Tag Archives: conditioning

training pets with punishment and reinforcement

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My family recently got a puppy.  Like most dogs in a new environment, he liked to go to the bathroom wherever he felt like going.  In the beginning we used to just punish him by yelling or something to try and scare him from doing it again.  He still would constantly keep peeing around inside the house.  We thought that he would have learned by now, but clearly he hasn’t.  He was trained to use a pad, but every once in a while he will find a different spot.  He learned a lot, but not enough to stop.  My mom found a new tactic to use however.  Now instead of trying to punish, she would reinforce it.  But not reinforce him peeing around the house.  She takes a paper towel, gets a little bit of the pee on it, and puts it on the pad.  Then she brings the puppy to the pad, let’s him sniff it, to know it’s his.  After that she will reward him with a treat.  It is difficult to change to this style of conditioning because he was already used to receiving treats a few times randomly throughout the day.  So it is a little earlier to determine if it will work one hundred percent, in case someone gives him a treat at a time other than when he pees on the pad.  I was a little skeptical of this idea at first because we are trying to also get him to pee when we take him on walks because he usually loves to try and run the whole time he is outside instead of actually going to the bathroom.  Hopefully by the time school ends he will have learned what he should and should not be doing.

Classic Conditioning

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Psychology has found that we have the ability to condition people and animals to achieve a desired response. Ivan Pavlov showcased this powerful ability by using dogs to demonstrate that a reflex could be caused to occur in response to a totally unrelated stimulus. Pavlov observed how the dogs salivated when meat was placed in their mouths or held in front of them. Soon, he began ringing a bell every time the meat was provided until the dogs would salivate to the sound alone. The dogs were able to exhibit an automatic unconditioned response solely on the pairing of a conditioned stimulus to an unconditioned stimulus.
Although we have the ability to condition a person to the point that they automatically respond in a certain way, that doesn’t necessarily mean we force them to. Sometimes conditioning can happen on accident.
In Pennsylvania, you are able to achieve your driver’s permit at the age of 16 if you pass the written (electronic) exam. As a new license holder, I was eager to get started as soon as I could. With no previous training, I began practicing the next day. My dad slowly took me through neighborhood roads, until he felt I was ready for a busier scene. I nervously drove down the main road by my house until I approached a fork in the road. As I began to turn right, I cut my wheel too hard and needless to say I caused an immense amount of damage. My immediate reaction caused me to shake uncontrollably and cry. Now, whenever I am faced with that road (which is unfortunately hard to avoid) I cringe and receive a pit in my stomach. My accident conditioned me to fear the scene each time it appears.
Classical conditioning is an extraordinary way to condition an organism for a specific response. Sometimes it is for a desired trait, while others may be caused on accident. Either way, each conditioned response can be counter-conditioned in the end.

Attempt at conditioning

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Last semester, my close friends and I spent a lot of nights staying up late.  Staying up till 3 am maybe watching a movie, or just talking.  Eventually it caught up to us and we would feel tired throughout the whole day, but we would still just sit around.  Soon enough we became more productive during the time we stayed up late.  We would bring in some work, and many of us had similar classes, so we would be able to work together and help each other out as we worked.  But the only problem with this was one of our friends would still decide to not do any work.  This problem is still occurring now, and we are trying to help our friend start.  During past few weeks, due to a lack of difficult work, we all just hung out, not doing much.  But now that some exams are coming up, everyone started to study more.  We attempted to get our friend to study by having everyone around our friend study.  We would all be quiet, and focused, hoping that would persuade our friend into wanting to study too, since it would be like a last option for our friend.  Our friend’s mind was still set on not doing work, even though there is an exam coming up very soon.  We all want to have fun, but we are too worried that our friend may get stuck behind because of the lack of effort our friend puts forth into studying.   A big part of the problem we have with getting through to our friend is the fact that our friend is often alone doing whatever, so if our friend were to get bored of us studying, then our friend can leave and do whatever.  Hopefully we can get our friend conditioned to study with us when we study, especially since we can all help him with at least one of his classes.