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The Science of Behavior: How Dogs Actually Learn with Dr. Susan FriedmanWhat is behavior—and how do dogs actually learn? Dr. Susan Friedman breaks down reinforcement, punishment, trust, errorless learning, and the science behind behavior change. A must-listen for rescue dog adopters, fosters, and trainers.
Episode SummaryWhat do we really mean when we say “behavior”? In this powerful kickoff to Season 6 of Pod to the Rescue, we’re joined by world-renowned behavior scientist Dr. Susan Friedman, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Utah State University and founder of Behavior Works. Together, we explore:
Whether you're a new adopter, foster, shelter professional, or trainer, this episode will fundamentally change the way you see behavior. Follow Dr. Friedman’s Behavior Works page on Facebook and check out her website: https://behaviorworks.org/ 🎙️ Connect With Us:
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Episode Transcript
Libby Felts 0:00
Libby, welcome to pod to the rescue, a podcast from summit dog rescue in Boulder, Colorado. I'm Emily, I'm Jenny and I'm Libby. We are all Professional Dog Trainers with multiple certifications in dog training
and behavior
Emily Wolf 0:18
together, we have more than two decades of experience in dog rescue,
Libby Felts 0:23
we want to share everything we've learned along the way with other folks involved in dog rescue, sheltering, fostering and adoption and anyone who just loves dogs,
Emily Wolf 0:32
rescuing the dog is just the first step. We're here to help with
Libby Felts 0:36
everything that comes next.
Hello listeners, and welcome back. I'm Libby, and we are thrilled to be back in your feeds with season six of pod to the rescue. We're kicking it off by going in depth into the science of behavior. Emily and Jenny interviewed the amazing Dr Susan Friedman to help explain what do we even mean when we say behavior? Whether you're a seasoned professional or you're just learning about the science of behavior, this episode is fabulous. I know that I got so much out of it. And finally, a quick content note. We originally recorded this for season five, which we had to cut a little short, so you'll hear Emily mention that, but we're excited to bring it to you now as our first episode of season six.
Jenni Pfafman 1:25
Enjoy today. We are so happy to have Dr Susan Friedman on the podcast. She is a professor emeritus in the Department of Psychology at Utah State University whose work has been translated into 17 languages, Dr Friedman has been instrumental in helping us understand the behavior of all animals, and teaches students all over the world through her living and learning with animals course, as well as other courses through behavior works. One thing that really has always stood out to me about Dr Friedman is how humble she is. She's probably one of the most knowledgeable people alive when it comes to behavior, but she will give all the credit for that knowledge to those she has learned from some of her most important work has been with zoos, and this aspect of Dr Friedman's work in particular, has had a tremendous impact on my own life. Before learning about the Cheyenne Mountain zoo from a clicker Expo presentation several years ago, I was really anti Zoo. I hadn't been to a zoo for 20 years, and after watching this presentation with the penguins being voluntarily being weighed on scales, my perspective of of zoos completely changed. So I went to Cheyenne Mountain zoo, where I met a very dear friend, Sarah Duggar, and got to meet some amazing animals, like chewy, the tiger and the grizzly bears there and and I got to meet Rick Hester and learn about elephants wallowing in the mud. And because of that, I've also been to the Columbus Zoo, and I've encouraged other people to go to zoos. So this is just a way that you have personally impacted my life so much. Susan, I've been a member of the Cheyenne Mountain zoo now for several years, and I'm just one student of Dr Freeman's, and there must be 1000s of others who have similar stories. I'm so happy to have the opportunity to talk with you today again, and welcome to the podcast.
Susan Friedman 3:36
Thank you so much. It really brings tears to my eyes to hear you talk about everything that was a beautiful introduction. And you know, I've complained when people just read from the bio, and this is why, because I get to know something about our shared experience together and our CO influence on each other and then pointing out to the world. So thank you so much for that really meaningful introduction. And it's true, things are changing all the time, so as we hold our strong opinions, we always need to keep our eye on the periphery to see if things are changing that would impact those opinions. So you showed extraordinary openness and flexibility, and I appreciate that so much. We're working hard in zoos, so that's great. Welcome.
Emily Wolf 4:29
Dr Friedman, I am excited to have you on as well, and I just wanted to get us started. If you can tell us what you love most about working with other animals.
Susan Friedman 4:42
Good morning, and thank you. If you leave it to just Jen and I, we would probably talk for years. So I'm glad that you moved us to that work at hand. I think I've always I've always been a behavior nut, which is kind of a weird slice. In the animal nut world, you know, so many children are loving of animals and and then other people love human behavior or humans, but the behavior was something I was always watching. How are they interacting with each other? How do they interact with us? And I don't I'm not sure where the seed of that love of behavior came from, but I had a very vocal and analytical mom who would sit with me for hours talking about her insights and my insights about the behaving world. She was a biologist, and I grew up outside of New York City, so there was lots of behavior to observe. Of the greatest range of behavior from behavior you want to see more and behavior you really want to see less. So I don't know, like so many of us, I just think that it's such a core element of the physical world that it's hard to ignore what's interesting about it.
Emily Wolf 5:59
Yeah, that's an interesting point, and we are. You're the first guest of season five. We've been talking for four seasons previously about mostly behavior in dogs, and we've never really explained what is behavior and why do animals behave. So we thought you were the perfect guest to come on and explain that to us.
Thank you. That question, the answer to that question, or at least partly, was served up to me in Paul chances book learning and behavior, because my background is special education, I had not really come in contact with the big picture of behaving organisms. I was focused on human behavior, and specifically children with special learning needs, when I read in his book that behavior is an evolved endowment, that it's an adaptation that allows us to meet and and survive this ever changing world, a light really went on for me that redirected the way that I think about behavior, and I talk about behavior and teach about behavior, behavior because it's in the School of Psychology, I think ends up kind of being other from Biology. It's not in the School of biology, zoology, ethology. It's in the School of Psychology, where education lives. And, you know, physical physical education lives. And so it's really separated from these roots, which is that we evolve to behave in ways that allow us to change the environment, to get closer to reinforcers and further away from aversive stimuli, like punishers or things we don't want to be near. I think when you think about it that way, as an adaptation, just like vision and hearing, that's an extraordinary wide door to analyze why and how we behave in any given situation where we're driven to operate on the environment, to change the environment on our own behalf, and that that you can just see How that tumbles into working with so called problem behavior in in other learners.
Jenni Pfafman 8:26
So speaking of problem behavior, people often ask, How will my dog know what is wrong if I don't correct him or scold him? And I have my way of answering this, but I'd love to hear from you how you would answer this question. And if we wanted to look at a specific example, maybe we could look at at potty training, which we could probably talk the rest of the hour about. But you know, people say like, if I don't scold my dog for making an accident in the house, how will he know that I want him to go outside and not inside.
Emily Wolf 9:12
You know, I was just thinking about this very thing the other day. I'd have to work to remember what triggered this idea. The one thing you know, we're always looking for what is reinforceable about what people say to us, so that we can build relationships with authentic acknowledgement of what they're doing right. So right away, I'm looking in your question for what's right about that question before I kind of roll my eyes, which I do have an inner eye, roll on that one and and feel bad about it, one of the things that's so right about that question is they're acknowledging that feedback following behavior influences what the animal is going to do next. Least that consequences, in the way of scolding or other feedback, are important to behavior change, and that is really the whole nut, the whole heart and soul of behavior change science is that consequences, the feedback of behaving, the changes in environment that your behavior produces, like scolding influence what you do in the future. So that's what's very right about that question, and if or when people say that to me, because they do often, that would be my first response is, you are a good observer of how behavior works, because you mentioned, consequences are important to behavior change, and they are, of course, what's not right about that behavior really comes from the cultural fog, that social understanding that we have, rather than a scientific understanding of how behavior works. So while we know that feedback is important to behavior change in our society, we're taught early on that punishment is the main approach to changing behavior, and that has been our legacy. You know, all through time. I don't know when it started. I watched a show on Neanderthals, but it but it looks like it was present way back then as well. So it's not a surprise that people have learned that the particular kind of feedback that they should use is the kind that directly reduces behavior punishment, and I call that cultural fog. It's what we've learned by our own experience, observing and experiencing other people's punishers, who knew that you could change behavior as quickly, if not more quickly, faster and as positively in the desired direction by consequences, selecting for what you want to see more. Who knew that you could use positive reinforcement to build alternative behaviors to pooping and peeing in the house, and that the animal would learn to discriminate where to do that behavior or those behaviors? I think it's really shocking, giving our given our cultural fog, given our history of learning, being punished, it is shocking news to discover that the natural laws of behavior include selecting the right behavior with positive outcomes, And that those work as well, or, if not, better, better, we could talk about why later, then punishment. So they both work. One is heavily weighted in our own behavioral history, so we're very fluent at it. The other one is almost hard to understand, hard to believe. And we're asking people to kind of choose between what they know well and they see works under some circumstances, at least for the short run, versus this whole new idea. It's a wonder that we've done as well in changing people's views over the last 25 years as we have.
Susan Friedman 13:17
Yeah, I while you were talking, I started wondering if, I wonder if natural selection might be, I don't know, just displaying my lack of knowledge here, but I wonder if natural selection works more on a Positive reinforcement contingency than punish than a positive punishment. Do you have any thoughts about that?
Emily Wolf 13:46
Yeah, I think we would have to, we would have to tease out what the measures of that would look like, which you'll hear me say often, I think in the podcast, is, instead of giving singular answers, I will ask. But what would it look like? How could we measure to know the answer? I'm not I'm sure we can come up with something, but I think it would take some time. It's an interesting idea, and when you say it just reflects your lack of knowledge. I mean, bravo to you, because we've been taught to hide our lack of knowledge, which in itself, reduces our knowledge.
Susan Friedman 14:26
It does. That's so true.
Emily Wolf 14:28
So let that go.
Susan Friedman 14:31
Yeah, and I'm gonna keep this in my mind for next time I see you, we'll talk we'll talk more about it. But so can you explain in simple terms to our listeners, who are mostly new adopters, foster or shelter workers, what is the simplest way to influence behavior? And I know that's a very simple question, but maybe looking at. ABC model and focusing on the A and the C to help them understand, yeah.
