we explore new ways
to help you supercharge your training skills, grow
your knowledge, and build your confidence so that
you can craft a life that positively impacts
(01:32):
every learner you encounter.
We will kick off today's episode, number 250
of the ATA podcast show, and I'm thrilled
to continue our tradition of having the wonderful
Dr. Susan Friedman, one of the most significant
(01:54):
influencers on my animal training and behavior journey,
join us every 50th episode.
Susan, it's fantastic, as always, to have you
back with us, and I'm incredibly grateful for
you always making time for us here at
Animal Training Academy.
Yeah, you can see, and maybe the audience
can hear, I've got this gigantic smile.
(02:16):
I am so excited for your success to
have this level of reach.
250 is an incredible number.
Congratulations, and thanks for including me in that
joy.
Yeah, it's nine years, I think, ATA's celebrating
its 10th birthday this year, a decade of
(02:37):
improving the lives of learners all over the
planet of all different species.
We've been fortunate here at the Academy to
have you and Rick Heister join us multiple
times since episode 200, and episode 200 was
(02:58):
released on May the 9th, 2023, so nearly
two years has passed since then.
That was a very popular episode.
Lots of people reached out to me and
said how valuable and helpful it was for
them with the things we talked about.
We talked about functional assessments and intervention designs.
(03:19):
We talked about negative reinforcement.
We talked about nonlinear contingency analysis, and then
when discussing the topics that you'd most like
to cover today, you mentioned some of the
same subjects, negative reinforcement, nonlinear contingency analysis.
Thinking back to that episode, number 200, with
negative reinforcement, we talked about how when an
(03:41):
animal says no by avoiding or escaping something,
that behavior itself is reinforced negatively.
And we talked about how this highlighted the
importance of teaching animals an appropriate way to
communicate their discomfort rather than resorting to undesirable
behaviors like ones, for example, we might label
(04:01):
as aggressive.
Some of the key takeaways I took from
that recording a couple of years ago was
that animals should have a clear and safe
way to express discomfort.
Trainers should recognize when behavior is motivated by
the removal of an aversive stimulus, and considerations
of the ethical use of negative reinforcement involves
(04:23):
giving the learner control rather than coercion.
We then talked about the distinction between ethical
applications of negative reinforcement versus coercive applications, such
as forceful handling, air pinches, or prong collars,
where I think some of the examples we
used, and how the goal should always be
to reduce reliance on coercion and increase voluntary
(04:46):
participation and training.
So I'm super interested, and I know the
listeners will be as well, to hear how
your thoughts have continued to evolve over the
last few years on this topic.
Yeah, you know, your list of the things
that we talked about and that you got
from it is really extraordinary.
(05:07):
So I so appreciate that when we talk
about something, you take it and streamline it
and are able to describe it back in
even more meaningful ways than I gave it
to you the first time.
So that description that you just did is
(05:28):
really the full story.
Really great.
It's such a luxury to work with and
talk with people who are so much on
the same wavelength that when you say something,
they can elaborate on it and make it
even better.
So thanks for that.
Yeah, the discussion continues.
(05:49):
It remains as a main, shiny thing for
me to continue to figure out how are
we going to use negative reinforcement well?
Where does it come in?
And so I keep refining my ideas and
understanding.
(06:11):
When we agree that animals have a right
to say no, we're saying that we will
honor the no by backing away.
And then we also need to have the
skills to shape the yes to be able
to build, to teach new skills.
So that's become kind of the saying that
(06:32):
I am working with that I'm trying to
build towards is honor the no and shape
the yes.
So what does that look like?
We can teach people to better observe the
no when it occurs, that they reinforce by
(06:55):
moving away, negatively reinforce nos that are milder,
earlier forms of the no, the precursors.
So what you've got is animals communicating no
with just an ear twitch instead of a
full on growl.
And we can think about different ways of
(07:17):
using negative reinforcement to honor the no.
For example, ready for some examples?
Okay.
For example, I've identified in my trying to
analyze the possibilities that there are ways of
negatively reinforcing a no, moving away to honor
(07:40):
the no or removing the tool or lowering
the criterion for what we're asking for.
We can either do it with a sub
-threshold approach where we move away.
And as we go forward towards the animal,
we strive to never trigger the big no
(08:03):
or any no.
And those two sub-threshold ways, one way
is what Joe Lang has been describing for
us, which is a time-based procedure.
We move forward, stay there for three seconds
or some short number of seconds, and then
we back away.
(08:24):
And then we go a little more forward,
wait for about three seconds and back away,
never triggering the no until we can get
close enough that the animal is no longer
saying no.
That's one version of using negative reinforcement to
honor the no.
Another one is a contingency, not time-based,
(08:48):
where we move forward, only sub-threshold, never
triggering the no.
And we wait until the animal does a
behavior that shows an increase in their calm
affect, lower arousal, and then we step back.
So now instead of waiting a few seconds,
(09:10):
we're waiting for a calmer behavior or another
calm behavior.
And I'll give examples with animals in a
minute, and then we step back.
And then, of course, there is the third
procedure that is over-threshold, that we don't
recommend, where you trigger the full-on no
(09:31):
response.
