The Seeker Circuit -- Training and Shopping

We're all (humans and other animals) programed to explore and to learn. As a religious educator this makes me happy. As a dog trainer it makes me really happy. Dogs, like people, are hard-wired by evolution to enjoy figuring out puzzles, to like exploring their environment, seeking out, like the USS Enterprise, new life and new civilizations (or at least new places where someone peed). Scientists talk about a "seeker circuit" in the brain -- a part that is engaged in the task of exploring, discovering and learning. They've found that rats, given a choice between having the pleasure center of their brain activated or that "seeker circuit" will opt for the excitement of exploring and learning over electronically-induced bliss.

I suspect that's why people get so invested in video games, although I wouldn't know from personal experience. But hey, what is the Web if not a great big field to sniff around in. I'm sure I'm not the only one who can waste vast amounts of time "seeker-ing" amongst the intertubes. Somebody posts an interesting article on Facebook...which has a link at the bottom...which takes you to a video on YouTube...which suggests a couple of other interesting possibilities...and before you know it the morning has evaporated like footprints by the pool on a hot day.

But, Taz would point out, the one thing that makes this metaphorical or literal sniffing about REALLY exciting is when you have something in particular to chase and track down. He loves the game where I hide a toy and he has to sniff around to find it. It would be even better if we could play that game in the back yard with the neighbor cats.But the point of the game is not really so much finding the thing as knowing that there's something out there to find and hunting it down.

I realized this for myself recently as I was, once again, sucked into the black hole of ...internet shopping. It started innocently enough, with the observation that it would be nice to be able to watch streaming video from the computer on the TV. So Lynn enters seeker overdrive, looking online at how this is possible. Which leads to serious contemplation of the purchase of a Wii, which streams Netflix, and hey, you could even use it to exercise. In which case you'd want a balance board. And exercise games. And extra controllers for Mattea's friends to be able to play. Or, there's hooking your laptop to the TV, which would work a whole lot better if you had a TV with more modern connections in the back than our semi-old CRT. Maybe we need a big-screen LCD TV! Or hey, you can buy internet-ready TVs already set to pick up your wireless signal! For only $1500!

For a couple of days my eyes glazed over with seeker circuit-induced techno lust. But really, I don't need to spend hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars for the privilege of watching something from a couch rather than a chair. I didn't really want the stuff as much as I wanted the process of finding the best stuff: reading reviews, figuring out connections, exploring the possibilities of HD wonders.

This, I believe, is why there are malls. People really like to roam around hunting for stuff. Just imagine how much money people could save by thinking of a mall expedition as the kind of African safari where you take pictures of the animals you see, rather than shooting them to take home trophies. There! The perfect LBD! Quick, whip out the iPhone and take a shot to send you your friends, documenting your hunting prowess. And then on to the next store, where the perfect earrings surely lie in wait, ready for digital transfer to your admiring pals.

Hey, maybe that means I need an iPhone....

Taz Talks -- Successive Approximation

OK, frankly this blog has gotten a little too grim and preachy for my taste. I think it's high time that we got back to a subject of interest. In other words, how to train a human. There is a very important concept in training that we have not talked about, and that is called Successive Approximation. In normal people language that means, "I will help you figure out the game by rewarding you for each step in the direction of what I want." For instance, when Mama taught me to jump in the laundry basket she rewarded me for coming near it, then for pawing it, then for putting my head in, then for putting one front paw in, then for two front paws in, then for hopping all the way in and then out again, and finally for jumping in and staying there.

Let us take a more interesting example. (Who wants to sit in a laundry basket, anyway? Actually, the cat does. We had to take the cat out so that I could play the game. Although it might have been more funner to jump on the cat.) Anyways, say you want to get a person to scratch your butt. Well, you could just back on up to them, which often works, but what if they don't get it, or they say "Bug off, Tazzie, I'm trying to work here."? Then you need to train them step by step.

Start by putting your head in their lap. No human can resist the chin on the knee, especially if you do the ol' melting puppy eyes bit. They will at least give you a pat on the head. Reward this with a little more chin pressure, and maybe a deep sigh. That should get them to rub your ears. Reinforce this behavior by leaning in, and maybe giving a little moan. Now turn your head enough that their hand slides to your neck or shoulder. Again, reinforce continued scratching by leaning in, and maybe looking up again with the puppy eyes. From here it should be a fairly simple matter to inch yourself forward until they are scratching that ever-itchy spot behind the hips. Heaven! And so simple. Just take it a step at a time, and reward every step of the way with the kind of expressions of adoration that humans crave.

Actually, the peoples might want to give some consideration to this technique. I notice that when they want a spouse or kid to do something that people get snarkier and snarkier trying to get the other person to comply. But maybe it would work more better to draw the person in the right direction with lovey-type stuff instead. I'm telling you, works for me every time.