Emily Wolf 15:09
First of all, what a list of superstars you mentioned, your adopters, your staff. I mean, you know my my heart, sends love out to all of you, because I don't know if this metaphor works, really, but I always think that the list of people that you described, keep their house build their houses furthest downstream, so that all of the stuff that's failed for other people goes down to their home, and then their door is open for all of this to flow into. So I just want to stop and say how much I admire and I'm aware of the work that you do. I have several close friends who do similar work, and it's amazing to me as I stand on the side of the river on the bank and watch all the flow into that rescues door. So thank you for that and for the work that you do. I think that the simplest way, if I were to give you one sentence first and then we could dismantle it, is to say that to change behavior, you have to change conditions, you have to change the environment the behavior happens in in order to change the behavior that the animal does. So, that simple sentence, to change behavior, you have to change conditions, is really, again, flies in the face of our cultural thought, because when we see animals behaving in ways we don't want them to, let's call it misbehaving. We understand it's rational behavior given their environment and their experience and their genetic tendencies. But if for a moment we just give it the name problem behavior or missed behavior, you know, you got to call it something for the conversation to move on. Most often, people think of these misbehaviors as a problem inside the animal. You know, what's wrong with this dog? What's wrong with this money that they're biting me, or they're growling at me, or they chew up the toys that I give them that should last longer. They think there's something wrong inside the animal. So when I say the simplest take home message is to change behavior, change conditions. That's really unnerving for people, because they're not looking in the conditions the environment to explain the problem behavior they're looking inside the animal, which leads you to solutions like drugs, which have a place, but it should be the smallest frequency of solutions. It needs to only be the smallest frequency changing conditions to change behavior will take the lion's share of solutions, and it leads people to give up their animals, because they're not thinking about their own environment as a power tool to change behavior. They're thinking there's something wrong with the animals, so they have to give it away, right?
That makes so much sense. And when we bring a new dog into a foster home, so many times, we do try to explain to people that man, we call it management, you know, setting up some baby gates, putting up film on the windows so that they can't bark at, you know, it stimuli, since they potentially have never lived in suburbia or an urban environment. And I think that that's a hard thing for a lot of people to understand. So that would be what you're You mean by changing conditions is
That's right, it would be changing the things that happened before, the behavior that are the setting triggers, we could say. So that's where Jenny brings in antecedent before, anti, the things that happened before and the things that happen after, changing the consequences or the outcomes of behavior. And so that's the ABC antecedent, the environment before the behavior occurs that we have a lot of control over as you described, and then the consequences of behaving, how you change the world by that behavior. Do you get people to back away? Do you get more treats and that sort of outcome? The consequences both bracket the behavior that occurs, and not only bracket, but I think more about a weave. They are woven into the existence of the behavior. Behavior doesn't exist without those threads running through that are the antecedents that tell the animal do it now green light foot on the pedal, or the con. Consequences, the people moved away. So that makes putting the barking have value, and indeed it does. So those management ideas are key. And I'll tell you one, one tip in talking about that, if you don't already talk about it this way, is people are very worried that those antecedent changes we make, or the consequence food reinforcers, among many different kinds that we may use, are going to be not only the current program, but are going to be in place. Need to be in place forever, and they don't want film over their living room window. They bought the house because of the beautiful view, you know, and they don't want to be giving treats every single time the dog goes outside after hearing the okay cue. They want to just open the door. And I think that's very reasonable. They want to live together with their animal. They want to float through the stream of the day together without having a food pouch or gates everywhere. And so I think it's very important to say to them that the beginning of the program to teach this dog successful behaviors in your home will not necessarily look like the end of the program. So I start by by reinforcing with food treats my puppy every time he waits at the door for me to open it and then say, okay. But now as a two year old, I never do that. I open the door, he waits. I say, Okay. And the reinforcer is the natural one of going outside. So we do start with these artificial ABCs, you know, with maybe working in the living room on the ok queue, where it's easier than at the door, but then we move it to the door, and we do give treats that are quick and easy, which is why food is so common, motivating, quick and easy. But it doesn't mean that that's what it's going to look like throughout the whole life of the dog. And when we remind them of how we work with newborns and how we're constantly moving through the stages, giving them more and more control as they learn more and more in order to control well. So we're not always we're not picking out the shoes that our high school students going to wear today the school right? So the beginning of the program might have a lot of effort and arrangements for us to run, but the goal is then to fade those supports, to have a more natural relationship with the dog and the environment.
I love that comparison to a baby versus a high schooler, because it's true with babies. We have the little baby play pens and we watch them every second, and we have the little outlet covers, but, yeah, you don't have outlet covers with a high schooler. And if we could start kind of applying that mentality, I guess, with our companion animals, that could be really helpful,
although I am still giving feedback on my 30 something year old daughter's shoes. That never stopped, but the outlet cover is a fabulous reminder of how much control we have over the environment and therefore their behavior, and then over their development and their learning. We start to fade our control. I mean, outlet covers is a great example
Susan Friedman 23:42
I was I was laughing when you were talking about the door, because my eight year old Border Collie has been when I first was teaching her to sit, to go outside, I would give her a treat, and then I'd let her outside. She'd said, I'd give her a treat, then I let her outside. So now sometimes when she wants a treat, she just goes to the door and sits and I give her a treat and think she wants to go out and she'll just come back into the living room and eat the cookie.
Emily Wolf 24:10
Yeah, yeah. So some people would hear that fun and funny story and say, See, that's the problem with giving treats. Is I don't want a dog manipulating me. But we see it quite differently, right? We see it as the dog having learned how to control its reinforcers and and we see it as a positive thing and a fun and funny thing. Also, we have confidence in our understanding of how behavior works, that if we didn't want that behavior, we could teach the dog that the food only comes when you ask for the said or Yeah, or are at the door with the dog. But in the meantime, we tend to be a very generous culture, the culture of positive reinforcement. So we would admire the dog who learned. Had to control their own reinforcers in that way?
Yeah, I'm just realizing, could you define reinforcers and punishers for our listeners who might not be familiar with those terms,
that is really a great catch. So we've defined antecedents as the important, influential things that happen before behavior that that lead to some behavioral choices in our animals or others. And then we talked about consequences, are the outcomes of behaving the change in the environment that give the animal feedback about whether or not they want to do that again, okay, so now we can add what some of the definitions of those consequences are reinforcers. Are consequences that result from the behavior follow the behavior, that strengthen the behavior, make it more likely the animal will choose to do that again, because the outcome of doing it was valuable. So think about a treat or a pet or praise for most dogs, and then the other side of that coin, because this is earth, and it tends to have balance, balance points the other side of the coin are the punishers, and those are the outcomes of behaving that weaken the behavior, or the probability of the behavior occurring in the future. So in plain English, we could say those are the outcomes that we don't want to experience, so we don't behave that way again. And I think we're born with maybe, but I'm very certain that we learn that our behavior produces outcomes, and so we can control them with how we behave. We are not just leaves in the wind getting pushed willy nilly. Our behavior has a control mechanism that is part of the natural world that we all have that allows us to learn these connections. Oh, when I bark at the male person going by the window, shade comes down, perhaps, but when I stand and just watch, then my my caregiver comes over, praises me and delivers some food. So one would be consider punishing shade coming down after the dog is already barking, but if it reduces the barking behavior, and the other would be considered a reinforcer sitting quietly and watching, because if it strengthens that choice to sit and watch it, that's a program we're working with now, and it's a program that lasts for years. You know, we'll hear that first bark, and we keep the pot of treats right on the shelf next to the window, and we always go over and we honor the function of the bark. But by function, I mean the purpose. What does the bark want to produce, or the animal want to produce in the barking, we always honor it. We go over, we say, what are you barking at? I mean, this is exactly how we talk to them. What are you barking at? I hear, Oh, it's a neighbor. And then the treats start. Neighbors are really nice to watch. Good job. And so we're getting more and more of the one bark and then watching behavior. We've got neighbor car, puppy and Kitty, and we go over to all and as soon as we arrive and start reaching for those treats, it changes from barking to, you know, aroused behavior, tension in the body, eyes fixed on the object, and tail tight. So we're getting there.
Susan Friedman 28:53
So you've we've talked a lot about reinforcement and building a history of reinforcement so that later on, you don't need to give the dog a cookie every time they do what you would like them to do. And I've heard you talk about this as putting trust into the account. So kind of like a bank account, you put a lot of trust into the account, and you have a really good video on YouTube about trust accounts. Can you talk a little bit about this and how fosters and adopters can build strong trust accounts with their dogs?
Emily Wolf 29:36
Yeah, it's a beautiful question, and that was a beautifully phrased question. I have to say that we do build trust accounts, and that's a metaphor that many people have used. So sometimes it's attributed to me, and in this case, it's one that I picked up somewhere in my special education background, and I hear many, many people use so. Acknowledgement to the generality of this metaphor, as you explained, if we think about our interactions as having a bank account next to us, an imaginary bank account, then every time we do something that is pleasing to the other individual, we can hear a coin hit that bank account. And I would say in my words, every time we deliver a reinforcer to one another, a coin goes into that trust account. And until we build such a big bank account in the relationship bank that even if we do something that is unpleasant or undesired in any way, think of all of those negative words again. I don't like any of them, but we need to talk. So we have to give it a name. We can take some trust out, some money out of that bank account, but we have so much in there that although it may have an immediate kind of bristling effect, it does not bankrupt the relationship. And so that's what we're going for. Trust is, after all, another one of these labels that we use. But as I've been saying, We've got to give what we do a name so that we can talk having the same understanding of what we're describing, of what we're talking about. So I ask, what do these labels look like? What does trust look like? So often we'll say, you need to build a trust account, but we never answer that question, or rarely do I hear people answering the question, and this is the behaviors that you should do in order to be labeled as trusted. So we tell people how to trust and that they should trust, but we don't tell them how to behave in that way. For those of you who can't see, I have the zoom gestures turned on, and when you lift your two thumbs up, you get fireworks. So it's and one hand, it's very annoying, but on the other hand, it's very pleasing, and so I haven't turned it off yet. So so what happens is we do thumbs up more because we get this firework thing going on, right? That's right, it's a first example of how consequences influence the rate of behavior that they follow. But so I've done some thinking about it, and I don't want to just say to people, it's, I hear this a lot. It's especially with rescue animals. It's all about trust. You just need to develop trust with this animal who doesn't have trust in humans or in human hands or human closeness. So just build that trust account. But what do you do to build the trust account? It's the glaring hole in our supporting of people who are working with animals for whom that is not already learned. And so I think that what we the behaviors we're referring to, are the ones that end in positive reinforcement. I think it's that simple. I think that if you interact with animals with a high rate of delivering reinforcement for particular target behaviors at such a high rate that you fill that piggy bank, then not only will you have a more resilient, bolder, more confident animal, because their behavior is what controlled Building the coins in the account. But you'll also have a more resilient animal in the sense that if something negative does happen, like an injection of the veterinary or they get put it into the bedroom, you know, when the Amazon person comes, when something withdraws, there's so much in there that they come out of the bedroom, or they leave the veterinary office ready to go, ready and raring to meet the world and to control their positive reinforcers again, what we call resilience. So I think that's something we all need to be careful of. Is if we're going to say to people, you need to the animal doesn't trust you. You need to build trust that whenever we use these labels, we take the next step, which is to say what the behaviors are that earn that label.
Oh, I love that. I was just thinking. One reason we started this podcast is because all of us who rescue animals love them and want to see them succeed, and yet, having the information from someone like you to teach us how to build a trust account is not readily available to the general public without, you know, going to clicker Expo. So just that was a beautiful answer, and I feel like anyone who's. Wondering how to help that new dog or that foster dog, or even that dog in the shelter, learn to trust more. It would be building that trust account through lots of reinforcers in the piggy bank, right?