Imagine a dog just, you know, out of
its mind growling and straining at the lead,
and you wait for them to calm down,
and then you move away.
So those are the some—when we say honor
the no with negative reinforcement, don't just work
through the no or don't force the animal
(09:52):
to give up the no.
You know, what does matching that function, negative
reinforcement, look like?
So let me quickly give you examples with
animals, then I'll turn it back to you
for more questions, Ryan.
For example, if we have a bird that,
you know, flies to the mesh when you
(10:14):
approach to drive you away.
So we see that there's high intensity, they
bang the mesh, their feathers are up, their
eyes are flashing.
So those are all the emotional behaviors that
are tracking your close proximity.
Rather than waiting for that animal to calm
(10:37):
down, the sub-threshold approach would be to
only go as close as that bird remains
calm.
Wait for three seconds, back away, and then
repeat as we move slightly forward.
That would be the example of that over
-threshold behavior.
You got too close.
We would consider that an error in the
(10:57):
procedure, and you should move away.
We could talk about it with dogs.
So, for example, or anything, really.
We've used it with elephants, giraffes.
If the animal shows you that they're calm
while you're working on the hoof until you
bring out the knife, then you would remove
(11:18):
the knife.
And then you would have to bring that
knife back in with some procedure to get
the yes.
So would it be, you know, some kind
of time-based procedure, or would it be
contingent on a calmer behavior?
So those are some of the things we're
talking about when we talk about matching the
function of the problem behavior when it's negative
(11:39):
reinforcement.
How can we use negative reinforcement to teach
the animal that saying no is not necessary,
not in its favor, and that saying yes
would be the more reinforcing alternative?
Did that make sense?
I feel myself kind of losing my own
thread as I describe it this way.
(12:00):
What do you make of that information?
I'm grateful for you being on our show
and being willing to lose your thread as
we talk about these things.
Absolutely.
I think having the three uses of negative
reinforcement is helpful to think about time-based,
(12:21):
contingency-based, or over threshold.
And I'm curious as you're talking, what are
you seeing in your work?
Because it's been two years since we did
episode 200 where we touched on this topic
as well.
I mean, it still is front of mind
for you.
And I'm curious if the reason being is
you're seeing stuff as you go out there
(12:42):
and work with trainers and work in different
communities.
It's keeping this really relevant for you and
important to talk about.
What is the biggest challenge you see with
professional trainers?
Is it a limit of application, a limit
of knowledge?
Is it because people are using this sub
-threshold more than other tools?
People are not reasonably understanding negative reinforcement.
(13:07):
What are you seeing that's keeping this so
relevant for you?
Amazing question.
I think what makes it so relevant to
me why I'm spending time in this area
is because people don't see the nose.
They don't see the nose until they become
really loud.
So we have animals leaving the training session
(13:28):
now that we've given them the freedom to
just walk away and find their reinforcers elsewhere.
We see animals escalating to the point of
a giraffe smacking a trainer with its head
or an eland kicking.
So even now when I look at some
(13:49):
of the videos that I use in LLA
as great examples, I'm starting to see like
within the first two seconds of the video,
there was a no that we missed entirely
because it was very, very small.
So I think the biggest, maybe it's not
a challenge, but the biggest contribution, helping people
(14:14):
change what they do, is recalibrating their eyes
to see these precursor behaviors of no, so
that the animal never has to escalate to
these obvious, intense, high response cost or even
dangerous versions of no.
(14:34):
So it's catching that no early and then
knowing what to do about it.
And so building observation skills.
And how, so I don't know how to
ask this in a way that's going to
represent the muddle thoughts that I have, but
how have we got to here?
Is it because we've spent too much time
(14:56):
focusing on teaching positive reinforcement and not enough
time also talking about using negative reinforcement, which
has limited our ability to do the observations?
Again, this is really an incredible question for
me to ponder.
How did we get here that we're spending
so much time on thinking about how to
use negative reinforcement?
(15:17):
Not only how to use it well, but
when to use it.
When, for me, when is when the animal
says no.
That's when we pull it out of our
pack and say, OK, I'm going to honor
that no and move away.
And then your question is, how did we
get here that we're just now recognizing animals
(15:40):
are saying no and that we can respond
to those no's in order to get to
the yes?
I think it's partly because we we work
with animals often that say yes a lot.
We don't work with these really hard behaviors
that require animals to stand for a really
(16:01):
long time, relatively speaking, as with a blood
draw.
I mean, an animal might have to stand
for five, six, seven minutes for a blood
draw.
We weren't asking.
We weren't doing the behaviors that are requiring
so much of animals that saying no now
becomes part of the dialogue, part of the
(16:23):
conversation that we're having with with animals.
So we're asking for things like blood draws.
We're asking for things like radiographs, for sonograms.
We're asking animals to stay still with painful
procedures, potentially painful, like nicing and abscess out
(16:46):
of a giraffe's hook voluntarily.
So you see that question.
This is why I really adore working with
you as we do every 50 podcasts is
because that is a really important question to
have an answer to.
