Positive Reinforcement, if only we could do it with humans

[This training guide by Emily Larlham is for humans to learn how to train their pets with positive reinforcement. If instead, you substitute someone you know like a neighbor, friend or family member and practice Progressive Reinforcement, you just may make the world a better place. Mauricio Rosas, 1/28/2017]

Progressive Reinforcement Training Manifesto

By Emily Larlham

The Need for a New Term:

A type of animal training exists that involves no forms of intimidation, confrontation, violence, reprimands, or domination. This non-violent kind of training has gone under many names: “Clicker Training,” “Positive Training,” “Positive Reinforcement Training,” and “Reward Training,” among others.   There is a need for a more specific, more accurate, more inspirational term. "Progressive Reinforcement Training."

Service Dogs from New Horizons Service Dogs are trained to understand

"Yes" as their reward for desired behavior. (added by Mauricio Rosas)

The above terms have been used so loosely in recent years that they have lost their original meanings.  How has this happened?  Trainers who use compulsion methods may incorporate a clicker (a noise maker to mark desirable behavior) and refer to themselves as a “Clicker Trainers.”  Trainers who use painful or intimidating methods may include food or toy rewards in their training and refer to themselves as “Reward Trainers” or “Positive Reinforcement Trainers.”  It is already possible that a member of the public may seek the guidance of a trainer who claims to be “Positive,” only to find out that this she routinely uses physical violence towards animals. I propose a new term the general public can use to refer to this type of modern training – a training system that is not only humane, compassionate, and reliable but is also based on the latest scientific studies.  Because this form of training consistently incorporates the latest and most reliable scientific findings, and because it furthers an evolutionary progress toward a more harmonious relationship between humans and the animals who live with them, it shall be referred to as

Progressive Reinforcement Training essentially means teaching animals by rewarding desired behaviors and excluding the intentional use of physical or psychological intimidation.

Progressive Reinforcement Training means:

1) Training by rewarding desirable behaviors so they will be more likely to occur in the future while preventing reinforcement of behaviors that are undesirable.

An example:  Letting a dog walk forwards while the leash remains loose to sniff a bush as a reward for not pulling, while not letting the dog reach the shrub if the leash becomes tight (so that pulling on a leash is never rewarded).

Another example: If you are training a dog to greet guests politely, you first reinforce the dog for calmly keeping all four feet on the floor (not jumping) in exciting situations, and then when the dog does jump up, you remove your attention briefly (by turning away from the dog- as attention is rewarding). However, if you simply tried to train a dog not to jump up by turning away from the dog repeatedly without rewarding him for the correct choices – the dog could become frustrated.  It is true that if the dog figures out that the jumping is not getting attention, the dog will try an alternate behavior – however, a dog will more likely try jumping higher, barking, whining, and nipping over standing still or sitting for attention. By rewarding the dog for what you want him to do first, you give the dog a default behavior to try when what he is doing is not working.

Examples of Rewards:

Roscoe will do anything for a toy! 

(added by Mauricio Rosas)

Food, toys, attention, people, other animals, running, sniffing, swimming, going outside, coming inside, etc.

Keep in mind the animal chooses what is rewarding, not the trainer. This means that if you give your dog a treat for sitting and then ask him to sit again and he doesn’t sit, it’s very likely the dog does not find the treat rewarding.  Other things to keep in mind are rewards will not be effective if the animal is full, or the animal is stressed.

2) Interrupting and preventing undesirable behaviors without physical or psychological intimidation, as well as rewarding the other response (training a behavior you find desirable in its place).

An example: If you want to teach a dog not to lie on your couch, you train the dog to do what you want him to do first.  That is, you teach him to go and lie on his dog-bed.  Then when he does try to go on the couch, you interrupt him and redirect him to the appropriate location (his dog bed) so that climbing onto the couch remains unreinforced.  During the training process you, also use management and prevention: while you are away from the house, you block the dog’s access to the couch, as he would likely choose to lie on the couch – and be reinforced for it – in your absence.