And you know, there's I'm thinking now to hear you say it back, there's so much more to learn, so much more to teach. Because we're not just randomly giving food, although that doesn't hurt either, you know, as a beginning point, but we say we are contingently delivering food, and that word was one of the two hardest words I had to learn in learning the jargon of behavior analysis, reinforcers and punishers. I learned that readily, but this word contingent really had me stuck for a while. And what we mean by it is that the food or other reinforcer, the ball, the frisbee toss or even stepping away can reinforce the behavior we want to see. When we say we deliver them contingently, we mean that they don't happen unless the specific behavior we're working to build happens. So there's a dependency between the behavior we want to see more happening and that positive outcome, that reinforcing outcome, so that kind of shapes up our own behavior. It means that above all else, we have to become great observers of behavior in the noise, in the white water of behavior occurring around us, and the kids are running and the doorbells ringing and my phone is beeping, and I have to spy that in all of that, the dog stayed quietly by my leg. Boom. That's a contingent reinforcement opportunity. So to see the opportunities for reinforcement which we're only going to use. Or by definition, means that it's contingent, it's dependent on the right behavior occurring first, the behavior we want to see more occurring first. It means, I think, that the most important skill of all the skills is the skill of an observer that we have to pick out what's right about what every organism around us is doing at every moment, and it becomes second nature. Once you build the skill you can't turn off the you know. I'll say to the person who delivers coffee from the Starbucks window, thanks for that cheerful face, you know. And I realized, why am I or I'll tell you a real example that happened that was so embarrassing. My daughter has a newish boyfriend, and when he came over for the first time, he started to put the silverware out that I had just left on the table, he started to organize it around the place. And I said to him, Can I catch you being good? Thank you so much for putting the silverware in the in the right place without being asked. That's what I was going for. Was the initiative to see a job and do it. And I said, and I looked at both of my daughters, and they were like, but it is really a lifestyle for me. It must be very annoying. I'm constantly aware of the behavior around me and trying to select with praise, what, what, what I want to see again. It's hard to turn off.
And I have seen, and I know confidence is probably a label, but I have seen when dogs come in and you I'd love your thoughts on my thoughts, that once they realize that their behavior can change reinforcers and have you know that they do feel more confident because they're more able to change their environment and work for reinforcers. Have you seen that? And can you explain that in a better way than I just did? Yeah.
I mean, I think that was a great way to explain for lay people. I think that the one part to build your skills at is you've already got the skill of recognizing a label, because you said that's probably a label. It is. It's not behavior, it's not an action. It's a label for action, right on. And now we have to think hard about what does it look like when we see a dog that's confident at a shelter? You and I would both say, look at that. That is a confident dog. So we're seeing something because we're not mind reading, and I'm not even sure we want to. That would be very hard for me to handle hearing people's thoughts and dog thoughts in a day. It's already hard for me to handle watching all that behavior, overt behavior happening around me. So you. Are seeing something, and you've learned that whatever those behaviors are, they go with this label. So it takes some effort and insight, some kind of wickedness about behavior, to be able to stop and say, Oh, I see what it is. Look at how the tail, first of all, the conditions, because fear is always influenced by conditions. Behavior never happens in a vacuum. Okay, that's a hard lesson for people, because it's counter to the cultural understanding. So first is the behavior of a dog has come into the waiting area to greet a potential person who might take them home and be their family, and we look at that dog, and we say, look at the confidence in that dog. What are we seeing? So first of all, the condition is they're coming into a place that they're not often in, so we expect that their behavior is going to be different than when they're behaving in the kennel, where they're staying most of the day. And then we see a tail held high, and tell me more. What do you see? Em?
I guess I would see when I think of confidence, I would think of a dog who had, like more loose body language. Didn't seem so fearful, maybe ears forward, but not hyper vigilant. You know, which I guess is another label that's okay,
yeah, loose mouth, door mouth, loose eyes and
like some eagerness to greet and be involved interacting with their environment.
Yes, yeah, yes, yes, and more yeses. So eagerness to greet. What does that look like they come right up to the conditions are strangers. They come right up to them. Everything is, I love that loose gate. Is I have a Cavapoo, and he's got the most endearing loose gate. It's quick. It's like, you know, on the floor, and it's just so open and free, you know. So a loose gate, soft eyes,
mouth, mouth, relaxed, like relaxed, yeah,
Susan Friedman 42:07
a little bit open, not, you know, conveying just breathing and and getting data as they come in, you know, assessing out what's going on, coming right over to us instead of hanging back. And that's cool. Lots of times I zero in on what something a label looks like by doing the balance the both both sides of it. I want a mouth just slightly open and loose. I don't want a grimace. I want ears forward, but not with strong muscle pushing just kind of a loose that. I love that description of the loose gate. So these are the things that, and many others, depending on the conditions, what confidence looks like may be different, like we might call it confidence for my dogs to look out the window and see the Amazon person and just watch and so, exactly so. And we, we need to go through each of the labels we use and say to people who are prospective caregivers. Do you need? Do you know what I mean by that? Do you know what I mean by look at that confidence. What do you see the dog doing, and they'll give it to you. And then you can add yours, or you can start to shape what it is you want them to see better. I remember that that very much, was the beginning of my work with non human animals, who I'll just call animals to say two words, I would stand behind trainers. I really came to respect, or zookeepers or ethologists, and I would say, what do you see? So somebody, we were working with condors, California condors. And I would stand behind the Condor Zookeeper, and he'd say, Oh, look, that bird's about to fly. And I would say, Well, what did you see? I saw nothing. I was overwhelmed with just this huge, huge, huge bird. And he said, Oh, it's just a feeling I have. I'm just, you know, I think sometimes I'm a condor myself. They would give me these non helpful answers, unhelpful answers, and I would keep pushing, no, no, what did you see? And he'd say, well, take a look at that one. What I see is sitting back on in balance, feet directly over body, body directly over feet. Feathers relaxed, head moving around so I and he would tell me, said that birds not going to fly. And they would show me, or what is that? Tiger is anxious. Well, what are you seeing? Well, he's pacing. He's using the same route, back and forth and back and forth. He's staying away from the mesh. So I asked enough people until I could see for myself what these labels meant. And. And I could communicate with the people who use them, I would understand what they meant, and I would say, do you mean the loose feathers on the neck? Yes, and, and, and that's what we need to help people to develop this observational skill of those nuanced behaviors, and then give them meaning.
Emily Wolf 45:19
Oh, gosh. Now I want you to come back and do an entire episode on observational skills for fosters and shelter workers, because it's true, if we are all using labels in our minds, we have different thoughts of what that label means. Without really helping the animals,
we're hurting animals unintentionally.
That would be a great thing. And you just need video. I'll just say one last thing, and then I want to move over. I can see a burning question or comment coming from Jen. Is I actually sat with Alexandra Curlin, the great horse woman and positive reinforcement teacher, recently, in the last couple of years, she and I snuck off together to the faculty room that they always have for us at clicker expos. She opened up her laptop, and for an hour she showed me Horse Videos to teach me imbalance or out of balance, because I finally said to her, What do you mean? The animal's not in balance. She'd elbow me, do you see that horse is not in balance? That's terrible. And I finally decided I needed to know what she was talking about. So for one hour, she just showed me imbalance and out of balance, videos or photos of horses, until I could pass the exam. She would show me one and say, which is it? And I'd say, in balance, yes. Out of Balance, yes. And so we learn these. These are called discriminations. You know, one thing you know, something is red, something else is purple. Do we put teal in the blue or the green? These are discriminations we learn. And so we can learn what the discriminations are before we use a label, and then once we have the same meaning, using the label is just shorthand. It's very exciting.
Susan Friedman 47:15
Your your account of learning to observe other animals or learning what those observations mean, made me think of learning a new language. So in the beginning, even once you know the words, you have to translate it in your head. So it's like, oh, the weight is forward, the mouth is closed, the eyes are tense, must be fearful and or these indications show me that the horse is out of balance. These indicate, and then after a while, you stop having to make the translation in your head, and you just know which is the level that the first guy that you mentioned with the Condor, he wasn't aware maybe that because he had observed so many times. And that's fluency, that's fluency in in a language. The language
Emily Wolf 48:15
absolutely other animals. That's a great,
a great analogy to learning a language, and it's something that we need to reinforce with each other, that when we hear a label, and we don't have the history of a shared list of behaviors that we ask and we don't ask it, this is part of the problem. We don't ask it in a cheeky way. That's a label. What does that look like? We ask it with authentic curiosity. Oh, tell me what you see, so that people are ready to think it through themselves if they haven't already, or if they already have a list. Share that list with us. And there's so much in what you say that we could talk about that's interesting. I think one reason why it's hard for people to give up these labels is that if I tell you what the behaviors of the Condor are, then I know I'm better able to predict the condor is going to fly too. So that means that you're giving up as the informant, as the expert in condors. Condors, you're giving up a little bit of your personal magic, that you knew what that bird was going to do before they did it, and there, and you were right. And so I think that we've come a really long way getting over that barrier, that it's been a long time since people withhold information, because the reinforcer for them is to be the one that has the special gift with fill in the blank, oh, I don't know. It's just a special gift I have. And I don't know if you remember from Cheyenne Mountain zoo Amy shills, but. She's one of the behavior works consultants, and she also runs the new center, center for draft training and conservation, or maybe it's conservation and training. So a big shout out to her. I've learned so much about training and observing from her recently in the last eight years of working with her, and she talks about this really eloquently. She said that her first 20 years or so was about the personal magic. She thought she just had a magical brain to brain connection with giraffe, and that's how she was succeeding where other people were failing. And now she understands that it was really about being a great observer, and that there is a whole science that can describe for you why she was successful, and she can explain the details of giraffe behavior that she was observing and teach those to others, and now they have that magic too. And she teaches two giraffe workshops, minimum of two a year, teaching others to see what she sees, to be able to help them. So I think it's kind of a big ask. When we say to people, take your personal magic, make it accessible, and then give it to everyone else you know, then what's going to be your personal magic? And my answer is, we will replace the personal magic of being good with giraffes, with being good disseminating information that improves the whole world. So we're we're giving you back something at least as big as what you're giving up. And so sometime, I hope you'll meet her and you'll hear her talk about that. It's very, very interesting.
Susan Friedman 51:47
Yeah, I love giraffes.
They are such incredible creatures.
Emily Wolf 51:53
What we're doing with giraffe now in terms of giving them the power to communicate their needs and their preferences to the humans who are caring for them, while at the same time getting certain jobs done, like blood draws and injections and hoof care voluntarily, cooperatively. It's it's extraordinary, so you need to get back there, and before you go, let me know, and I'll make sure that you have some giraffe time. Okay, I will you too.
Ed, yeah, I'll be there. We could go together. Yeah, one concept I'd love for you to chat about, and maybe even in your discussion about giraffes, is errorless learning. Can you talk a little bit about that? And how do you train those giraffes? Even though this is a dog rescue podcast, I think it I mean learning all the same, all species, right? So, right.