Why now are we talking about R-?
Are we saying here's the scenario where we
(17:10):
would move it from the top of the
hierarchy?
We would pull it down from the speed
bump and the caution sign, and we would
say, use it under this particular situation.
Why are we finding ourselves in situations where
animals are saying no to us?
And I think the main answer is that
(17:31):
our positive reinforcement training has been so successful
that we are now asking animals to be
partners in more intense medical procedures rather than
putting them into squeeze shoots or netting them,
toweling them or anesthetizing them.
(17:52):
That's huge.
When you start to ask when positive reinforcement
training has become so effective that you're now
asking for these, you're asking for more than
just shifting from A to B or to
move out to an area, interact with a
(18:14):
new enrichment item.
As we've asked for more and more because
positive reinforcement has shown us we can have
these dialogues instead of these command based monologues.
Now we're saying, hang on, because I'm seeing
that what we're asking is big enough that
(18:37):
the animals are saying no.
And we have to say, you can say
no.
And when you say no, instead of ignoring
it or saying, oh, gee, we're going to
have to anesthetize the giraffe because we can't
get past the no.
We're saying, wait a minute, here are strategies
to get past the no, honoring the no
(18:58):
and strategies to get past it.
So we can do these more.
They're not so more complicated as they ask
more of the animal to give more voluntary
behavior under increased duress to avoid doing things
that ultimately take away their power to be
(19:21):
partners, squeeze shoots and anesthesia.
So I'm able to better articulate this for
myself because I am guided by and lean
on the hierarchy and teach that to others
and negative reinforcement being above positive reinforcement.
And it's not and you can see that
(19:44):
I'm struggling to articulate this.
Is it not that we're choosing negative reinforcement
as a strategy, but we we need to
know how to use it because animals are
going to say no.
And then and then we need to real
time select that procedure.
Yeah.
So to add to what you're saying, and
I appreciate you having to walk lightly to
(20:05):
figure out where you can plant your feet.
We're now doing procedures with animals asking for
volunteer cooperative responses from them that are harder
than we have asked for in the past.
In the past, when we've asked for things
like health care and blood draws, we've done
(20:29):
it with more restraint.
We didn't we didn't ask for it to
be voluntary or for them to be partners
in our care.
Positive reinforcement training has been so successful that
we keep pushing that boundary of where we
can apply it.
And now we are actually doing voluntary blood
(20:52):
draws.
I mean, just stop and think about it
for a minute.
It's incredible.
And part of doing these more difficult behaviors
where we're asking for more, but still maintain
our goal of having a dialogue with the
animal, a partnership through these procedures.
(21:13):
Then we have to realize they may say
no more.
And what are we going to do when
they do?
So we say, OK, we're going to honor,
we're going to respect the no, which means
going up there and grabbing negative reinforcement.
That becomes respecting the no, because that's what
the animal is telling us in the dialogue.
(21:35):
When their ears pin back and their tail
starts to wish and their shoulders twitch or
they move their head away, they lean back.
All of those are saying you've now gotten
into a territory of partnership where you're leaning
on me more and it's getting uncomfortable.
(21:58):
So we can just ignore that and say,
well, we cannot train this behavior with this
individual with positive reinforcement.
So we're going to need to anesthetize them
or put them in a squeeze chute.
Or we can say, hang on, if we
honor the no, so we teach them there's
always an escape route.
(22:18):
We will hear the no and we will
respond to it.
And then we need to develop our skills
at competing with the no to get the
yes.
That's how we get animals that dance for
seven minutes for a jugular blood draw or
keep their head still on a target while
we give an injection.
(22:40):
Or while we work on their hooves in
ways that are not so comfortable, that are
not just brushing the bottom of the hoof,
but are knifing and rasping.
So if we're going to do that as
partners in these procedures, that breaks through to
kind of the next level of training.
(23:01):
Who would have thought 20 years ago that
you could get a voluntary blood draw from
a hyena?
You know, excited to see you, responding to
the head back cue and holding that for
seven minutes.
It is incredible, you know.
But if what you're asking is to just
(23:21):
move A to B in the morning and
then back to A in the afternoon, you
know, that's a very different level of shaping
behavior.
Or you're going to shape a show behavior.
That's a very different level of training than
asking an animal to stand still while I
knife and abscess.
(23:42):
Can it be done with positive reinforcement?
Who knew?
Part of the answer is yes.
If, first, you honor the no.
Does that clarify?
Yes, it does.
I think.
So it's because we're been so successful with
positive reinforcement that we're starting to ask what
(24:05):
else is possible.
And we're starting to ask for behaviors that
might be labeled as harder, more uncomfortable.
And so as you just finished up there
with part of the answer is yes, we
can do this with positive reinforcement as long
as we honor the no.
And so then we need those different parts
(24:27):
of the hierarchy to strengthen our likelihood of
success.
That's right.
And it should really be no surprise that
we can go up and down, because in
all three articles and all of my presentations
and podcasts, I've always described the hierarchy, not
(24:50):
as a recipe, but as a guideline and
that you can move up as needed.
You just need to make sure that moving
up is necessary.