You can interrupt an animal’s undesirable behavior so that he is not self-rewarded without using physical or mental intimidation.  To do this, you can train the animal to respond to an attention cue or recall: something that means, “stop what you are doing and look at me,” or “stop what you are doing and come here immediately.”

A very basic training plan for training an attention noise to interrupt behavior:

First, you can make the noise that you want the animal to respond to (a whistle, or a kissy noise) and then feed a treat. Repeat this until the animal is expectant of a treat after the sound.  Next, make the noise while the animal is looking away from you and AS the animal turns to look at you (for the treat) mark that behavior with either a click (using a clicker) or by saying “yes.”  Once you have repeated this step, you can then add distractions.  Have the animal on a leash so he cannot reach the diversion (perhaps a low-value piece of food on the ground)- make the attention noise, and click or say “yes” and then feed a treat if the animal turns towards you after hearing the sound. If the animal does not turn towards you, do not click or say “yes.”  The animal should not be allowed to reach the distraction that it is interested in.  You can take a step backward from the distraction to make it easier so the animal can succeed.  You can condition this attention noise or a recall to muscle memory in the same way a driver responds to a green light traffic signal (green light means go!).  Once you have created many different scenarios where your animal can disengage in what he is interested in to come towards you and look at you, you can start using the sound to interrupt behaviors that you find undesirable.

Keep in mind that if you ignore the animal and only pay attention to him when he is doing an unwanted behavior, you will be training the animal to do exactly that which you do not want by providing your attention whenever the behavior occurs.  So the GOAL is to reward the animals other responses to the same situations in conjunction with interrupting and preventing the undesirable behaviors.

Example: If your dog steals your underwear and runs around the house with them to get your attention, you have got to reinforce your dog with your attention when he is calm and doing NOTHING.  When your dog is lying at your feet quietly, that is when you will reinforce him with MORE attention than when he runs off with your underwear.

 3) Taking an animal’s emotional state and stress levels into account.

Trainers practicing Progressive Reinforcement read an animal’s body language to the best of their ability for signs of stress or arousal and adjust their training approach accordingly.

Example: Removing a dog that is offering stress signals from a situation where a child is chasing or pestering the dog.

4) Socializing and teaching an animal to cope with his environment using reinforcement.

You can use Progressive Reinforcement Training to socialize and teach an animal to cope with his environment by letting him experience low or non-stressful situations in which the animal is likely to succeed and earn rewards for desirable behavior.  You can then increase difficulty and distractions as the animal succeeds, with the goal of creating a confident, well-adjusted animal.

An example: Teaching an animal to be relaxed and calm while being handled or restrained by using reinforcement.  Pavlov’s dog was trained to have a new emotional response to a bell because the sound of a bell was followed by food. You can train your dog to enjoy handling, very simply put, by touching the dog and then feeding the dog a treat, and increase the invasiveness as the dog remains unstressed by the situation.  If the dog were too shy away, the trainer would have to go back a step to where the dog was comfortable (Classical Conditioning).

Another example: Feeding a dog a reward for remaining relaxed and calm around an exciting situation (perhaps a road with loud traffic), first from a distance and then as the dog succeeds from closer and closer.  If the dog were to become too excited or stressed, the trainer could go back a step in the training process until the dog was successful.

 5) Using a marker to train, whether it be a clicker, some other noise-maker, your voice or touch, or a visual marker.  Or, on the other hand, not using a marker, and instead, for example, reinforcing an animal by feeding a treat directly to his mouth.

A marker can be used to pinpoint behavior.  It tells an animal that what it's doing at that exact moment in time will win him reinforcement.

For example: If a dog sits, the trainer can click as the dog is sitting, and then feed the dog a treat.  Or the trainer can say, “Yes!” in a positive tone as the dog is sitting and then feed the dog a treat or release the dog to get a toy or go out the door.

