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Saturday, December 7, 2019

What has cookie jar to do with animal training??




Well – there is a clear reason and correlation and it has a lot to do with the work and time we spend with our animal friends. Let me enlighten you with my thoughts behind the title.

Quite often when discussion turns into modern animal training principles I do refer and compare those with the ways we are and could use when raising kids.  Some people get offended if we do comparison between children and animals but in principle we all are under the same behavior modification rules as our animal companions, this is not to diminish in any way the value and respect  of children. Of course human mind & emotions etc. are a lot more complex in wholeness in comparison to animal mind. Small kids react differently than a bit more grown up children or adults, our reactions are probably a bit more sophisticated to the ones with animals but still underneath, we  all are governed with same basic principles.  

An example I’ve used several times is frustration - and the very primitive reactions we all do because of it. Many times one of the reasons for frustration is that we don’t get what we want or actually, we don’t get what we are used to getting in a  similar situation, for some reason there is no reinforcement available after the event.

Let’s imagine you’re getting into your room at work and for some reason the door is jammed. The first thing you do to get to the room is – try harder, use your keys or eventually get some help from someone else.
This modification of your behavior is due to frustration – because you cannot get in to your room. So to receive the reinforcement you are usually getting (entering the room) you do something more vigorous. Your behavior has changed and maybe it is even a bit twisted - the environment or the changes in the environment has made you behave on a different way. This process of trying harder to get the reinforcement we are used to getting is called extinction burst. It happens for a while before we give up.

The Cookie jar

A cookie jar; for many it is the embodiment of promise or anticipation of some sweet and delicious delicacy.
This is in a way how we in principle work with animals under our care. Of course all this is due to repetition. Repetition comes into its greatest value through the number one principle in animal training; 
The behavior is determined by its consequences.

Combine this principle with some chocolate brownies – and you can get most of humankind working with you in a very positive and rewarding manner.
Behavior of getting the cookies from the jar is utterly reinforcing, unless you are allergic to chocolate or other ingredients in the cookies.



Photo from Karamel kompagniet cookie jar cover


Scene 1
Let’s consider that these cookies are very pleasing to the person getting them. Imagine that the jar of these cookies is in a certain well known place, like in a higher shelf in your kitchen.
By the way; Weather you know it or not. All, even the most hidden & secret hiding places you can think of for this kind of delicacy is most likely well-known by your kids, if you’ve been blessed with them.
So the occurrence of having your child to go to the cookie jar is relatively high, especially in the case that she or he has been successful in getting into the jar and having one or two cookies from it.
So – if the consequence has been very positive it is reinforcing the behavior to occur more often and the child is reaching for the grand prize more often – even if they don’t have a permission to get one.

…maybe you’re gradually getting the correlation between the cookie jar and animal training?

The previously mentioned chain of behavior and consequence is called positive reinforcement. If something good happens after the behavior the behavior has a tendency to increase. Nowadays the expression is that if something positive is added in the environment the behavior is likely to occur more often.


Scene 2

What happens if you are home and you see the little hand reaching for the grand prize from that jar?

A parent could grab the hand and say no – or just say no. In the ideal world the behavior of reaching to the jar should stop in this kind of situation. Eventually the parent will only have to say no, or just be present in the room / environment - and the child will stop reaching for chocolate brownies from the jar. Through repetition the child will learn that it is not beneficial for her or him to go for the cookies.
At this scenario we are having a negative stimulus, or by behavior modification vocabulary; an aversive stimuli, present in the environment. Something not so pleasant happens if this behavior has the possibility to take place. A negative element has been added in the environment to stop the unwanted behavior – in this case it is the parent who is denying the child to proceed.

So – if we break it into operant conditioning terminology; the following forces effect on behaviors present in the situation.  
The fact that this child in the situation is not even going to reach for the cookies from the jar is positively punished. This means that an incorrect type of behavior (not stealing the cookies) is punished by having or adding in the environment an aversive stimulus – something unpleasant; the denying parent.

Scene 3
But … What happens if this parent goes to another room or out in the garden to do some other responsibilities.. or even further, to a grocery and the child is left alone in the room with the cookie jar.
The child can be obedient and just keep on playing with hers or his toys. In any case what happens is that the negative force, the aversive stimulus, has now been removed from the environment.
With the scheme we are now playing with we would anticipate that the child would go to the jar and reach for her / his grand prize; a tasty chocolate brownie. In this case the behavior of getting the brownie is still very much positively reinforced but planning and going to the cookie jar is actually negatively reinforced; as the negative element (the parent) which previously stopped the behavior to occur has been removed from the environment.
It is important to understand the geometrics of the operant conditioning theory, even though we would only focus our way of managing the behaviors of our animal friend by the emphasis on positive reinforcements and rewards.

Scene 4
There are still two other ways to solve this problem behavior of stealing the brownies without parents’ permission. An easy solution could be that while the parent leaves the room he or she would take the cookie jar with him/her. This leaves an empty space on the place where the jar used to be. So there is no need to go and try to get any of them if they just aren’t there anymore.
Now we are talking about negative punishment. This means that we have taken away the original trigger from the environment (the cookie jar) which caused this stealing behavior in the first place. So we have removed something pleasant from the environment and therefore there is no way for the child to get to the jar anymore for a brownie.
By the way when we are talking about punishment in behavior modification, we should rethink our way of understanding the concept of punishment. In animal behavior management the punishment is always affecting the behavior never the individual animal. This is very important as we don’t want to hurt animals in any way!

Scene 5
One could think that we have already all the possibilities available for making the scheme work on a way we (as parents) would like it to work. However, there is still one more option – only that wouldn’t bring us the solution that fast as the one’s mentioned earlier. This actually has something to do with the topic mentioned at the very beginning of this blog text; frustration.

It is not really frustration that we can use but similar situation which may cause a bit of frustration. What if the parent would exit the house and just leave the cookie jar all by itself in the shelf only this time it would be utterly and completely empty?

The mere existence of the jar in the shelf would most likely agitate children to go to the jar in the hope of some delicacy. Only to find out that there is none left.
What would happen next? - A bit of frustration maybe and sooner or later another try. “What if, despite of finding it already once or twice empty, for some reason the jar would have magically filled with some brownies?” – This is totally irrational thought but something of a kind happens in real life.
Before giving up we or the animals would make a few trials just because in the past it has worked and given a very positive experience and reinforcement for the behavior to increase. This phase will not last long and quite soon it and the whole behavior shall gradually fade out. There is no reason to go back to the empty jar! It is a phenomena that can be seen relatively often in training situations and as we all now know it is called extinction burst. If you are skilled it is also an excellent tool in training you animals.

Eventually the jar is not any more interesting as it has lost its value as a source of brownies. The behavior gradually fade away, in other words the behavior is extinct. The process is called extinction which describes extremely well the whole chain of events in it.

So, cookie jar is THE aid-memoire for me as it has all the elements of reinforcement and punishment in it. 

So, have a cookie and enjoy it...

By the way ... did you know that today, the 8.12, is the national Chocolate Brownie day in USA? In Finland, where I come from, it would be most likely called the mokkapalapäivä.
Happy chocolate brownie day – where ever you are !

..I may also bake some pieces of  mokkapala for me as well J

-Kai-

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