And how do we make sure?
Well, I mean, one guideline is to ask
other experts what their opinion is and to
not work alone, making these decisions in a
(25:12):
vacuum.
So I think that is very much part
of how we got to say, here's an
example of where you would go up, fetch
out negative reinforcement.
And then I think everybody agrees who's talking
about this.
You get to positive reinforcement as quickly as
possible.
I've not met anybody suggesting that it escalate
(25:34):
to punishment, positive punishment or negative punishment.
That's where we're at.
And really, Ryan, I just want to say
again that this question you've asked me is
so important for me to have thought through
is how did we get here?
We haven't used negative reinforcement in our work
for years.
(25:55):
How did we get here?
And I think at least part of the
answer is we're training more harder behaviors.
From the animal's point of view, we're asking
for more.
You the listener, no doubt this is going
to be helpful for you.
I know that it's helpful for me.
And also, I love that I did LLA
(26:17):
for the first time in 2010.
So 15 years now since I was just
lucky enough to do that with you.
And even now, just to hear you talk
about moving up and down.
Every time I talk to you about the
hierarchy or about functional assessments, there's some other
bit that my learning history and my genetics
(26:40):
and who I am as a learner up
until that point has always been in front
of me, but hasn't been as clear.
So just giving little bits there that have
always been included in the things that I've
read multiple times over the last 15 years.
I just get clarity right now in this
conversation.
So I'm glad I asked that question.
I'm sure it's definitely going to be helpful
(27:02):
for our listeners as well.
We talked about three ways that we can
work with negative reinforcement, which were time-based,
contingency-based, over-threshold.
Where the over-threshold would not be recommended.
No.
And then some might also give food, for
(27:23):
example, if they get a no.
So does that fit in your thinking?
It really does.
That's one of the challenges.
I don't know that challenges is a big
word.
I would say this is one of the
interesting bumps in the road that people have
shown us they're experiencing, and that gives us
(27:43):
an opportunity to think it through.
One of them is just observing these subtle
no's.
People just don't see them.
The best way to see them is to
look at video.
It is not real time.
So I want to give that tip.
A video.
And then we stop, start, and continue with
that video.
We look, and then we play it again.
(28:03):
Stop there.
Did you see that change in weight?
That's where you should have put down the
target stick or whatever.
So we're actually going over video.
It's a very important strategy.
And then this other kind of, in my
opinion, it's an obstacle to using these techniques
(28:24):
well in this circumstance, is that people will,
you know, let the animal, give that animal
the space and the autonomy to step back.
And then they'll also give a positive reinforcer.
They'll also give a piece of food.
So right now I'm envisioning a giraffe, who
I have a lot of opportunities to learn
(28:45):
from in my zoo consulting and working with
the great Amy Schill's great innovator.
So let's say the giraffe has its foot
on the block, and we see a little
tell, a little no, like an ear flick.
So we might encourage that animal to step
back or move our hands right away and
(29:05):
step back.
And then people will also not only remove
hands, but they'll offer a cracker.
And we've realized that if you do both,
it's hard to compete with teaching the new
skill, because the net gain for saying no,
if you'll allow us to talk in this
(29:27):
kind of metaphorical way, the net gain for
saying no, is that only you get to
have the hands removed and step away, but
you also get the cracker.
That's sort of the bundle.
Then the bundle for coming forward and keeping
your foot on the block for hoof care
is just the cracker.
(29:48):
So we see that there is kind of
a differential gain and loss equation here that
we have to account for.
So our recommendation is to let negative reinforcement
reinforce the no and save those positive reinforcers
(30:09):
for the yeses, so that now the bundle
of reinforcers for yes is the food, hopefully
working with a love trainer, solving problems, all
the things that we can put into that
bundle of reinforcers for the yes.
Praise, like if you're working with a dog,
(30:32):
it might be the food, treat, praise, petting,
all of that for the yes and for
the no, hands off the negative reinforcer.
You can see that this is related to
all of the seeds that grew from Emily
and Ava and Peggy is those start behaviors.
(30:55):
That's what we want to teach is the
start behaviors, the stop behaviors, and the continue
behaviors.
We want all three of those in the
repertoire of the animal.
Now that we're asking for hard things like
blood draws.
And so that means we need to teach
them.
(31:15):
We teach start behaviors when the animal leans
forward and invites us in and we reinforce
that.
We teach stop behaviors when an ear twitches
rather than kicking us by removing our hands
or stepping away.
And we teach continue behaviors by only continuing
(31:37):
to reinforce while the animal is showing us.
I'm going to throw in another term, assent
behaviors related to consent behaviors.
But consent, at least in this country, is
a legal term.
So there's another term for working with learners
that can't sign a contract, and that's assent.
(31:59):
So we're looking for all three, stop behaviors,
start, stop, and continue.
And continue is described so beautifully by Anna
Linehan, who works with Joe Lang, whose nonlinear
analysis course I took.
So this is like the third course I've
taken and many more second course and many,
(32:21):
many seminars online where she says to reach
really the highest standard.
We need those no behaviors.
Those are the stops.