Reinforcing behavior is also possible without using a marker.  For example, you can feed a dog a treat for looking at another dog to change his emotional response to the other dog (Classical Conditioning).  You can also reinforce your dog for calmly lying around the house or outside by tossing him a treat between his paws while he is not expecting the treat and he will be more likely to repeat the behavior in the future.

 6) Employing humane, effective, respectful training based on the latest scientific evidence.

A commitment to Progressive Reinforcement Training means strictly following all of the above principles – not just in training sessions, but during 100% of the time spent with an animal.

Progressive Reinforcement Training does not mean:

1) The intentional use of physical or psychological intimidation.

Using your voice, touch, body language, a device, or the environment to intimidate an animal for the purpose of continuing, initiating or ending the animal’s behavior.

Examples: staring at an animal, intentionally leaning over him, poking, jerking, shocking, squirting with water, startling with noise, or using your voice in an intimidating way to suppress behavior (saying “no” or “eh!”).

 2) Intentionally disregarding an animal’s stress levels or signals.

Deliberately putting an animal in overly stressful situations in which he cannot cope, rather than exposing the animal in a way that he is under his threshold (the animal can make choices and cope).

Example: Forcing an animal to meet a stranger while the animal is offering a wide range of stress and avoidance signals.

Example:  Dragging an animal across a surface he is frightened of and refuses to cross, instead of teaching the animal to feel confident and calm crossing the surface using Counter Conditioning (rewarding the animal for choosing to take steps across the floor until the animal is confident to cross calmly on his own)

 3) Holding selfish or uncompassionate goals for your training.

Intentionally putting an animal at risk for physical or emotional damage to satisfy one's own interests.

A commitment to Progressive Reinforcement never means deliberately using the intimidation tactics above – never in training sessions, and never during any other time spent with an animal.

Why refrain from using Physical or Psychological Intimidation? 

For scientific, moral, and ethical reasons. Using these forms of conditioning can produce unwanted side effects in addition to the basic trauma they do to an animal.

 The many problems with using physical or psychological intimidation:

1) Without perfect timing, intensity, and consistency, the “training” amounts to nothing more than abuse.
2) The animal learns to avoid the Punisher in order to indulge in undesirable behavior.
3) These techniques can cause irreversible emotional damage to the animal.
4) The punishment can increase stress hormones, arousal, and aggression.
5) Animals can habituate to the punishment – meaning that the intensity of the punishment must keep increasing to have any effect as the animal learns to endure it.
6) You cannot change an animal’s basic emotional response to find children, adults, or other animals (or anything for that matter) reinforcing by using intimidation; you can only suppress the dog’s punished behaviors.
7) Intimidation can cause dogs to hide their warning signs before attempting to bite.
8) Dogs trained with punishment can feel trapped by their handlers, since the decision to leave a ‘stay’ or to leave the handler’s side (to escape from a bothersome child, for example) can cause punishment.  Animals who feel they have no escape tend to bite rather than move away.
9) Intended intimidation can actually increase the behavior you wish to extinguish, as intimidation involves giving a form of attention to an animal.
10) The presence of the Punisher becomes less reinforcing for the animal.  If you punish your dog using intimidation, it is harder to compete with the reinforcement value of other things in the environment.  Your dog will find other stimuli in the environment more reinforcing than you as the dog increasingly associates you with punishment rather than reward.
11) Dogs who have been trained with physical or psychological intimidation do not offer behaviors on their own as readily when asked, making complex behaviors difficult to train
12) Handlers who use intimidation as punishment will punish their animals more easily in the future as punishment is rewarding to the handlers themselves (they get the result they wanted- hitting a dog made it stop barking, so they will be more likely to hit the dog in the future).  In other words, using physical or psychological intimidation causes one’s own behavior patterns to change.

In conclusion, Progressive Reinforcement Training is not a permissive form of training.  It requires providing consequences to all behaviors.  The trainer takes on the role of a benevolent leader and guide using these ethical and scientifically based methods.