Wags and kisses,
Taz

Dominance, Cesar Milan, and the Corporate Control of America

While we're on hot-button issues for dog trainers, let's talk for a moment about dominance. There's a school of dog training, most famously represented at the moment by TV dog trainer Cesar Milan, which holds that the way to have a happy canine/human pack is to make sure that the human being is always in the dominant role. People who train from this perspective advocate things like making sure that the person always is the first to go through a door or the first to eat, and practice things like "alpha rolls" where the person pushes the dog into a "submissive" position belly-up on the floor. The kind of trainers who spend a lot of time talking about things like the timing and placement of reinforcers are not big on this particular theory, pointing out that a) social relations in wolf packs are a lot more subtle and complicated than these dominance trainers assume, b) dogs are not wolves and c) people are not dogs, so even if dogs do have dominance hierarchies, humans trying to create those the same way that dogs do might just confuse everybody. (Want to look tough? Try holding your tail stiff over your back. How's that working for you?)

OK, so I'm not a big fan of a lot of the dominance stuff, but it's also true that there are a lot of problems created in households where the dogs are running the show. If you can't sit on the couch when and where you want to sit, if you can't pick up your dog's food dish or take away something they want but can't have, there's a problem. Now that I think about it, there are a lot of households where the kids are running the show, which doesn't work any better. (If you can't set a bedtime, have homework and reasonable chores completed and get to school on time, to my mind, you've got issues.)

The solution to these problems, however, is not dominance, it's leadership. Leadership doesn't mean that I shove you around. Leadership means that I have access to the resources you want, and that you have to come through me to get them. Want the treats? Do the tricks. Want the TV? Get the homework done. Want access to the good things in life? Then follow the rules.

Here's where I go global (and maybe postal). For some reason, we seem to think it's OK for corporations, rather than the government, to be running the show. To my mind, that's like having the kids, or the dogs, in charge of the household. But now corporations have unlimited right to contribute to political campaigns. There's been deregulation of everything from banks to minerals management, and the rules that are in place are a) set by the corporations themselves and/or b) not enforced. And gee, it turns out that, like children and dogs, corporations really aren't qualified to be running the show. If the financial crisis was not enough to prove that point, the BP oil disaster ought to be driving the point home pretty good. If you want the right to drill for oil, you should have to conform to the safety rules. (Whether they can ensure that it's safe is a topic for another day.) If you want the government to loan you money, you should have safety limitations that prevent you from throwing people's money away on ludicrous gambling schemes.

Go ahead. Call me a socialist. But I would rather have a government elected by the people in the leadership role, rather than a bunch of corporations following their own interests without regard for public safety or welfare. Leadership through regulation and control of access to resources is all we've got, because I've yet to figure out how to alpha roll BP.

Bribes/Lures and the Great Oreo Question

OK, so nothing gets dogs trainers as up in arms as does the question of punishment. But you can get some pretty good (if somewhat less snarky) disagreement going over the question of just how you use rewards. For one group of people (clicker trainers) the reward always comes AFTER the behavior. It's, like, the definition of a reward. You do what I want, and I give you a reward. But how does the animal figure out what you want? Long story. We'll get there some other time. Suffice it to say that there is another group of people who find it useful to use the goody to show the animal what you want. For instance, if you have a puppy that you want to teach to sit, you can hold a treat just above its nose. The nose goes up and the bottom goes down. Puppy physics. Then the puppy gets the cookie.

Works just fine. But...you've basically just bribed the dog. Rather than cheering after the fact, you've established the treat as the basis for getting the behavior. The puppy has lost the opportunity to use its own little brain to figure out the problem itself, and might not try it again until you pull out the treat to follow. Or, if you're on the other side of the argument, you've saved both yourself and the puppy the frustration of it wondering what the heck you want, by giving it a nice, clear, fun explanation. I told you there was disagreement.

But what, you ask, does this have to do with the wonderful world of people? And, yes, Oreos, which we were promised in the title? Well, it goes like this. Mattea (the kid) does a lot of dancing. Like ten classes a week. She and the girls she dances with compete in dance competitions and all. And the studio just added three new classes for kids her age with amazing teachers. To our surprise, however, Mattea didn't want to take the tap class with the ultra-cool, extremely hip and up-to-date tap teacher.

Mattea loves tap -- tap and hip hop are her favorite kinds of dance. However, unlike, seemingly, most of the girls she dances with, while Tea loves dancing, she has a limit. She likes to dance, but not if it takes away from her playing time. And this class was happening on a Tuesday evening, and she wanted her Tuesday evenings free. Now, from a parental perspective, we could see a variety of ways that Tea was going to get left in the dust if she blew off this class. But our policy has always been that dancing is a recreational activity, and recreational activities are things about which you get to choose (within the limits of the rules of the studio, which explains why she is taking ballet). So...we encouraged and we reasoned and we explained our concerns. And Mattea said no, she didn't want to.

