Always ask the person you’re talking with how he or she is using a term before deciding you know what is being said.

Terms of Confusion

Negative Reinforcement, Flooding, Extinction, Oh My!

            A guy from Pluto and a woman from Mars met in a bar where the bartender was fluent in 187 different space languages.  Some space languages are very, very similar, so often people from different planets can talk with each other without lessons.  After a few minutes of meaningful eye contact, the Martian sauntered over to the Plutonian and said, “Hey, Pluto, want to barble my flinkum?” 

            The Plutonian’s eyes lit up and he said, “Dwing!” 

            The bartender looked at me and said, “She’ll be back without him … and she’ll be mad.” 

            “How do you know?”

            “Well, in both of their native tongues the word “my” is a possessive meaning that something belongs to the person doing the speaking, right?”

            “Sure…”

            “And in both languages “Dwing” means, “I was hoping you’d suggest that!”

            “Obviously …”

            “But unfortunately, in Martian barble means “kiss” and flinkum means “sweet lips.”    

            “Pretty tame for a space bar!  What do they mean in Plutonian?”

            “Barble means “go on a date with” and flinkum means ‘brother’.”

            In the world of animal training, although you might not end up introducing a cute guy to your brother, you just might walk away from a conversation thinking you know what was just said, while the person you were talking with took away something very different.  It’s very important to speak with a common language when dealing with behavior.  If you think “negative reinforcement” means to remove something after a behavior and see that the rate of the behavior increases, while the person you’re talking to thinks it means any kind of aversive disciplinary measure, you’re not communicating.  Because trainers use different terms to describe the same procedures and sometimes use the same term to describe different procedures, always ask the person you’re talking with how he or she is using the word before deciding you know what is being said.

            In the world of clicker training most of the procedures used come from the science of behavior analysis.  But sometimes there are discrepancies.  Obviously I would prefer that everyone use the technical behavior analytic terms because that would make my life easier, but I know that communities of people are already using a variety of terms, so the most important thing to remember is what I’ve already said.  Always ask the person you’re talking with how he or she is using a term. 

            I’d like to go through a few terms and explain why it’s important that we always use them in consistent ways. 

Negative Reinforcement

            Negative reinforcement is a commonly used term that is commonly used incorrectly in the big world.  Trainers are often savvier than the general public, but I’m going to run through it as a starting point for this discussion.  In order to identify negative reinforcement in action, if you see an animal (including a human animal) avoiding or trying to escape from something, negative reinforcement is going on somewhere. 

As you probably know, reinforcement is a procedure through which some event happens with a behavior (at the same time or afterwards) and that results in the rate of that behavior increasing or maintaining.  We say “rate” because that means how many times the behavior happens.  If we said the behavior increased it could mean it got louder, it got longer or it happened sooner.  You can adjust those characteristics of behavior during shaping … a term that needs its own article!

            Negative is a mathematical term when talking about behavior.  It doesn’t present a moral judgment.  (Negative reinforcement is not necessarily a bad thing.)  Add the term negative to reinforcement and the definition is firmed up a little bit.  Negative reinforcement is a procedure through which something is withdrawn from the environment resulting in the rate of that behavior increasing or being maintained.  Note that even though the name says negative, the behavior’s rate still increases or maintains. Reinforcement is always talking about building a behavior or keeping it in place.  Negative in this context is talking about that event being subtracted from the environment.    

           We tend to think of negative reinforcement as one of the bad guys in operant conditioning.  There are indeed times when it is used coercively and aversively.  But it can be used in ways that are both more effective and less aversive than positive reinforcement. 

            Say Fido is scared of strange dogs, but we keep walking him past strange dogs and offering him Scooby Snacks.  He might take them—or he might not, but is food what’s really on his mind?  If you say it depends on the dog, you’re right.  But you can teach a dog to take food in the presence of other dogs and still have a dog that is scared of other dogs.  If you want to teach a dog not to be afraid of other dogs, the best way to teach him is to provide him with escape from other dogs when he does any behavior that is not as scared as what he used to do.  If he performs a calming signal (see Turid Rugaas’s elegant little book, On Talking Terms With Dogs:  Calming Signals.) such as sniffing the ground, averting his eyes or licking his lips, have someone walk the other dog away.  You’ll make progress a lot faster.  And oddly enough, the other dogs become less aversive in the process. 

            (Continued in right column)

Flooding   

            Flooding is a term that is used in horse training, parrot training and dog training, among other areas.  Sometimes negative reinforcement is mistaken for flooding.  There’s a difference though.  In using a negative reinforcement procedure, when your learner does the behavior, you release the aversive stimulus.  For example, I’ve seen several trainers of different species hold animals firmly to calm them down.  Traditional parrot trainers may wrap a bird in a towel and hold him still until he stops struggling before they release him.  (I’m not recommending this, by the way.)  Many animals learn to tolerate handling this way, although there are better ways.

            The distinction between flooding and negative reinforcement is that with flooding, no matter what the animal does, he can’t escape until released.  There is no magic behavior that is going to cause the aversive situation to let up.  The end is not under his control.  In negative reinforcement, if the animal does a certain thing, he is released.   He is given control over his escape.  Certain behaviors result in the animal receiving reinforcement in the form of escape from the aversive situation.  Remember that when you see escape working as a reinforcer, you’re seeing negative reinforcement.

            If the parrot trainer held a struggling bird still by wrapping him in a towel until the bird stood calmly on his arm, and as soon as the bird stood calmly on his arm he removed the towel,  and if the bird stood calmly on his arm more often in the future, the procedure the trainer was using was negative reinforcement.  If the trainer held the bird still no matter what the bird did and the bird just gave up, that would be flooding.  In flooding standing calmly on his arm wouldn't cause the towel to be removed.  The parrot would not have a way to affect the environment.  With negative reinforcement, the parrot can affect the environment by performing certain behaviors.  (This paragraph was edited on 6/4/05)

Escape Extinction

            Did you know that you can extinguish negatively reinforced behavior?  If your dog always sits because you stop pulling up on his collar when he does, but then you no longer stop pulling his collar, he may eventually stop bothering to sit, unless it’s more comfortable than doing something else.  (Releasing the pressure on the collar is the reinforcer in this situation.)  Why should he sit?  He’s going to get choked anyway!  In behavior analysis this is called escape extinction. And in training, it is a form of what people sometimes call flooding.  Extinction occurs when a reinforcer that has been delivered for a certain behavior stops being delivered, whether the reinforcer was a negative reinforcer or a positive reinforcer.  To extinguish negatively maintained behavior, you stop letting the animal escape.     

Why does it matter what we call stuff?

            The name isn’t the critical thing.  The procedure and its effect on behavior are the critical things.  If you are performing negative reinforcement (escape) to help your dog do calming signals more often in the presence of other dogs, but you tell someone you’re using flooding, they may find they don’t have the same results you get when they go home and try it on their own.  If you think you’re doing negative reinforcement but you’re doing escape extinction… two problems!  Reinforcement increases behavior while extinction decreases it!  If you’re talking about two different things, you may teach someone to do something that will give them very different results from what you intend.

Conclusion

And so, I’ll repeat myself.  Always ask the person you’re talking with how he or she is using a term so we can be sure we’re speaking the same language.  Oh, and watch out for strangers in space bars. 

Kellie Snider

Copyright, 2005