Source: http://dogmantics.com/progressive-reinforcement-training-manifesto/

"The proper way to destroy a flag that is old or has become soiled is to burn it." Sen. John Glenn

TESTIMONY OF FORMER SENATOR JOHN GLENN AGAINST THE FLAG DESECRATION AMENDMENT 

Senator John Glenn - Testimony before Senate Judiciary Committee, 4/28/99

For those who served in the armed services, we risked our lives because we believed it was our duty to defend our nation. I can tell you that in combat you do not start out thinking about the philosophy of our nation. When you start a run on a ground position from the air, through antiaircraft, or lead a patrol where people are getting shot, you do not think about those philosophical thoughts. It is the survival of the moment that holds your attention. Only later do you think about some of these great philosophical thoughts. 

But every last tiny fiber in our flag stands for someone who has given his or her life to defend what it stands for. Many of us here have as many friends in Arlington Cemetery, bearing silent witness to our flag, as we do bearing public witness to it in the world of the living. Maybe that is why I have so little patience, and even less sympathy, for those pathetic and insensitive few who would demean and defile our nation's greatest symbol of sacrifice. They deserve harsh censure.  

President Obama Awards John Glenn with Medal of Freedom

But, in what I view as their demented ways, they also have my pity because they cannot, apparently, feel the pride and the exhilaration that comes from being called to a purpose larger than ones own self. They cannot feel the pride in our nation and what it stands for, even though not perfect as yet; the pride in a nation whose very strength rests in a guarantee of freedom of expression for every single person, whether that person agrees with the majority, or not. It is a guarantee that some misguided souls exploit for their own egotistical, self-centered purposes.  

I believe that the members of this Committee have a special responsibility to recognize that it would be a hollow victory indeed if we preserved the symbol of our freedoms by chipping away at those fundamental freedoms themselves. Let the flag fully represent all the freedoms spelled out in the Bill of Rights, not a partial, watered-down version that alters its protections.  

The flag is the nation's most powerful and emotional symbol. It is our most sacred symbol. And it is our most revered symbol. But it is a symbol. It symbolizes the freedoms that we have in this country, but it is not the freedoms themselves. That is why this debate is not between those who love the flag on the one hand and those who do not on the other. No matter how often some try to indicate otherwise, everyone on both sides of this debate loves and respects the flag. The question is, how best to honor it and at the same time not take a chance of defiling what it represents.  

Monument of U.S. flag raised at Iwo-Jima

Those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, who died following that banner, did not give up their lives for a red, white and blue piece of cloth. They died because they went into harm's way, representing this country and because of their allegiance to the values, the rights and principles represented by that flag and to the Republic for which it stands.  

Without a doubt, the most important of those values, rights and principles is individual liberty: The liberty to worship, to think, to express ourselves freely, openly and completely, no matter how out of step those views may be with the opinions of the majority. In that first amendment to the Constitution we talk about freedom of speech, of religion, or the press and right to assemble.  

The Bill of Rights was not included in the Constitution. The Bill of Rights was added after the Constitution was passed. Some states refused to ratify the Constitution because it did not have a Bill of Rights defining basic human rights that they wanted this country to stand for. James Madison worked to get a Bill of Rights put together while the Constitution was already in existence.  

The Congress passed the first 10 amendments known today as the Bill of Rights. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly are protected in the First Amendment.  

That commitment to freedom is encapsulated and encoded in our Bill of Rights, perhaps the most envied and imitated document anywhere in this world. The Bill of Rights is what makes our country unique. It is what has made us a shining beacon of hope, liberty, of inspiration to oppressed peoples around the world for over 200 years.  

In short, it is what makes America, America. Those 10 amendments to the Constitution we call the Bill of Rights have never been changed or altered by one iota, by one word, not a single time in all of American history. That is how our forefathers have looked at the Bill of Rights. There was not a single word of change during any of our foreign wars, and not during recessions or depression or panics. Not a single change when we were going through great national times of trials and tribulations and times of great emotion and anger like the Vietnam era, when flag after flag was burned or desecrated, far more often than they are today. Even during all that time, our first amendment remained unchanged and unchallenged.  