So what we're teaching them is different. What we teach our children is different. We don't have drafts doing calculus, but the basics, the basic laws of how we teach well, are the same for all species, and what makes it different is partly the species we're working with that tells us what they're likely to find reinforcing and the conditions in which they're likely to thrive from a physical setting standpoint. But what's the same is how we learn we're all looking for signals that tell us how to use our behavior to get reinforcers. That's the common thread. And we're so busy being enamored of Noah's Ark, we've had such a long history of enduring the differences among the different species that we're not observing the thread that is common along all the animals that we admire for their differences. So not only can we admire giraffes for their long necks, but we can also admire them for doing more of what we need them to do, because we have delivered a cracker, which would be essentially the same as teaching kid to do more of their math homework for time at the computer. The common thread, that's what we're really pulling on when we train teach a course across species. And then I'll add one more note, it's not just about the species. Even more important to the work that we're doing is the individual within a species that is so important to rescue dogs and animals, because each individual may or may not be represented well by their breed generalities. And of course, no animal perhaps is under that cloud more than the pit breeds the pities that they have such a general reputation for their aggression. Unstoppable aggression. And yet, we all know of so many animals that have that look, that pity look, who end up being unbelievably successful companion family dogs. In fact, they were the quintessential family dog in my parents generation. And if, for those of you who remember Spanky and our gang, that dog with that black eye patch, you know, they were the most common and most adored of the varieties, I'll say, because who even knows what goes into that Heinz mix of ketchup, you know, to get these dogs. So I brought you down to the place where we live, which is the individual, acknowledging species general tendencies, but understanding that our work is always about the individual, because individuals may or may not behave like their reputation, and part of our work is figuring out which ones you know, how these individuals are different from one another. When we place them in homes, your question was about errorless learning.
You know, it's like that movie. What's the everything is about everything that is really true, which is why someone can study behavior their entire life. I would need many lives, many, many lives to even scratch the surface of what's under there. But errorless learning is a great topic because, again, it pushes against the cultural fog, which you can tell I'm anti authoritarian as a style. So you're bringing up all these ways I get to push against the fog, and that makes me very happy. It also explains how I ended up in the principal's office in kindergarten. Can you imagine sending a kid punishing a kid in kindergarten? I mean, I had barely been in school and off I was sent a story for another day. But that's related to this question about errorless learning, because who would ever imagine you could teach without punishing errors, which you know relates to how you phrase that question. How is it that we could teach dogs to come when called to trade, when they take an item that belongs to the baby and it's not a dog toy. How do we teach them to do these incredible things without the no feedback, even if our potty train indoors, outdoors, without the no feedback, even if the no feedback is acceptable to us. Occasionally, I do say no. Occasionally I do say, you know, don't go on that couch. Get out of the litter box right. Get out of the litter box. So we're all using behavior decreasing consequences. It's about how frequently we want it infrequent. It's about how severe we want it to be very mild. And of course, we want it to be effective. And it's also about this key question, which is new to my list of key questions, is, is it necessary? So if it's necessary to train with those less severe and occasional punishers, we're okay with that. I'm okay with that nobody needs to feel guilty about that. It's not a positive reinforcement, only world, and it's not a force free world. We're really using those phrases to mean reducing those things like force and punishment. But the answer to the is it necessary question is that it's rarely necessary, and that brings us to errorless learning. How is it we could teach an animal to have a learn a skill with only reinforcing the occurrence of the skill and not punishing the non occurrence of the skill doing it wrong, growling or whatever it is, and that was really Skinner noticed this very early on. So it's not a new concept, but it didn't start to be really researched and demonstrated until the 70s, where a researcher named terrace taught a discrimination between red and green to pigeons, a red meant peck the key for food, and green meant don't Peck, because the food won't come up in the hopper. So that was the, you know, bark once when it's the male person, but then don't bark when it's our neighbor that's a similar discrimination on and off. Well, the way that he taught it without any no responses, was by bringing in the green light where the food would not follow very, very slowly and re. Forcing pecking during the red light over and over and over. So what we get, if we could imagine, I may have lost you. So let me set it up again, is we've got a pigeon in a chamber which is itself a conversation for another time. And when they pick the red food comes up when they pick the green, nothing happens. So in our jargon, we would call that the ignore or the extinction condition. Okay, so every time they pick red, food follows. The goal was to teach them to almost never pick green, to teach without errors. And what he did was he brought the green in very early on, but very faintly, and he flashed it only for half a second, not enough time for the bird to even get over there. But the red stayed on for five seconds, so it encouraged the bird to get over there. Over the repetitions of getting fed for red, the green started to come in longer and brighter until it was full strength green for five seconds, full strength red for five seconds. And the bird never picked the green, or very rarely, and then he compared it to another group of pigeons who learned the same discrimination, but with no control over the green coming in very quietly, very slowly, they had 3000 errors over 28 sessions the other pigeons who learned with this errorless style, where the environment was arranged to make the right answer the most likely one and the wrong answer to be ignored was 25 errors in 28 sessions. The other group that was taught in the in the traditional trial and error way, was 3000 errors in in 28 sessions, staggering. So it's we're comparing 28 errors to 3000 errors. So how does that happen? Well, it happens by a high rate of reinforcement for the correct response and an environment that discourages the wrong response and just ignores it. Should it occur so not all wrong responses can be ignored when that's the case. We do heavy antecedent arrangement to make it unlikely, like the window shade at the window, while super reinforcing the animal for hearing something but picking up a toy and bringing it to me instead. And we also reduce errors with, not only with the antecedent arrangement, which is my favorite way, we also reduce errors with our with our teaching strategies. So we shape behavior by approximations, by small responses to get to the big goal, instead of asking for the big goal. And that's a big conversation itself. What is the shaping procedure? What is that tool? Paul chan says, The crown jewel of teaching. So number one, crown jewel is observation skills. Number two, crown jewel is understanding the basics of ABCs. Number three, crown jewel is to ask, is the punishment you're using necessary? The fourth crown jewel is the teaching technique of shaping, and that is gradually moving behavior to the end goal, instead of waiting or expecting it to happen full on. And we really need to get that to the caregivers of our shelter dogs who don't already know it, and to help them be really expert at it, because that's going to be the path to their greatest success is this skill of keeping the rate of reinforcement very high by reinforcing approximate responses to the end goal, and then moving to that end goal.
Susan Friedman 1:04:05
This is a lot of information. Emily, we should do a little mini episode on teaching, leave it with errorless learning, because, yeah, I've completely changed from when I started teaching. Leave it to and there's a whole other question about, do we actually need to teach leave it?
Emily Wolf 1:04:21
But yeah, I teach leave it, yeah, but I debates are really important, because they help us rethink what we're doing. But yeah, no shame in teaching leave it.
Susan Friedman 1:04:32
How do you teach it? Susan, I'm curious.
Emily Wolf 1:04:35
Well, if I were going to do it errorless learning, I'm trying to think about how I taught it with this new pup, who's now two years old, it would probably be with setups first, so that I could control rather than incidental learning, where they're already attracted to pick up the baby's toy. So very heavy antecedent arrangement, so that the. Boys aren't just scattered all around where the dog is would be part of it heavy antecedent arrangements, so that the things I want them to leave are not on the floor in the first place. So that's an that's got to be the very first part of teaching dogs to lead it successfully is not constantly putting them in an environment where everything they touch they they need to leave, yeah, and then the to balance that would be to make sure that there's always a lot of things in the environment they can use with their mouths, that they're reinforced for bringing to me, and that those things are changed up often, so that there's always novelty in the environment. They don't go looking for the novel thing, because the things that you want them to use are have been there on the floor for six months, so that the lot of antecedent arrangement that comes before answering the question, and then it would probably have to do with things like interrupting their forward movement towards something that I've set up, you know, with something like come to me or eventually leave it, and then reinforcing them for turning around to me. So that means the setup and the observation of going towards something but teaching them to come back to me, which I remember teaching my children to do and and then perhaps adding a trade behavior so that if they did get something I would say, which the brother of Odie Jean does so beautifully, my daughter taught him because she's got the baby. He picks up a toy and she says, Genie trade, and he goes to a particular area on the carpet, drops it and looks up for the reinforcer for trading. So those are some of all of the things. You know, I think trade for her is the leave it that that we're talking about. How would you do it?
Susan Friedman 1:06:55
I'll just be very brief. But similarly to the pigeon, green light and red light making the correct response. So I start with very few distractions, both hands behind my back and the dog just in front of me, and say, leave it. And if they just stay in front of me, they get a gorgeous start moving my hands closer and closer to the dog. And then eventually I can have the treat open in my hand and say, leave it, and give them the treat, and then start bringing in other distracted items. Generalizing, I love it.
Emily Wolf 1:07:34
I'll use it, and I will cite you. And
that sounds fantastic. And that's instead of having them pawing at your hand, yeah, that's learn
more, we're ready to move on.
That's gorgeous, yeah, oh my gosh. Well, Dr, Susan Friedman, we will let you go and go have your giraffe meeting, but we so appreciate you coming on and giving us a behavior primer for our listeners, and we would love to have you back someday.
Oh, thank you anytime. It was really a pleasure, and I want to say I always think about this when I say goodbyes. What how did that interview feel for me? What feedback can I give you? And I really appreciate the questions were so thoughtful, so carefully and clearly presented to me. You're great interviewers, so I wish you well and go on interview more and more and more to get this information out there. Thank you so
much. And where can people find you?
Well, the behavior works.org. Website would be a place to start, and just remember, it's org. Behavior works.org I'm not even going to mention the alternatives as part of effortless learning. Behavior works.org and I have a really fun Facebook page. Behavior works Facebook page, and if you scroll and scroll and scroll, there are beautiful videos with paragraph explanations and like the page. I'm at 36,000 and I want to keep going, so don't forget to like the page and enjoy. Yeah.
Reinforce you by liking your page. Yeah. Thank you.
Libby Felts 1:09:16
Thanks for tuning in. If you liked this episode, don't forget to rate review and share with a friend. It helps us achieve our mission of helping more rescue dogs and their people. Pod to the rescue is hosted by Emily wolf of brilliant pup behavior, Jenny faffman of elevated dog training, and Libby Felts of Boulder dog. See our websites linked in the show notes for consults. Thanks to Mike pesci for our original music. The show is produced and edited by me Libby of Boulder dog Media For show notes and transcripts. Head to pod to the rescue.com. Let us know what you think of this episode on social media. We are at pod to the rescue on Instagram and Facebook, and we love connecting with listeners. We'll catch you next time on pod to the rescue. Oh, and tell your dogs. We said, Hi,
Emily Wolf 1:10:16
that's great, Susan, if anything happens where we mess up during we or you or anybody. We have an editor so you can clap like that, and then wait a couple of seconds, and that helps her know that, like we messed up, and then you just start over.