And so Kelsey went to pick her up from hip hop, which immediately precedes this new tap class. But Kelsey brought with her a small package of Oreos. And she told Mattea that if, on the off chance, she were staying for the tap class, well then she'd probably need the cookies for extra energy. In other words, Kelsey bribed Mattea with cookies to take the class. Have I mentioned that Tea, like the dogs, is highly motivated by cookies? As in, pictures of Oreos on her computer background, just because it makes her happy to look at them?

Yeah, she took the class -- and the cookies. So, have we now ruined her intrinsic motivation to learn for the sake of learning? Or have we helped her over the hump to realize that the rewards for taking the class will exceed the costs? Will she take the class again? Will she demand cookies? Stay tuned...the class comes up again tomorrow.

Goals

It's coming up on the end of the school year -- always very exciting when you live with a kid and a high school teacher. But it's got me thinking about grades. I will avoid commenting on Mattea's grades in this public forum (but babe, if for some reason you should happen to read this -- since you DO your homework, is it that much more trouble to HAND IT IN?) But, you know, in a general, theoretical, totally non-parental, and certainly unconcerned way, what helps kids get good grades?

Karen Pryor, popularizer of behavior science and queen of clicker training, has an interesting post on her website about four schools that experimented with rewarding kids with money. As she summarizes the experiment:

New York set up a program to pay fourth-through seventh-grade children for their test grades during the school year. For great results you could get as much as $50. The money went right into a savings account.

Chicago also paid for test scores during the year. Good scores could earn up to $2,000 per year, half of which went into a savings account payable on graduation.

Washington, D.C. had a complicated system in which high school students were paid $100 every two weeks by getting perfect marks in five different areas, including attendance and good behavior.

Dallas kept it simple. Second-graders got $2 every time they read a book and passed a little computer test on it.

Care to guess which school had the best success? Right, Dallas. A test is an outcome, not a behavior. The way to change outcomes is to change behaviors. If you pay a kid $2000 at the end of the year for getting great grades or doing well on important standardized tests, all of the behaviors that would lead to success over the course of the year go unrewarded. Outcomes aren't really something that we can control -- behaviors are.

So if I were to promise Mattea $1000 for getting all A's on her report card at the end of the year (not gonna happen, babe!) she wouldn't really know what exactly she needed to do in order to achieve that goal. And the delay between the action and the reinforcement would be so long that she wouldn't really know what was being rewarded anyway. (And if I put the money into a saving account, it would hardly count as a reinforcement at all.) Far better for me to figure out what is standing in the way of her success and how to change that behavior. For instance, maybe I would need to give Tea a bag of M&Ms, and tell her that each time she handed in an assignment she could have an M&M. (If, of course, I could trust her not to gobble them all on the way to school. "Leave it" is a crucial command for both children and dogs. Mine are less reliable than they should be.)

How often have you talked to someone about their goal to lose 20 pounds, or to win a competition, or to learn to play the violin? All fine and good as far as it goes, but those are all outcomes, not behaviors. You can't get to the outcome unless you figure out what things you would actually need to DO to get to those goals. Much more effective to have a goal that you will eat fruit for dessert instead of ice cream, or practice for 20 minutes four times a week. Those are behaviors that you can control. And yes, that you can reward. (But you can't reward yourself for being good and eating fruit by having ice cream. That's cheating. It turns out that people very commonly reward themselves for exercising by eating more, or less healthfully, than they would otherwise. Wrong kind of reward.)

Personally, I would just like to say that this is the first year that I have actually fulfilled my New Year's resolution. That resolution was "More dancing!" (Always with the exclamation point at the end.) In addition to being a behavior, rather than an outcome, it has the advantage, as Taz would say, of being "more funner." So much easier to be successful at doing something that you wanted to do anyway.

What are your goals?

Punishment...and Crime.

If you ever want to see a big, snarly, hairy fight, you can toss a squirrel into the middle of a dog park, or you can bring up the concept of punishment in a group of dog trainers. Dog trainers run the gamut from "no kind of unpleasant thing shall happen to a dog on my watch, ever" to "if you don't shove the dog around he'll shove you around, so you better shove harder." I have no desire to become the squirrel at the dog park, so I'm just going to put out a few things that we do know about punishment and then ponder how they might apply to our penitential system.

So, what do we know about punishment? Well, for one thing, it's only effective if it happens right after the offending behavior. If you turn a hose on your dog as it's fence-fighting with the neighbor dog, it might (might!) think better of it next time. If you come home and find that your dog has chewed a corner out of your drywall or eaten a sofa cushion, your yelling or smacking will have no effect whatsoever, except to make your dog wonder why you have suddenly turned into a raving and dangerous lunatic.