We need to start behaviors, which is an
animal, you know, enthusiastically showing with their behavior.
They want to proceed working with us.
(32:41):
We've got to see those and continue behaviors.
And then those are assent, the start and
continue are assent behaviors.
And when the animal says no, stop, then
assent has been withdrawn and we need to
stop what we're doing.
So I'm thinking of it.
(33:02):
Yeah.
You know, in human, in human feedback, the
team feedback, we've talked about this.
I think it started with a man named
Philip Daniels.
I can't find original writing of his, but
everybody attributes this to him.
The what do I want you to start
when we work together?
(33:22):
What do I want you to stop doing?
What do I want you to continue doing?
That stop, start and continue theme has been
in the human resources world for a very
long time.
And it's well used across all the different
people who are consulting and coaching and so
(33:43):
forth.
And I realized the dot to connect whatever
you want to call it, saying yes, saying
no, saying start, start buttons.
It's back to that framework.
We want animals to have a history of
reinforcement for saying no.
That's where negative reinforcement comes in.
We stop what we're doing to say stop
(34:05):
and to say continue.
And when an animal can communicate all of
those to us, then we can ask them
to do really hard things.
Because they're either long duration stationing like a
blood draw or have care or like painful,
uncomfortable in some way, like dealing with a
(34:27):
hoof abscess or a wound.
Amazing.
Well, I'm glad I asked that question.
And I find myself really curious about you,
the listener and what you've been implementing and
how what we're sharing in this episode.
Share similarities with your application or differs.
(34:47):
Please feel free to reach out and share.
I'm super curious to know what everyone's up
to and how this information is landing with
everyone.
Let's move on, Susan, unless you have something
else you'd like to add about negative reinforcement
before we do, because I don't want to
talk about non-linear contingency analysis as well.
If I remember correctly, back to episode 200,
(35:09):
we discussed how behavior is not solely determined
by a simple, immediate ABC chain, but rather
by a network of interconnected contingencies.
The only change I would make in that
description is I would say may not, because
most often in my experience, that one linear
(35:30):
ABC is very informative.
And then we talked about, and I do
remember as I was writing this this morning,
to keep it fresh in my brain, not
because I'm completely unorganized.
I was thinking about that.
How do I word that?
Is it accurate to say that applies to
all behaviors or some behaviors?
(35:51):
So thank you for that.
I appreciate that.
And then when we talked about non-linear
contingency analysis acknowledges that multiple antecedents and contingencies
can interact in complex ways to influence the
behavior.
We talked about multiple examples in that episode,
including an employee arriving late to work.
(36:11):
And we talked about penguins in a zoo
context.
So just for everyone listening, if you want
to hear this stuff, I encourage you to
listen to episode 200.
You can do so after this episode, and
that will tie in nicely.
I'll link to it in the show notes.
And also, just while I'm talking about that,
I'll also link to episodes we did with
Amy Shields, who Susan was just talking about
(36:32):
with her work with giraffes, to hear about,
hear in her words as well, describe some
of the things that we've been talking about
today.
Maybe for now, though, can we just refresh
everyone listening, what we mean when we talk
about non-linear contingency analysis, and then how
your thoughts have evolved on this topic over
the last few years?
(36:53):
Yeah.
I mean, when I first heard Gold Diamond
on a CD that I have from 1977
or something, I couldn't make sense of it,
I have to say.
I just did not understand what we were
talking about.
(37:15):
And it's funny, because my mentor, Carl Cheney,
was Gold Diamond's TA, I think I might
have mentioned to you, which I get a
big kick out of.
And when I said that to him, he
said, yeah, it was always hard to understand
what he was saying.
Not only because he was saying things that
were very brilliant and very complex, but he
(37:36):
always had a cigar in his mouth.
And so he was talking around the cigar.
So that made me feel a little bit
better that when I started to listen to
these CDs I had of his contributions to
behavior analysis, I couldn't pick it up at
(37:56):
that time.
But when Joe Lang started to introduce it,
it started to not only make sense, but
become more important to my work and allow
me to connect the dots to the model
that I use, that didn't use the words
non-linear contingency analysis, but it was there
(38:19):
in the bucket that I called, I and
others called, distant antecedents.
That's what we mean there.
So if you think of the linear ABC,
the more immediately influential antecedents of the cue
(38:39):
and the context in which the behavior occurs,
and you think of the behavior in observable
terms, and you think of the influential consequences
that maintain the behavior, that is, reinforcers.
Then we go back to the distant antecedent
bucket and we say, I think of us
(39:00):
like being mini-me's and rummaging around in
this bucket for additional contingencies that are influencing
that linear ABC, then sort of the nucleus
of that complex of that cell or that
atom.
So what else might influence that so-called
(39:23):
problem behavior, or Joe calls it the disturbing
behavior?
Give it a name.
Like I always say, we can call it
Dumbledore, but we need a name to communicate
it.
What else influences that?
That if we knew and addressed, we may
solve the problem behavior without even directly dealing
(39:47):
with that original linear contingency.
Or would just help us solve, work with
that linear contingency.
Okay, now this makes sense to me.