Okay, well, we talk about this quite a bit in the class that we need to embrace mistakes. We say we eat them for breakfast because there's such an incredible opportunity to learn something important, to either do it again the same way, to change what you do, to get different outcomes. And I've often, somewhere along the line, I have these crazy insights, and then my poor students have to endure them. I had the insight that mistakes to behavior are like mutation is to Darwinian evolution, that without mutation, there's not enough variability for selection to take place to improve what we do, and without mistakes, we don't have enough variability in our behavior For outcomes to select for improved behavior. So that makes mistakes like really elevated experience, because they improve what we do in a sort of selection, kind of perspective. So that's my first crazy insight to share with you. Okay, I love that.
Libby, welcome to pod to the rescue, a podcast from summit dog rescue in Boulder, Colorado. I'm Emily, I'm Jenny and I'm Libby. We are all Professional Dog Trainers with multiple certifications in dog training
and behavior
Emily Wolf 0:18
together, we have more than two decades of experience in dog rescue,
Libby Felts 0:23
we want to share everything we've learned along the way with other folks involved in dog rescue, sheltering, fostering and adoption and anyone who just loves dogs,
Emily Wolf 0:32
rescuing the dog is just the first step. We're here to help with
Libby Felts 0:36
everything that comes next.
Hello listeners, and welcome back. I'm Libby, and we are thrilled to be back in your feeds with season six of pod to the rescue. We're kicking it off by going in depth into the science of behavior. Emily and Jenny interviewed the amazing Dr Susan Friedman to help explain what do we even mean when we say behavior? Whether you're a seasoned professional or you're just learning about the science of behavior, this episode is fabulous. I know that I got so much out of it. And finally, a quick content note. We originally recorded this for season five, which we had to cut a little short, so you'll hear Emily mention that, but we're excited to bring it to you now as our first episode of season six.
Jenni Pfafman 1:25
Enjoy today. We are so happy to have Dr Susan Friedman on the podcast. She is a professor emeritus in the Department of Psychology at Utah State University whose work has been translated into 17 languages, Dr Friedman has been instrumental in helping us understand the behavior of all animals, and teaches students all over the world through her living and learning with animals course, as well as other courses through behavior works. One thing that really has always stood out to me about Dr Friedman is how humble she is. She's probably one of the most knowledgeable people alive when it comes to behavior, but she will give all the credit for that knowledge to those she has learned from some of her most important work has been with zoos, and this aspect of Dr Friedman's work in particular, has had a tremendous impact on my own life. Before learning about the Cheyenne Mountain zoo from a clicker Expo presentation several years ago, I was really anti Zoo. I hadn't been to a zoo for 20 years, and after watching this presentation with the penguins being voluntarily being weighed on scales, my perspective of of zoos completely changed. So I went to Cheyenne Mountain zoo, where I met a very dear friend, Sarah Duggar, and got to meet some amazing animals, like chewy, the tiger and the grizzly bears there and and I got to meet Rick Hester and learn about elephants wallowing in the mud. And because of that, I've also been to the Columbus Zoo, and I've encouraged other people to go to zoos. So this is just a way that you have personally impacted my life so much. Susan, I've been a member of the Cheyenne Mountain zoo now for several years, and I'm just one student of Dr Freeman's, and there must be 1000s of others who have similar stories. I'm so happy to have the opportunity to talk with you today again, and welcome to the podcast.
Susan Friedman 3:36
Thank you so much. It really brings tears to my eyes to hear you talk about everything that was a beautiful introduction. And you know, I've complained when people just read from the bio, and this is why, because I get to know something about our shared experience together and our CO influence on each other and then pointing out to the world. So thank you so much for that really meaningful introduction. And it's true, things are changing all the time, so as we hold our strong opinions, we always need to keep our eye on the periphery to see if things are changing that would impact those opinions. So you showed extraordinary openness and flexibility, and I appreciate that so much. We're working hard in zoos, so that's great. Welcome.
Emily Wolf 4:29
Dr Friedman, I am excited to have you on as well, and I just wanted to get us started. If you can tell us what you love most about working with other animals.
Susan Friedman 4:42
Good morning, and thank you. If you leave it to just Jen and I, we would probably talk for years. So I'm glad that you moved us to that work at hand. I think I've always I've always been a behavior nut, which is kind of a weird slice. In the animal nut world, you know, so many children are loving of animals and and then other people love human behavior or humans, but the behavior was something I was always watching. How are they interacting with each other? How do they interact with us? And I don't I'm not sure where the seed of that love of behavior came from, but I had a very vocal and analytical mom who would sit with me for hours talking about her insights and my insights about the behaving world. She was a biologist, and I grew up outside of New York City, so there was lots of behavior to observe. Of the greatest range of behavior from behavior you want to see more and behavior you really want to see less. So I don't know, like so many of us, I just think that it's such a core element of the physical world that it's hard to ignore what's interesting about it.
Emily Wolf 5:59
Yeah, that's an interesting point, and we are. You're the first guest of season five. We've been talking for four seasons previously about mostly behavior in dogs, and we've never really explained what is behavior and why do animals behave. So we thought you were the perfect guest to come on and explain that to us.
Thank you. That question, the answer to that question, or at least partly, was served up to me in Paul chances book learning and behavior, because my background is special education, I had not really come in contact with the big picture of behaving organisms. I was focused on human behavior, and specifically children with special learning needs, when I read in his book that behavior is an evolved endowment, that it's an adaptation that allows us to meet and and survive this ever changing world, a light really went on for me that redirected the way that I think about behavior, and I talk about behavior and teach about behavior, behavior because it's in the School of Psychology, I think ends up kind of being other from Biology. It's not in the School of biology, zoology, ethology. It's in the School of Psychology, where education lives. And, you know, physical physical education lives. And so it's really separated from these roots, which is that we evolve to behave in ways that allow us to change the environment, to get closer to reinforcers and further away from aversive stimuli, like punishers or things we don't want to be near. I think when you think about it that way, as an adaptation, just like vision and hearing, that's an extraordinary wide door to analyze why and how we behave in any given situation where we're driven to operate on the environment, to change the environment on our own behalf, and that that you can just see How that tumbles into working with so called problem behavior in in other learners.
Jenni Pfafman 8:26
So speaking of problem behavior, people often ask, How will my dog know what is wrong if I don't correct him or scold him? And I have my way of answering this, but I'd love to hear from you how you would answer this question. And if we wanted to look at a specific example, maybe we could look at at potty training, which we could probably talk the rest of the hour about. But you know, people say like, if I don't scold my dog for making an accident in the house, how will he know that I want him to go outside and not inside.
Emily Wolf 9:12
You know, I was just thinking about this very thing the other day. I'd have to work to remember what triggered this idea. The one thing you know, we're always looking for what is reinforceable about what people say to us, so that we can build relationships with authentic acknowledgement of what they're doing right. So right away, I'm looking in your question for what's right about that question before I kind of roll my eyes, which I do have an inner eye, roll on that one and and feel bad about it, one of the things that's so right about that question is they're acknowledging that feedback following behavior influences what the animal is going to do next. Least that consequences, in the way of scolding or other feedback, are important to behavior change, and that is really the whole nut, the whole heart and soul of behavior change science is that consequences, the feedback of behaving, the changes in environment that your behavior produces, like scolding influence what you do in the future. So that's what's very right about that question, and if or when people say that to me, because they do often, that would be my first response is, you are a good observer of how behavior works, because you mentioned, consequences are important to behavior change, and they are, of course, what's not right about that behavior really comes from the cultural fog, that social understanding that we have, rather than a scientific understanding of how behavior works. So while we know that feedback is important to behavior change in our society, we're taught early on that punishment is the main approach to changing behavior, and that has been our legacy. You know, all through time. I don't know when it started. I watched a show on Neanderthals, but it but it looks like it was present way back then as well. So it's not a surprise that people have learned that the particular kind of feedback that they should use is the kind that directly reduces behavior punishment, and I call that cultural fog. It's what we've learned by our own experience, observing and experiencing other people's punishers, who knew that you could change behavior as quickly, if not more quickly, faster and as positively in the desired direction by consequences, selecting for what you want to see more. Who knew that you could use positive reinforcement to build alternative behaviors to pooping and peeing in the house, and that the animal would learn to discriminate where to do that behavior or those behaviors? I think it's really shocking, giving our given our cultural fog, given our history of learning, being punished, it is shocking news to discover that the natural laws of behavior include selecting the right behavior with positive outcomes, And that those work as well, or, if not, better, better, we could talk about why later, then punishment. So they both work. One is heavily weighted in our own behavioral history, so we're very fluent at it. The other one is almost hard to understand, hard to believe. And we're asking people to kind of choose between what they know well and they see works under some circumstances, at least for the short run, versus this whole new idea. It's a wonder that we've done as well in changing people's views over the last 25 years as we have.
Susan Friedman 13:17
Yeah, I while you were talking, I started wondering if, I wonder if natural selection might be, I don't know, just displaying my lack of knowledge here, but I wonder if natural selection works more on a Positive reinforcement contingency than punish than a positive punishment. Do you have any thoughts about that?
Emily Wolf 13:46
Yeah, I think we would have to, we would have to tease out what the measures of that would look like, which you'll hear me say often, I think in the podcast, is, instead of giving singular answers, I will ask. But what would it look like? How could we measure to know the answer? I'm not I'm sure we can come up with something, but I think it would take some time. It's an interesting idea, and when you say it just reflects your lack of knowledge. I mean, bravo to you, because we've been taught to hide our lack of knowledge, which in itself, reduces our knowledge.
Susan Friedman 14:26
It does. That's so true.
Emily Wolf 14:28
So let that go.
Susan Friedman 14:31
Yeah, and I'm gonna keep this in my mind for next time I see you, we'll talk we'll talk more about it. But so can you explain in simple terms to our listeners, who are mostly new adopters, foster or shelter workers, what is the simplest way to influence behavior? And I know that's a very simple question, but maybe looking at. ABC model and focusing on the A and the C to help them understand, yeah.
Emily Wolf 15:09
First of all, what a list of superstars you mentioned, your adopters, your staff. I mean, you know my my heart, sends love out to all of you, because I don't know if this metaphor works, really, but I always think that the list of people that you described, keep their house build their houses furthest downstream, so that all of the stuff that's failed for other people goes down to their home, and then their door is open for all of this to flow into. So I just want to stop and say how much I admire and I'm aware of the work that you do. I have several close friends who do similar work, and it's amazing to me as I stand on the side of the river on the bank and watch all the flow into that rescues door. So thank you for that and for the work that you do. I think that the simplest way, if I were to give you one sentence first and then we could dismantle it, is to say that to change behavior, you have to change conditions, you have to change the environment the behavior happens in in order to change the behavior that the animal does. So, that simple sentence, to change behavior, you have to change conditions, is really, again, flies in the face of our cultural thought, because when we see animals behaving in ways we don't want them to, let's call it misbehaving. We understand it's rational behavior given their environment and their experience and their genetic tendencies. But if for a moment we just give it the name problem behavior or missed behavior, you know, you got to call it something for the conversation to move on. Most often, people think of these misbehaviors as a problem inside the animal. You know, what's wrong with this dog? What's wrong with this money that they're biting me, or they're growling at me, or they chew up the toys that I give them that should last longer. They think there's something wrong inside the animal. So when I say the simplest take home message is to change behavior, change conditions. That's really unnerving for people, because they're not looking in the conditions the environment to explain the problem behavior they're looking inside the animal, which leads you to solutions like drugs, which have a place, but it should be the smallest frequency of solutions. It needs to only be the smallest frequency changing conditions to change behavior will take the lion's share of solutions, and it leads people to give up their animals, because they're not thinking about their own environment as a power tool to change behavior. They're thinking there's something wrong with the animals, so they have to give it away, right?
