@ericm I don't know how to use Reddit most effectively but go to google scholar and search for yourself. I read canine studies all the time. Try searching "impacts of punishment versus reinforcement on canine behavior. I certainly have anecdotal evidence but a study with 100 dogs is legitimate, maybe not end-all be-all, but can you show me a legitimate study with 100 dogs that shows how punishment is beneficial? Or at least, not harmful? Are you able to see this study? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8463679/
@ericm Here's another. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8463679/ It's hard to see things when they are disappearing. The function of punishment is that it weakens (maybe extinguishes) behavior and potential behaviors, and while you might notice if it's damaging a behavior you've targeted, punishment can hit unintended targets, and dogs lose confidence, motivation, creativity. I've noticed punished dogs don't communicate as well as my dogs, they hide what they really think. I like the fact that my dogs can see hear smell perceive and understand things differently than I do. So I want them to tell me what they think. If they are worried about making a mistake, if they are just performing like robots, doing what they're told, then I feel like I only have half a dog. I want my dog to be working with me, I don't want a shell of a dog obedient like a puppet. I want a creative thoughtful dog who understands and loves his job, who trusts and believes in me completely. People who teach their dog -- do it or else -- when they take away the dogs ability to choose they are only using part of the dog's brain, and they are relying on their own forcefulness instead of relying on the forcefulness of the dog. You get a lot more out of the dog when the dog is controlling his own body, rather than when the handler is trying to control the dog's body with the use of aversives and force.
@lasaruse I always appreciate effort in animal research, and I am in no way anti research - and in fact just got done with a doctorate dissertation about viscoelastic testing in cardiac surgery….and can honestly say that every trial I have ever read both for and against aversives is absolutely terribly done and any results from those trials should really be taken with a grain of salt.
Like I said - I do appreciate the effort. But it’s all nonsense and simply can and should not be applied to real life if you are actually interested in reproducing the results. Furthermore, many of them are not peer reviewed. And the ones that are are either entirely subjective with result reporting, or identify the total lack of applicability the “results” show.
@leathamoll We don't write the laws of learning, we have to live them. And the laws of learning -- behavior science -- apply to ALL animals, humans dogs butterflies birds.https://blogs.worldbank.org/educati...eality-corporal-punishment-children-and-youth There are tons of great studies on the negative impacts of punishment on children. The same sorts of impacts -- increased aggression, depression, anxiety disorders -- are what we see in dogs. If you're accustomed to punished dogs, you might think they're okay because you don't know what you're missing, you don't realize what communicative and creative problem solving abilities, what sort of deeper partnership possibilities you've squashed. https://www.first5california.com/en...-techniques-newborn-baby-toddler-preschooler/
@imagebeastmarkbeast The results are pretty clear: dogs trained with aversives have a higher incidence rate of problematic and maladaptive behavior. There’s no control study for case normalized dogs receiving either aversive or non aversive treatment, but the evidence is broad enough that scientific boards like the AVSAB have come out against aversives based on their review of the literature.
They could be wrong, but there’s a very good reason lots of detection dogs are switching to R+ and working dogs like racing Greyhounds are on R+ training regimes as well. Motivation via punitive measure is just less effective when you need a dog to work and be fearless. You cannot punish a dog into chasing a lure at 45mph, you breed them to want it and reward them when they chase.
Your creds in a different scientific field don’t really apply, but congrats on that anyway?
@jamesapado Of course you wouldn’t use aversive as for sports or work. But those are unsafe behaviors that need to be fixed and kept under control. You also wouldn’t punish a dog before teaching them a behavior via positive reinforcement. Anyone who uses an aversive before teaching a dog what to do is a crappy and not reputable trainer. That doesn’t mean you can’t use correction once a behavior is learned.
@imagebeastmarkbeast but I've noticed and I may be wrong is that the authoritarianism of Donald Trump and Putin and someone like whatever his name is in Florida this kind of idea that punishment is essential but you wanna lock them up and physically stop the election or stop the kneeling or stop whatever it's no surprise to me at all that same punishment oriented authoritarianism is currently in fashion in certain circles of dog training. It seems to me that Trump followers lean heavily on punishment. Maybe I'm wrong. But it just so happens that I don't think I have a single Trump follower in my training club because we train here with reinforcement. We don't want to hurt our dogs we want to build our dogs trust. We try to empathize with the dog and be fair. We are not in any big rush to control the dog, because we're teaching the dog to control themselves. We don't want to prevent the dog from communicating to us so that means sometimes the dog may disagree with us and we learn from that. We train with games were yes there are winners and losers but nobody gets hurt. So anyway I'm just curious. Are there any strong Biden followers using shock collars or is that just a Trump thing?