And so I started looking for examples of
this, looking for examples of where just working
(40:07):
to replace the problem behavior or teach an
alternative was very hard because there were other
things going on that I needed to deal
with to get smooth sailing in that linear
ABC.
And that's where that example of an employee
who always came late, reinforcing coming on time
(40:29):
is not enough.
I had to discover this other influential contingency
influencing her tardiness, which was that she needed
to get her kid on the bus at
the same time she needed to leave for
work if she was going to be on
time.
Solve the kid on the bus problem by
asking her to come in a half hour
later so she could be both on time
(40:50):
and parent or child.
And the problem of tardiness was solved not
by directly reinforcing tardy behavior, but by solving
a nonlinear contingency floating in our orbit that
was an obstacle.
Okay, now I have an example.
(41:10):
I've got it where it's going to be
useful to us.
And then Rick and I and the whole
Penguin team and Jason Breedle, names worth mentioning
because we're working constantly in teams.
So the I word becomes irrelevant and the
(41:31):
we word becomes relevant.
But I want you to know who we
is.
Who we is, I don't know how to
conjugate that right.
We'll deal with that after the podcast.
Realize that the problem of the penguins not
swimming.
If we only thought about that in a
linear way, it would lead us to do
(41:53):
what many penguin trainers were doing, which was
add reinforcers to being in the water.
So we compete with staying out by making
going in even more reinforcing, and that can
work.
So we have to get away from this
dichotomous, something's right, wrong, you versus me, this
confrontational thinking.
(42:14):
Some people do use supersized positive reinforcers to
get those penguins in the water, and it
works beautifully.
So let's not forget that because it does
work.
It can work, I should say.
But in this case, adding fish, we just
were not seeing immediate effects.
(42:35):
Something produced the exploration of a nonlinear approach,
we said.
What is reinforcing them staying out of the
water?
Which I don't think is the obvious question
to ask without having this nonlinear gold diamond
headset available to you.
(42:58):
We ask, what do the penguins lose if
they go in the water?
These are really great questions.
It's like your question that opened the podcast.
How did we get here?
Why are we talking about negative reinforcement?
We haven't needed to talk about it for
10 years.
So we ask that question.
What do they lose?
And we realize they lose the nest.
(43:19):
Okay, you've heard the story.
Just to refresh.
So a nonlinear contingency, that is another contingency
beside our basic run of the animals in
some way, are avoiding something by getting in
the water.
So we ask what?
Not enough.
(43:40):
Nest caves add nest caves more than there
are pairs of penguins.
And like a light switch, those penguins are
in the water without having to increase the
reinforcers.
Although a big increase did occur when we
started offering live trout.
But that was sort of another chapter in
this book.
It wasn't really part of the chapter whose
(44:02):
title is Penguins Not Swimming in the Multi
-Million Dollar New Habitat.
So that's how nonlinear analysis for me became
important to learn.
And so I started studying it.
I didn't just listen to a podcast here
(44:23):
or there.
No shade on a podcast is a great
place to get information.
But it's often just not enough.
You've got to dig in much deeper, spend
more time, even spend more money, taking courses,
reading books, until you get to a place
where you feel like you can authentically represent
(44:46):
the information well.
Or if you're going to discount it and
say, no, I don't advocate going down that
path.
You've got to be an expert in that
material to defend why you think it shouldn't
be used.
So where were you, in your personal opinion,
two years ago in terms of your authenticity
(45:07):
to teach this and describe this and to
teach this application?
Are you there now?
Were you not there then?
Are you still on that?
Do you still feel like you are?
I was there now.
And now what I'm working on is not
speaking in such absolutes and then showing why
(45:30):
not.
Not just saying it, but showing what the
alternatives are.
There are alternatives to negative reinforcement for the
stop communication that are positive reinforcement, better antecedent
arrangement, lower criterion for the behavior, stimulus-stimulus
(45:51):
pairing done in a modern way, which means
that it's a short burst of stimulus-stimulus
pairing to get an operant behavior to emerge.
I can talk more about that.
Have you had Kiki Iplon on to talk
about that?
She's been on one of our shows.
Yeah.
She's really worked hard to develop what that
(46:14):
looks like, stimulus-stimulus pairing, to get to
operant behavior, to get to the yes.
You can use differential reinforcement, which would have
been a standard move.
Differential reinforcement of an alternative or incompatible behavior.
I think I've listed the main ones.
(46:36):
So where I am today is to say,
here are the tools in the toolbox.
We don't want to deal with absolutes.
You must never use negative reinforcement.
You must always use positive reinforcement.
Nor do we want to say, so I'm
(46:58):
also rejecting these absolutes that say, you must
use negative reinforcement to honor the no, and
never use positive reinforcement when an animal says
no.
Yeah.
These absolutes are holding us back, and I
find them ridiculous and exhausting.
(47:19):
But I will say it's also exhausting to
figure out what the heck this is, what's
going on.
So I spend a lot of time, my
team and I spend a lot of time
reading articles, taking courses, listening to podcasts, and
(47:39):
then finding what sticks and what doesn't.