That makes so much sense. And when we bring a new dog into a foster home, so many times, we do try to explain to people that man, we call it management, you know, setting up some baby gates, putting up film on the windows so that they can't bark at, you know, it stimuli, since they potentially have never lived in suburbia or an urban environment. And I think that that's a hard thing for a lot of people to understand. So that would be what you're You mean by changing conditions is
That's right, it would be changing the things that happened before, the behavior that are the setting triggers, we could say. So that's where Jenny brings in antecedent before, anti, the things that happened before and the things that happen after, changing the consequences or the outcomes of behavior. And so that's the ABC antecedent, the environment before the behavior occurs that we have a lot of control over as you described, and then the consequences of behaving, how you change the world by that behavior. Do you get people to back away? Do you get more treats and that sort of outcome? The consequences both bracket the behavior that occurs, and not only bracket, but I think more about a weave. They are woven into the existence of the behavior. Behavior doesn't exist without those threads running through that are the antecedents that tell the animal do it now green light foot on the pedal, or the con. Consequences, the people moved away. So that makes putting the barking have value, and indeed it does. So those management ideas are key. And I'll tell you one, one tip in talking about that, if you don't already talk about it this way, is people are very worried that those antecedent changes we make, or the consequence food reinforcers, among many different kinds that we may use, are going to be not only the current program, but are going to be in place. Need to be in place forever, and they don't want film over their living room window. They bought the house because of the beautiful view, you know, and they don't want to be giving treats every single time the dog goes outside after hearing the okay cue. They want to just open the door. And I think that's very reasonable. They want to live together with their animal. They want to float through the stream of the day together without having a food pouch or gates everywhere. And so I think it's very important to say to them that the beginning of the program to teach this dog successful behaviors in your home will not necessarily look like the end of the program. So I start by by reinforcing with food treats my puppy every time he waits at the door for me to open it and then say, okay. But now as a two year old, I never do that. I open the door, he waits. I say, Okay. And the reinforcer is the natural one of going outside. So we do start with these artificial ABCs, you know, with maybe working in the living room on the ok queue, where it's easier than at the door, but then we move it to the door, and we do give treats that are quick and easy, which is why food is so common, motivating, quick and easy. But it doesn't mean that that's what it's going to look like throughout the whole life of the dog. And when we remind them of how we work with newborns and how we're constantly moving through the stages, giving them more and more control as they learn more and more in order to control well. So we're not always we're not picking out the shoes that our high school students going to wear today the school right? So the beginning of the program might have a lot of effort and arrangements for us to run, but the goal is then to fade those supports, to have a more natural relationship with the dog and the environment.
I love that comparison to a baby versus a high schooler, because it's true with babies. We have the little baby play pens and we watch them every second, and we have the little outlet covers, but, yeah, you don't have outlet covers with a high schooler. And if we could start kind of applying that mentality, I guess, with our companion animals, that could be really helpful,
although I am still giving feedback on my 30 something year old daughter's shoes. That never stopped, but the outlet cover is a fabulous reminder of how much control we have over the environment and therefore their behavior, and then over their development and their learning. We start to fade our control. I mean, outlet covers is a great example
Susan Friedman 23:42
I was I was laughing when you were talking about the door, because my eight year old Border Collie has been when I first was teaching her to sit, to go outside, I would give her a treat, and then I'd let her outside. She'd said, I'd give her a treat, then I let her outside. So now sometimes when she wants a treat, she just goes to the door and sits and I give her a treat and think she wants to go out and she'll just come back into the living room and eat the cookie.
Emily Wolf 24:10
Yeah, yeah. So some people would hear that fun and funny story and say, See, that's the problem with giving treats. Is I don't want a dog manipulating me. But we see it quite differently, right? We see it as the dog having learned how to control its reinforcers and and we see it as a positive thing and a fun and funny thing. Also, we have confidence in our understanding of how behavior works, that if we didn't want that behavior, we could teach the dog that the food only comes when you ask for the said or Yeah, or are at the door with the dog. But in the meantime, we tend to be a very generous culture, the culture of positive reinforcement. So we would admire the dog who learned. Had to control their own reinforcers in that way?
Yeah, I'm just realizing, could you define reinforcers and punishers for our listeners who might not be familiar with those terms,
that is really a great catch. So we've defined antecedents as the important, influential things that happen before behavior that that lead to some behavioral choices in our animals or others. And then we talked about consequences, are the outcomes of behaving the change in the environment that give the animal feedback about whether or not they want to do that again, okay, so now we can add what some of the definitions of those consequences are reinforcers. Are consequences that result from the behavior follow the behavior, that strengthen the behavior, make it more likely the animal will choose to do that again, because the outcome of doing it was valuable. So think about a treat or a pet or praise for most dogs, and then the other side of that coin, because this is earth, and it tends to have balance, balance points the other side of the coin are the punishers, and those are the outcomes of behaving that weaken the behavior, or the probability of the behavior occurring in the future. So in plain English, we could say those are the outcomes that we don't want to experience, so we don't behave that way again. And I think we're born with maybe, but I'm very certain that we learn that our behavior produces outcomes, and so we can control them with how we behave. We are not just leaves in the wind getting pushed willy nilly. Our behavior has a control mechanism that is part of the natural world that we all have that allows us to learn these connections. Oh, when I bark at the male person going by the window, shade comes down, perhaps, but when I stand and just watch, then my my caregiver comes over, praises me and delivers some food. So one would be consider punishing shade coming down after the dog is already barking, but if it reduces the barking behavior, and the other would be considered a reinforcer sitting quietly and watching, because if it strengthens that choice to sit and watch it, that's a program we're working with now, and it's a program that lasts for years. You know, we'll hear that first bark, and we keep the pot of treats right on the shelf next to the window, and we always go over and we honor the function of the bark. But by function, I mean the purpose. What does the bark want to produce, or the animal want to produce in the barking, we always honor it. We go over, we say, what are you barking at? I mean, this is exactly how we talk to them. What are you barking at? I hear, Oh, it's a neighbor. And then the treats start. Neighbors are really nice to watch. Good job. And so we're getting more and more of the one bark and then watching behavior. We've got neighbor car, puppy and Kitty, and we go over to all and as soon as we arrive and start reaching for those treats, it changes from barking to, you know, aroused behavior, tension in the body, eyes fixed on the object, and tail tight. So we're getting there.
Susan Friedman 28:53
So you've we've talked a lot about reinforcement and building a history of reinforcement so that later on, you don't need to give the dog a cookie every time they do what you would like them to do. And I've heard you talk about this as putting trust into the account. So kind of like a bank account, you put a lot of trust into the account, and you have a really good video on YouTube about trust accounts. Can you talk a little bit about this and how fosters and adopters can build strong trust accounts with their dogs?
Emily Wolf 29:36
Yeah, it's a beautiful question, and that was a beautifully phrased question. I have to say that we do build trust accounts, and that's a metaphor that many people have used. So sometimes it's attributed to me, and in this case, it's one that I picked up somewhere in my special education background, and I hear many, many people use so. Acknowledgement to the generality of this metaphor, as you explained, if we think about our interactions as having a bank account next to us, an imaginary bank account, then every time we do something that is pleasing to the other individual, we can hear a coin hit that bank account. And I would say in my words, every time we deliver a reinforcer to one another, a coin goes into that trust account. And until we build such a big bank account in the relationship bank that even if we do something that is unpleasant or undesired in any way, think of all of those negative words again. I don't like any of them, but we need to talk. So we have to give it a name. We can take some trust out, some money out of that bank account, but we have so much in there that although it may have an immediate kind of bristling effect, it does not bankrupt the relationship. And so that's what we're going for. Trust is, after all, another one of these labels that we use. But as I've been saying, We've got to give what we do a name so that we can talk having the same understanding of what we're describing, of what we're talking about. So I ask, what do these labels look like? What does trust look like? So often we'll say, you need to build a trust account, but we never answer that question, or rarely do I hear people answering the question, and this is the behaviors that you should do in order to be labeled as trusted. So we tell people how to trust and that they should trust, but we don't tell them how to behave in that way. For those of you who can't see, I have the zoom gestures turned on, and when you lift your two thumbs up, you get fireworks. So it's and one hand, it's very annoying, but on the other hand, it's very pleasing, and so I haven't turned it off yet. So so what happens is we do thumbs up more because we get this firework thing going on, right? That's right, it's a first example of how consequences influence the rate of behavior that they follow. But so I've done some thinking about it, and I don't want to just say to people, it's, I hear this a lot. It's especially with rescue animals. It's all about trust. You just need to develop trust with this animal who doesn't have trust in humans or in human hands or human closeness. So just build that trust account. But what do you do to build the trust account? It's the glaring hole in our supporting of people who are working with animals for whom that is not already learned. And so I think that what we the behaviors we're referring to, are the ones that end in positive reinforcement. I think it's that simple. I think that if you interact with animals with a high rate of delivering reinforcement for particular target behaviors at such a high rate that you fill that piggy bank, then not only will you have a more resilient, bolder, more confident animal, because their behavior is what controlled Building the coins in the account. But you'll also have a more resilient animal in the sense that if something negative does happen, like an injection of the veterinary or they get put it into the bedroom, you know, when the Amazon person comes, when something withdraws, there's so much in there that they come out of the bedroom, or they leave the veterinary office ready to go, ready and raring to meet the world and to control their positive reinforcers again, what we call resilience. So I think that's something we all need to be careful of. Is if we're going to say to people, you need to the animal doesn't trust you. You need to build trust that whenever we use these labels, we take the next step, which is to say what the behaviors are that earn that label.
Oh, I love that. I was just thinking. One reason we started this podcast is because all of us who rescue animals love them and want to see them succeed, and yet, having the information from someone like you to teach us how to build a trust account is not readily available to the general public without, you know, going to clicker Expo. So just that was a beautiful answer, and I feel like anyone who's. Wondering how to help that new dog or that foster dog, or even that dog in the shelter, learn to trust more. It would be building that trust account through lots of reinforcers in the piggy bank, right?