The amendment under consideration today goes directly to the issue of freedom of speech. We are talking about freedom of expression. The Supreme Court has held on two separate occasions that no matter how great the majority, the minority, under our Bill of Rights, has the right of expression. That expression is protected by freedom of speech.  

Do we want to take a chance on reducing our freedom of speech? What about freedom of the press? Do we want to open even a tiny chance to restrict our ability to assemble peaceably? And do we want to take a chance that we would not be able to petition our government for redress of grievances? Those are the things that are covered in that first amendment, known as the Bill of Rights.  

I think there is only one way to weaken the fabric of our country, our unique country, our country that stands as a beacon before other nations around this world and that is to allow the few misguided souls to lessen the freedom that we all share.  

One of the most exhilarating things that can ever happen to a man or woman is to be able to represent their country and be called to something, to a purpose larger than themselves. I feel sorry for people who have never had that experience. It is something you cannot really explain.  

Of course some may argue that the First Amendment is not and has never been absolute, that we already have restrictions on freedoms of expression and that a prohibition on flag burning would simply be one more? After all, it is said that freedom of speech does not extend to slander, libel, revealing military secrets, or of yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater. That is true. To the extent that flag burning would incite others to violence in response does not constitute a clear and present danger, and that is what the Supreme Court ruled. The difference here is whether it is a clear and present danger that we have every right to try to avert.  

I believe that this argument misses a key distinction, and that distinction is that all those restrictions on free speech I just mentioned threaten real and specific harm to other people, harm that would come about because of what the speaker said, not because of what the listeners did.  

To say that we should restrict speech or expression that would outrage a majority of listeners or move them to violence is to say that we will tolerate only those kinds of expression that the majority agrees with, or at least does not disagree with too much. That would do nothing less than gut the First Amendment.  

What about the argument that flag desecration is an act and is not a form of speech or expression that is protected by the First Amendment? Well, I think that argument is a bit specious. Anybody burning a flag in protest is clearly saying something. They are making a statement by their body language, and what they are doing makes a statement that maybe speaks far, far louder than the words they may be willing to utter on such an occasion.  

They are saying something, just the same way as people who picket, or march in protest, or use other forms of symbolic speech expressing themselves. Indeed, if we did not view flag burners as something we find offensive and repugnant, we surely would not be debating their right to do so.  

Let me say a word about something that has gotten short shrift in this debate, something we should consider very carefully. I am talking about the practical problems with this amendment. Let us say we pass it, the States pass it, it becomes an amendment, and we change the Constitution. Then what a nightmare we would have enforcing it.  

If Congress and States are allowed to prohibit the physical desecration of the flag, how precisely are we defining the flag? We do not have an official flag, as such, with an exact size, type, kind of ink, dyes, or fabric. There is no official flag, as such. So does this amendment refer to only manufactured flags of cloth or nylon of a certain size or description, such as the one we fly over the Capitol? Does it refer to the small paper flags on a stick we hand out to children at political rallies or stick in a cupcake at a banquet? Those flags are often tossed on the floor or in a garbage can at conclusion of an event. How about during the 1976 bicentennial when vendors were selling flag bikini swimsuits for women and boxer shorts for men.  

Retired Flags Burned (photo by Bob Walter)

Remember that the proper way to destroy a flag that is old or has become soiled is to burn it. But what if you do it in protest? What was the intent? Every lawyer will tell you that the toughest thing to prove is intent.  

I do not know what the courts would do in a case like that. We can go on with all kinds of examples here of how this would be very difficult to administer, and it would be subject to 50 different interpretations. I might be able to do something in Ohio, and I drive across the Ohio River to Kentucky, West Virginia, or Pennsylvania and the same thing might be illegal.  

This amendment should be defeated. The dangers from it far outweigh the threat that we have to the flag. I simply do not believe that this is a major problem for this country requiring an amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.  

Our most revered symbol stands for freedom but is not freedom itself. We must not let those who revile our way of life trick us into diminishing our great gift or even take a chance of diminishing our freedoms.