And demonstrating why the absolutes are the next
new obstacle to remove.
As you're talking, I'm reminded of a comment
on a Facebook post we had.
And the comment was from somebody, and I
(48:00):
don't know them, and if you're this person
and you're listening to this podcast, shout out
to you and gratitude for providing an opportunity
for us all to learn.
The Facebook post was about something to do
with how to get unstuck if you're hitting
rough patches in your training.
It's a little PDF we've put together.
(48:21):
And then the question pops up, says, what
do you think about crate training?
So unrelated, or this person might have been
stuck in that space.
And I said something along the lines of,
we lean on Susan Friedman's hierarchy of behavior
change interventions.
We treat each animal as an individual, and
we'll go from there based on the learner
(48:42):
in front of us.
But I get the sense, that might just
be my sense and might not exist in
reality, that that wasn't quite adequate in what
the person was looking for.
So I'm acknowledging my own potential for growth
here and learning how to articulate what you're
talking about, how to articulate this, not to
talk in absolutes and to help.
(49:03):
That's not what I'm saying, to help others
see that in the answers that I provide
to them.
What I'm curious, if you're seeing that as
something that's holding us back, what might you
have to share with our listeners in terms
of how we can be the most effective
teachers when teaching those, like clients in their
(49:23):
house with their animals, who might be quite
at a level of understanding that makes it
really challenging for them to take in that
information?
Yeah, I think it does require expertise to
remove the absolutes and to explain why.
(49:44):
So we just removed an absolute when you
fed back what we had talked about last
time, and you had something that intimated always,
and I said may, about whether or not
there will be nonlinear.
There won't always be.
Most of the time, there are not in
our animal training, in my experience.
(50:07):
But I think that using examples really helps.
So I think it is also important to
give them the big framework, the meta framework.
We use the hierarchy to be thoughtful about
what procedure we use.
We're not just going to grab a procedure
solely because it's effective.
That's what the hierarchy does for us.
(50:29):
It encourages us to think first, to stay
with positive reinforcement or differential reinforcement as much
as possible.
And if we're going to go up, we're
going to think very carefully about it.
So that's what I want them to know
about why we keep saying the hierarchy is
useful.
What's it useful for?
(50:50):
It's useful for slowing us down and maintaining
the value that effectiveness is not enough.
It should also be the least intrusive approach
to training the crate.
And then I think giving examples is the
best we can do.
So we can say, for example – I
mean I have a video of Cesar Millan
(51:11):
teaching Marlo Thomas, an actress from old time,
to crate train her dog.
And he says, OK, get it in the
crate.
Close the door.
Good.
Doors closed.
Is it locked?
Yeah, good.
OK.
Come on.
We're going to go have a cup of
coffee for 15 minutes and then we'll come
back.
So there's that level of crate training that
(51:33):
is highly intrusive.
And I think explaining what we mean by
intrusive is important, too.
That means the animal has no control over
its own outcomes.
It can't get out of the crate.
And then on the other side of the
continuum, we have someone who says, I'm not
going to even ask my animal to be
in a crate.
I'm just never going to go away.
(51:54):
I'm never going to have a situation in
my home where the animal needs to be
crated.
I'm going to tell the Amazon guy to
leave the boxes at the end of the
driveway or whatever.
I'm just never going to open my door.
In the middle, then, are all of our
positive reinforcement solutions.
And we're going to learn to use those
(52:16):
first.
So that would be in the crate example,
shaping by approximation, selecting for behaviors that are
close.
We're going to have that conversation, which is
the big conversation.
Shaping is incredible.
And it does require very nuanced observation so
that you can catch the animal when it
naturally offers something closer to the end goal,
(52:38):
rather than having to produce the variability by
withholding.
So there's a lot in that.
And then we go from there.
So I think that having an example describing
the funny extremes and then explaining what we
do when we do it with positive reinforcement.
And then if, for example, I'm thinking of
(53:00):
let me think of her name.
It'll come to me.
She has a beautiful video on when negative
reinforcement makes sense.
So I'm thinking of, you know, like she,
Caroline.
It's two words shift.
Yes.
That's who I was thinking about.
Yeah.
(53:20):
Yeah.
So can we find her and honor her
by getting the name right?
Caroline Privia Chabot.
And I've worked at it.
Another thing to learn.
She she has a beautiful video on YouTube
where she says she explains that she works
with shelter cats.
So, you know, how would you teach a
(53:42):
shelter cat to get into a crate or
to get out of a crate?
It does involve allowing the animal to say
no, meaning stepping away.
That's negative reinforcement.
So I think the way that we talk
to people is, first of all, we have
to tell them it's not easy.
So if you came for just a simple
(54:03):
five cent answer, you came to the wrong
person.
And I would caution you if you find
the person who does that to come back
to us.
Number one, it takes effort and and time
to build that expertise.
But this is, you know, I think of
the that quote from St. Exubery, whose name
(54:27):
is French, and I've also said poorly that
we want to teach people not how to
build the ship first.
We don't want to give them hammers and
nails.
We want to show them and build a
love of the vast and endless sea.