And you know, there's I'm thinking now to hear you say it back, there's so much more to learn, so much more to teach. Because we're not just randomly giving food, although that doesn't hurt either, you know, as a beginning point, but we say we are contingently delivering food, and that word was one of the two hardest words I had to learn in learning the jargon of behavior analysis, reinforcers and punishers. I learned that readily, but this word contingent really had me stuck for a while. And what we mean by it is that the food or other reinforcer, the ball, the frisbee toss or even stepping away can reinforce the behavior we want to see. When we say we deliver them contingently, we mean that they don't happen unless the specific behavior we're working to build happens. So there's a dependency between the behavior we want to see more happening and that positive outcome, that reinforcing outcome, so that kind of shapes up our own behavior. It means that above all else, we have to become great observers of behavior in the noise, in the white water of behavior occurring around us, and the kids are running and the doorbells ringing and my phone is beeping, and I have to spy that in all of that, the dog stayed quietly by my leg. Boom. That's a contingent reinforcement opportunity. So to see the opportunities for reinforcement which we're only going to use. Or by definition, means that it's contingent, it's dependent on the right behavior occurring first, the behavior we want to see more occurring first. It means, I think, that the most important skill of all the skills is the skill of an observer that we have to pick out what's right about what every organism around us is doing at every moment, and it becomes second nature. Once you build the skill you can't turn off the you know. I'll say to the person who delivers coffee from the Starbucks window, thanks for that cheerful face, you know. And I realized, why am I or I'll tell you a real example that happened that was so embarrassing. My daughter has a newish boyfriend, and when he came over for the first time, he started to put the silverware out that I had just left on the table, he started to organize it around the place. And I said to him, Can I catch you being good? Thank you so much for putting the silverware in the in the right place without being asked. That's what I was going for. Was the initiative to see a job and do it. And I said, and I looked at both of my daughters, and they were like, but it is really a lifestyle for me. It must be very annoying. I'm constantly aware of the behavior around me and trying to select with praise, what, what, what I want to see again. It's hard to turn off.
And I have seen, and I know confidence is probably a label, but I have seen when dogs come in and you I'd love your thoughts on my thoughts, that once they realize that their behavior can change reinforcers and have you know that they do feel more confident because they're more able to change their environment and work for reinforcers. Have you seen that? And can you explain that in a better way than I just did? Yeah.
I mean, I think that was a great way to explain for lay people. I think that the one part to build your skills at is you've already got the skill of recognizing a label, because you said that's probably a label. It is. It's not behavior, it's not an action. It's a label for action, right on. And now we have to think hard about what does it look like when we see a dog that's confident at a shelter? You and I would both say, look at that. That is a confident dog. So we're seeing something because we're not mind reading, and I'm not even sure we want to. That would be very hard for me to handle hearing people's thoughts and dog thoughts in a day. It's already hard for me to handle watching all that behavior, overt behavior happening around me. So you. Are seeing something, and you've learned that whatever those behaviors are, they go with this label. So it takes some effort and insight, some kind of wickedness about behavior, to be able to stop and say, Oh, I see what it is. Look at how the tail, first of all, the conditions, because fear is always influenced by conditions. Behavior never happens in a vacuum. Okay, that's a hard lesson for people, because it's counter to the cultural understanding. So first is the behavior of a dog has come into the waiting area to greet a potential person who might take them home and be their family, and we look at that dog, and we say, look at the confidence in that dog. What are we seeing? So first of all, the condition is they're coming into a place that they're not often in, so we expect that their behavior is going to be different than when they're behaving in the kennel, where they're staying most of the day. And then we see a tail held high, and tell me more. What do you see? Em?
I guess I would see when I think of confidence, I would think of a dog who had, like more loose body language. Didn't seem so fearful, maybe ears forward, but not hyper vigilant. You know, which I guess is another label that's okay,
yeah, loose mouth, door mouth, loose eyes and
like some eagerness to greet and be involved interacting with their environment.
Yes, yeah, yes, yes, and more yeses. So eagerness to greet. What does that look like they come right up to the conditions are strangers. They come right up to them. Everything is, I love that loose gate. Is I have a Cavapoo, and he's got the most endearing loose gate. It's quick. It's like, you know, on the floor, and it's just so open and free, you know. So a loose gate, soft eyes,
mouth, mouth, relaxed, like relaxed, yeah,
Susan Friedman 42:07
a little bit open, not, you know, conveying just breathing and and getting data as they come in, you know, assessing out what's going on, coming right over to us instead of hanging back. And that's cool. Lots of times I zero in on what something a label looks like by doing the balance the both both sides of it. I want a mouth just slightly open and loose. I don't want a grimace. I want ears forward, but not with strong muscle pushing just kind of a loose that. I love that description of the loose gate. So these are the things that, and many others, depending on the conditions, what confidence looks like may be different, like we might call it confidence for my dogs to look out the window and see the Amazon person and just watch and so, exactly so. And we, we need to go through each of the labels we use and say to people who are prospective caregivers. Do you need? Do you know what I mean by that? Do you know what I mean by look at that confidence. What do you see the dog doing, and they'll give it to you. And then you can add yours, or you can start to shape what it is you want them to see better. I remember that that very much, was the beginning of my work with non human animals, who I'll just call animals to say two words, I would stand behind trainers. I really came to respect, or zookeepers or ethologists, and I would say, what do you see? So somebody, we were working with condors, California condors. And I would stand behind the Condor Zookeeper, and he'd say, Oh, look, that bird's about to fly. And I would say, Well, what did you see? I saw nothing. I was overwhelmed with just this huge, huge, huge bird. And he said, Oh, it's just a feeling I have. I'm just, you know, I think sometimes I'm a condor myself. They would give me these non helpful answers, unhelpful answers, and I would keep pushing, no, no, what did you see? And he'd say, well, take a look at that one. What I see is sitting back on in balance, feet directly over body, body directly over feet. Feathers relaxed, head moving around so I and he would tell me, said that birds not going to fly. And they would show me, or what is that? Tiger is anxious. Well, what are you seeing? Well, he's pacing. He's using the same route, back and forth and back and forth. He's staying away from the mesh. So I asked enough people until I could see for myself what these labels meant. And. And I could communicate with the people who use them, I would understand what they meant, and I would say, do you mean the loose feathers on the neck? Yes, and, and, and that's what we need to help people to develop this observational skill of those nuanced behaviors, and then give them meaning.
Emily Wolf 45:19
Oh, gosh. Now I want you to come back and do an entire episode on observational skills for fosters and shelter workers, because it's true, if we are all using labels in our minds, we have different thoughts of what that label means. Without really helping the animals,
we're hurting animals unintentionally.
That would be a great thing. And you just need video. I'll just say one last thing, and then I want to move over. I can see a burning question or comment coming from Jen. Is I actually sat with Alexandra Curlin, the great horse woman and positive reinforcement teacher, recently, in the last couple of years, she and I snuck off together to the faculty room that they always have for us at clicker expos. She opened up her laptop, and for an hour she showed me Horse Videos to teach me imbalance or out of balance, because I finally said to her, What do you mean? The animal's not in balance. She'd elbow me, do you see that horse is not in balance? That's terrible. And I finally decided I needed to know what she was talking about. So for one hour, she just showed me imbalance and out of balance, videos or photos of horses, until I could pass the exam. She would show me one and say, which is it? And I'd say, in balance, yes. Out of Balance, yes. And so we learn these. These are called discriminations. You know, one thing you know, something is red, something else is purple. Do we put teal in the blue or the green? These are discriminations we learn. And so we can learn what the discriminations are before we use a label, and then once we have the same meaning, using the label is just shorthand. It's very exciting.
Susan Friedman 47:15
Your your account of learning to observe other animals or learning what those observations mean, made me think of learning a new language. So in the beginning, even once you know the words, you have to translate it in your head. So it's like, oh, the weight is forward, the mouth is closed, the eyes are tense, must be fearful and or these indications show me that the horse is out of balance. These indicate, and then after a while, you stop having to make the translation in your head, and you just know which is the level that the first guy that you mentioned with the Condor, he wasn't aware maybe that because he had observed so many times. And that's fluency, that's fluency in in a language. The language
Emily Wolf 48:15
absolutely other animals. That's a great,
a great analogy to learning a language, and it's something that we need to reinforce with each other, that when we hear a label, and we don't have the history of a shared list of behaviors that we ask and we don't ask it, this is part of the problem. We don't ask it in a cheeky way. That's a label. What does that look like? We ask it with authentic curiosity. Oh, tell me what you see, so that people are ready to think it through themselves if they haven't already, or if they already have a list. Share that list with us. And there's so much in what you say that we could talk about that's interesting. I think one reason why it's hard for people to give up these labels is that if I tell you what the behaviors of the Condor are, then I know I'm better able to predict the condor is going to fly too. So that means that you're giving up as the informant, as the expert in condors. Condors, you're giving up a little bit of your personal magic, that you knew what that bird was going to do before they did it, and there, and you were right. And so I think that we've come a really long way getting over that barrier, that it's been a long time since people withhold information, because the reinforcer for them is to be the one that has the special gift with fill in the blank, oh, I don't know. It's just a special gift I have. And I don't know if you remember from Cheyenne Mountain zoo Amy shills, but. She's one of the behavior works consultants, and she also runs the new center, center for draft training and conservation, or maybe it's conservation and training. So a big shout out to her. I've learned so much about training and observing from her recently in the last eight years of working with her, and she talks about this really eloquently. She said that her first 20 years or so was about the personal magic. She thought she just had a magical brain to brain connection with giraffe, and that's how she was succeeding where other people were failing. And now she understands that it was really about being a great observer, and that there is a whole science that can describe for you why she was successful, and she can explain the details of giraffe behavior that she was observing and teach those to others, and now they have that magic too. And she teaches two giraffe workshops, minimum of two a year, teaching others to see what she sees, to be able to help them. So I think it's kind of a big ask. When we say to people, take your personal magic, make it accessible, and then give it to everyone else you know, then what's going to be your personal magic? And my answer is, we will replace the personal magic of being good with giraffes, with being good disseminating information that improves the whole world. So we're we're giving you back something at least as big as what you're giving up. And so sometime, I hope you'll meet her and you'll hear her talk about that. It's very, very interesting.
Susan Friedman 51:47
Yeah, I love giraffes.
They are such incredible creatures.
Emily Wolf 51:53
What we're doing with giraffe now in terms of giving them the power to communicate their needs and their preferences to the humans who are caring for them, while at the same time getting certain jobs done, like blood draws and injections and hoof care voluntarily, cooperatively. It's it's extraordinary, so you need to get back there, and before you go, let me know, and I'll make sure that you have some giraffe time. Okay, I will you too.
Ed, yeah, I'll be there. We could go together. Yeah, one concept I'd love for you to chat about, and maybe even in your discussion about giraffes, is errorless learning. Can you talk a little bit about that? And how do you train those giraffes? Even though this is a dog rescue podcast, I think it I mean learning all the same, all species, right? So, right.
So what we're teaching them is different. What we teach our children is different. We don't have drafts doing calculus, but the basics, the basic laws of how we teach well, are the same for all species, and what makes it different is partly the species we're working with that tells us what they're likely to find reinforcing and the conditions in which they're likely to thrive from a physical setting standpoint. But what's the same is how we learn we're all looking for signals that tell us how to use our behavior to get reinforcers. That's the common thread. And we're so busy being enamored of Noah's Ark, we've had such a long history of enduring the differences among the different species that we're not observing the thread that is common along all the animals that we admire for their differences. So not only can we admire giraffes for their long necks, but we can also admire them for doing more of what we need them to do, because we have delivered a cracker, which would be essentially the same as teaching kid to do more of their math homework for time at the computer. The common thread, that's what we're really pulling on when we train teach a course across species. And then I'll add one more note, it's not just about the species. Even more important to the work that we're doing is the individual within a species that is so important to rescue dogs and animals, because each individual may or may not be represented well by their breed generalities. And of course, no animal perhaps is under that cloud more than the pit breeds the pities that they have such a general reputation for their aggression. Unstoppable aggression. And yet, we all know of so many animals that have that look, that pity look, who end up being unbelievably successful companion family dogs. In fact, they were the quintessential family dog in my parents generation. And if, for those of you who remember Spanky and our gang, that dog with that black eye patch, you know, they were the most common and most adored of the varieties, I'll say, because who even knows what goes into that Heinz mix of ketchup, you know, to get these dogs. So I brought you down to the place where we live, which is the individual, acknowledging species general tendencies, but understanding that our work is always about the individual, because individuals may or may not behave like their reputation, and part of our work is figuring out which ones you know, how these individuals are different from one another. When we place them in homes, your question was about errorless learning.
You know, it's like that movie. What's the everything is about everything that is really true, which is why someone can study behavior their entire life. I would need many lives, many, many lives to even scratch the surface of what's under there. But errorless learning is a great topic because, again, it pushes against the cultural fog, which you can tell I'm anti authoritarian as a style. So you're bringing up all these ways I get to push against the fog, and that makes me very happy. It also explains how I ended up in the principal's office in kindergarten. Can you imagine sending a kid punishing a kid in kindergarten? I mean, I had barely been in school and off I was sent a story for another day. But that's related to this question about errorless learning, because who would ever imagine you could teach without punishing errors, which you know relates to how you phrase that question. How is it that we could teach dogs to come when called to trade, when they take an item that belongs to the baby and it's not a dog toy. How do we teach them to do these incredible things without the no feedback, even if our potty train indoors, outdoors, without the no feedback, even if the no feedback is acceptable to us. Occasionally, I do say no. Occasionally I do say, you know, don't go on that couch. Get out of the litter box right. Get out of the litter box. So we're all using behavior decreasing consequences. It's about how frequently we want it infrequent. It's about how severe we want it to be very mild. And of course, we want it to be effective. And it's also about this key question, which is new to my list of key questions, is, is it necessary? So if it's necessary to train with those less severe and occasional punishers, we're okay with that. I'm okay with that nobody needs to feel guilty about that. It's not a positive reinforcement, only world, and it's not a force free world. We're really using those phrases to mean reducing those things like force and punishment. But the answer to the is it necessary question is that it's rarely necessary, and that brings us to errorless learning. How is it we could teach an animal to have a learn a skill with only reinforcing the occurrence of the skill and not punishing the non occurrence of the skill doing it wrong, growling or whatever it is, and that was really Skinner noticed this very early on. So it's not a new concept, but it didn't start to be really researched and demonstrated until the 70s, where a researcher named terrace taught a discrimination between red and green to pigeons, a red meant peck the key for food, and green meant don't Peck, because the food won't come up in the hopper. So that was the, you know, bark once when it's the male person, but then don't bark when it's our neighbor that's a similar discrimination on and off. Well, the way that he taught it without any no responses, was by bringing in the green light where the food would not follow very, very slowly and re. Forcing pecking during the red light over and over and over. So what we get, if we could imagine, I may have lost you. So let me set it up again, is we've got a pigeon in a chamber which is itself a conversation for another time. And when they pick the red food comes up when they pick the green, nothing happens. So in our jargon, we would call that the ignore or the extinction condition. Okay, so every time they pick red, food follows. The goal was to teach them to almost never pick green, to teach without errors. And what he did was he brought the green in very early on, but very faintly, and he flashed it only for half a second, not enough time for the bird to even get over there. But the red stayed on for five seconds, so it encouraged the bird to get over there. Over the repetitions of getting fed for red, the green started to come in longer and brighter until it was full strength green for five seconds, full strength red for five seconds. And the bird never picked the green, or very rarely, and then he compared it to another group of pigeons who learned the same discrimination, but with no control over the green coming in very quietly, very slowly, they had 3000 errors over 28 sessions the other pigeons who learned with this errorless style, where the environment was arranged to make the right answer the most likely one and the wrong answer to be ignored was 25 errors in 28 sessions. The other group that was taught in the in the traditional trial and error way, was 3000 errors in in 28 sessions, staggering. So it's we're comparing 28 errors to 3000 errors. So how does that happen? Well, it happens by a high rate of reinforcement for the correct response and an environment that discourages the wrong response and just ignores it. Should it occur so not all wrong responses can be ignored when that's the case. We do heavy antecedent arrangement to make it unlikely, like the window shade at the window, while super reinforcing the animal for hearing something but picking up a toy and bringing it to me instead. And we also reduce errors with, not only with the antecedent arrangement, which is my favorite way, we also reduce errors with our with our teaching strategies. So we shape behavior by approximations, by small responses to get to the big goal, instead of asking for the big goal. And that's a big conversation itself. What is the shaping procedure? What is that tool? Paul chan says, The crown jewel of teaching. So number one, crown jewel is observation skills. Number two, crown jewel is understanding the basics of ABCs. Number three, crown jewel is to ask, is the punishment you're using necessary? The fourth crown jewel is the teaching technique of shaping, and that is gradually moving behavior to the end goal, instead of waiting or expecting it to happen full on. And we really need to get that to the caregivers of our shelter dogs who don't already know it, and to help them be really expert at it, because that's going to be the path to their greatest success is this skill of keeping the rate of reinforcement very high by reinforcing approximate responses to the end goal, and then moving to that end goal.
Susan Friedman 1:04:05
This is a lot of information. Emily, we should do a little mini episode on teaching, leave it with errorless learning, because, yeah, I've completely changed from when I started teaching. Leave it to and there's a whole other question about, do we actually need to teach leave it?
Emily Wolf 1:04:21
But yeah, I teach leave it, yeah, but I debates are really important, because they help us rethink what we're doing. But yeah, no shame in teaching leave it.
Susan Friedman 1:04:32
How do you teach it? Susan, I'm curious.
Emily Wolf 1:04:35
Well, if I were going to do it errorless learning, I'm trying to think about how I taught it with this new pup, who's now two years old, it would probably be with setups first, so that I could control rather than incidental learning, where they're already attracted to pick up the baby's toy. So very heavy antecedent arrangement, so that the. Boys aren't just scattered all around where the dog is would be part of it heavy antecedent arrangements, so that the things I want them to leave are not on the floor in the first place. So that's an that's got to be the very first part of teaching dogs to lead it successfully is not constantly putting them in an environment where everything they touch they they need to leave, yeah, and then the to balance that would be to make sure that there's always a lot of things in the environment they can use with their mouths, that they're reinforced for bringing to me, and that those things are changed up often, so that there's always novelty in the environment. They don't go looking for the novel thing, because the things that you want them to use are have been there on the floor for six months, so that the lot of antecedent arrangement that comes before answering the question, and then it would probably have to do with things like interrupting their forward movement towards something that I've set up, you know, with something like come to me or eventually leave it, and then reinforcing them for turning around to me. So that means the setup and the observation of going towards something but teaching them to come back to me, which I remember teaching my children to do and and then perhaps adding a trade behavior so that if they did get something I would say, which the brother of Odie Jean does so beautifully, my daughter taught him because she's got the baby. He picks up a toy and she says, Genie trade, and he goes to a particular area on the carpet, drops it and looks up for the reinforcer for trading. So those are some of all of the things. You know, I think trade for her is the leave it that that we're talking about. How would you do it?
Susan Friedman 1:06:55
I'll just be very brief. But similarly to the pigeon, green light and red light making the correct response. So I start with very few distractions, both hands behind my back and the dog just in front of me, and say, leave it. And if they just stay in front of me, they get a gorgeous start moving my hands closer and closer to the dog. And then eventually I can have the treat open in my hand and say, leave it, and give them the treat, and then start bringing in other distracted items. Generalizing, I love it.
Emily Wolf 1:07:34
I'll use it, and I will cite you. And
that sounds fantastic. And that's instead of having them pawing at your hand, yeah, that's learn
more, we're ready to move on.
That's gorgeous, yeah, oh my gosh. Well, Dr, Susan Friedman, we will let you go and go have your giraffe meeting, but we so appreciate you coming on and giving us a behavior primer for our listeners, and we would love to have you back someday.
Oh, thank you anytime. It was really a pleasure, and I want to say I always think about this when I say goodbyes. What how did that interview feel for me? What feedback can I give you? And I really appreciate the questions were so thoughtful, so carefully and clearly presented to me. You're great interviewers, so I wish you well and go on interview more and more and more to get this information out there. Thank you so
much. And where can people find you?
Well, the behavior works.org. Website would be a place to start, and just remember, it's org. Behavior works.org I'm not even going to mention the alternatives as part of effortless learning. Behavior works.org and I have a really fun Facebook page. Behavior works Facebook page, and if you scroll and scroll and scroll, there are beautiful videos with paragraph explanations and like the page. I'm at 36,000 and I want to keep going, so don't forget to like the page and enjoy. Yeah.
Reinforce you by liking your page. Yeah. Thank you.
Libby Felts 1:09:16
Thanks for tuning in. If you liked this episode, don't forget to rate review and share with a friend. It helps us achieve our mission of helping more rescue dogs and their people. Pod to the rescue is hosted by Emily wolf of brilliant pup behavior, Jenny faffman of elevated dog training, and Libby Felts of Boulder dog. See our websites linked in the show notes for consults. Thanks to Mike pesci for our original music. The show is produced and edited by me Libby of Boulder dog Media For show notes and transcripts. Head to pod to the rescue.com. Let us know what you think of this episode on social media. We are at pod to the rescue on Instagram and Facebook, and we love connecting with listeners. We'll catch you next time on pod to the rescue. Oh, and tell your dogs. We said, Hi,
Emily Wolf 1:10:16
that's great, Susan, if anything happens where we mess up during we or you or anybody. We have an editor so you can clap like that, and then wait a couple of seconds, and that helps her know that, like we messed up, and then you just start over.
Okay, well, we talk about this quite a bit in the class that we need to embrace mistakes. We say we eat them for breakfast because there's such an incredible opportunity to learn something important, to either do it again the same way, to change what you do, to get different outcomes. And I've often, somewhere along the line, I have these crazy insights, and then my poor students have to endure them. I had the insight that mistakes to behavior are like mutation is to Darwinian evolution, that without mutation, there's not enough variability for selection to take place to improve what we do, and without mistakes, we don't have enough variability in our behavior For outcomes to select for improved behavior. So that makes mistakes like really elevated experience, because they improve what we do in a sort of selection, kind of perspective. So that's my first crazy insight to share with you. Okay, I love that.