So that's what we want to do first
is teach people to give them the experience
(54:47):
that leads to them loving the vast and
endless panorama of behavior change science with the
least intrusive method.
So when we talk about negative reinforcement, we're
not talking about using it because it's it's
we love negative reinforcement.
If we could keep aversive stimuli out of
(55:10):
the antecedent so animals don't have to say
no, that would always be our first best
choice is can you train this in a
way that the animal doesn't have to say
no?
That's number one.
Absolutely.
That's the least intrusive.
But if we do need to work with
an animal that's experiencing what we're doing with
(55:32):
intrusively, then negative reinforcement has a place because
it's a way that we honor they're saying,
no, we don't just push them around.
So I think when you're talking to people
and you say, well, how do you train
a crate to say, well, we adhere to
the intervention to the hierarchy of least intrusive
and positive reinforcement doesn't give them enough information,
(55:57):
but it is the beginning is the first
five steps of the path.
And then you have to tell the rest
of the story.
Well, I like the that you added in
there.
If you want a quick fire answer, then
you've come to the wrong person.
I like that.
Yeah.
I mean, for me, that's a very big
tooth.
(56:18):
Well, looking at the time, I wrote down
loads of notes from Susan and I talking
before we push record, talking to you, the
listener of the show.
So I could keep going and going and
going.
And I really want to, but we've been
going for about an hour.
So let's head towards wrapping it up there,
(56:40):
Susan.
Before we do, though, unless you have anything
else you'd like to add and you feel
hasn't been, you haven't had the opportunity to
share based on what we've talked about.
Oh, thanks for that.
Last, last licks.
I don't really think so.
You know, it's just a very, very exciting
world that we're living in.
And the science that helps us explain learning
(57:02):
and behavior is is itself so thrilling and
so exciting.
So I just hope that if nothing else,
we we excite people to look more, talk
more, try other things, you know, and enjoy.
Well, additionally, luckily for you, the listener of
(57:25):
the show, if you do want to learn
more from Susan, from BehaviorWorks, it does not
have to stop at this podcast episode.
There are other learning, multiple other learning opportunities
that you can get yourself involved in.
Susan, could you share with everyone what learning
(57:46):
opportunities BehaviorWorks has coming up?
OK, places people can go to learn more
about our work and what we can help
you with www.behaviorworks.org.
And then there not only are there probably
thirty five, thirty eight articles that might be
(58:06):
of interest to you written for lay people.
There's also some veterinary book chapters that I've
written available to you there.
And then take a look at the courses
that we offer because we offer many more
courses.
Now, of course, there's LLA, which is our
flagship living and learning with animals, a course
that we adore and love our students.
(58:28):
And then there's how research works.
Christy Alligood is teaching how movement works.
Laurie Stevens is teaching.
We've got Nicole Fowler-Sandowski teaching how retrieving
works without retreat, without really killing anything.
But all the great behaviors of the retriever.
(58:49):
We've got Kiki Yablon doing an exciting book
club, reading Skinner books about behavior, I think
was the last one.
And we have a journal reading group.
Christy Alligood runs to be able to learn
how to read those journal articles.
I hope I'm not forgetting anybody, but it's
all listed on the website under courses.
(59:13):
And the other thing we have is career
connections where people who are interested in becoming
trainers who are behavior analysts or behavior analysts
who are interested in becoming trainers can talk
with Christy and I about how to build
that bridge the way that we have.
So I think that's the story.
(59:34):
And then just all my podcasts and hope
to see some of you on the road.
Clicker Expo is coming up in March in
Chicago.
And yeah, busy, exciting, happy life.
Disseminating science.
What could be better?
Are you reinforcing?
Yeah.
The 250 episodes keeps bringing me back.
(59:57):
Me too.
It's bringing both of us back and a
lot of other people who are so grateful
that you've built this, this reach for people
to get information that they need and to
become more empowered.
And then to pay it forward to empower
others.
It's wonderful, right?
We're loving those ripples.
Thank you to the listener for spreading them.
(01:00:19):
We will link to everything Susan's mentioned in
the show notes.
One last time from myself and on behalf
of all who have been listening, we really
appreciate you taking the time to hang out
with us at ATA Susan.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Hope to see you at 300.
(01:00:39):
And thank you so much for listening as
well.
This is your host, Ryan Cartlidge, signing off
from this episode of the Animal Training Academy
podcast show.
We hope today's conversation inspired you and equipped
you with new tools for your trainer's toolbox.
Remember, every challenge in training is an opportunity
(01:01:01):
to learn and sharpen your animal training geekery.
Embrace the rough patches, learn from them and
keep improving.
And don't forget the path to growing your
skills and expanding your knowledge continues beyond this
episode.
Visit www.atamember.com to join our supportive
(01:01:26):
membership where you will find a community of
trainers just like you.
Together, we're making a huge positive difference in
the lives of animal and human learners worldwide.
Until next time, keep honing your skills, stay
awesome.
And remember, every interaction with an animal or
(01:01:48):
human learner is your opportunity to create ripples.
We're here cheering you on every step of
the way.
See you at the next episode.
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