We know that, unlike rewards, punishments need to happen every time the offending behavior occurs in order to be effective. If you sometimes get doused for barking and snarling at the neighbor dog and sometimes you just get to carry on, most likely you're going to keep carrying on.

We also know that punishment, especially if not skillfully applied, can create unforeseen associations and resentments/fears. If you hit a dog (or a child), you probably expect them to come out thinking "That was unpleasant, I should never try that again!" However, they may just end up with an impression of "Ow! That was nasty. Apparently I can't trust you not to hurt me." You can also end up with weird phobias, like the horse that Temple Grandin (Animals in Translation) talks about who is terrified of people in black hats after being hurt by someone wearing a black hat. You don't always create the same negative associations you planned on.

So...how about that crime and punishment? Say that you have someone who is using illegal drugs. Say that this person gets caught. How close in time is the punishment likely to be to the offending behavior? (Actually, I have no idea. I don't even watch Cops. But I know that people go for quite some time awaiting trial.) Is the punishment likely to happen every time the offending behavior occurs? Not a chance in hell. This one I'm sure on. Is putting this drug user in jail likely to create unintended negative consequences? It certainly wouldn't surprise me. I'm just kind of guessing that your average prison inmate doesn't spend most of their time reflecting on how prison is a logical consequence for their poor choices, and how they will never make such poor choices again. I could be wrong, but I'm kinda guessing that inmates are much more likely to be resentful of people in authority than otherwise. Not to mention that what small-time offenders are likely to learn from spending time with bigger-time offenders is hardly likely to be the kind of education you were hoping to sponsor.

Now, I'm not saying that we should abolish prisons. There are some folks who are simply too dangerous to have walking around, and they need to be contained. There's a difference between teaching and management. If your dog bites, put a muzzle on it before you go out in public. But the number of pathological serial killers/serial rapists, etc. has got to be vanishingly small compared to the number of people in prison. If prison doesn't work as punishment (punishment being defined as something that reduces a behavior) then aren't we spending a whole lot of money on something that simply doesn't work? (See here for one of many articles indicating that this is, in fact, the case.)

Nobody has asked my opinion on how to solve California's many-billion dollar budget deficit, but here is my modest proposal. Let everybody who isn't dangerous out of jail. Legalize drugs, since punishing people for taking them simply isn't keeping people from taking (or selling or producing) them. Have clear labels on all drugs indicating how dangerous they are, and levy high taxes. Use those taxes for drug treatment and prevention programs, and for public education programs about the hazards of drug use. These changes will, and the very least, save us many billions of dollars, and will probably result in lower rates of drug use.

Here's my question for politicians (and the people who vote for them) who are "tough on crime": does tough on crime mean "finding and implementing the most efficient possible ways to reduce crime" or does it mean "make people who commit crimes suffer"? Personally, I'd rather that we used the best information we have to get the best results, rather than assuming that our main goal should be to look as tough and snarly as possible. But hey, maybe I'm just the squirrel at the dog park....

Taz Talks -- More Funner

Hey Dudes and Dudettes! Mama says that she is thinking about a post on punishment, but she's not ready yet, so I can write this time. My topic is better. My topic for today is More Funner.

I will explain. I have a theme song. (Everyone should have a theme song!) Mine is "Tervs Just Wanna Have Fun." Actually, I think the lady originally sang it about Girls, not Tervs, but I'm not a girl, and I am a Terv (that's short for Belgian Tervuren), so it works better this way.

Tervs just wanna have fun. Dogs in general, really. People spend their time working and doing laundry and shopping for groceries and vacuuming and whatever, and when they have a bit of time left over, they figure that is their time for fun. Which they usually squander watching something stupid on the television -- although television can be an excellent way to keep people still for snuggling pets, which is, of course, crucial.

Dogs, on the other hand, are all about the fun (and napping). Yes, there are working dogs, with real, important jobs. But hel-LO! Check out the drug detection and search and rescue dogs -- big game of hide and seek, with games and prizes when you find what you're after. Herding sheep? Funnest game on the whole entire planet, no exceptions. K9 officers taking down bad guys? BAM! Human tug toy. Wicked awesome. Mostly dog jobs are a big ol' fun fest.

Now, I'm not saying that people jobs are necessarily the same way. Don't go all "following your bliss-y" and neglect to shop for dog food. But hey, why not make things More Funner? That's my point. With a little creativity, even the annoying stuff can maybe be More Funner.

For instance, Mama is always fighting with Mattea, the kid, over what stuff she should be eating. Mattea says that she never gets anything good to eat. Mama says that Mattea wants to eat nothing but junk food, and that bodies need protein and vegetables and not just empty carbs. (I'm not sure what empty carbs are. I am familiar with empty cartons, which are a whole lot of fun, but this is apparently not what she is talking about.) So a couple of days ago Mama made Chex Mix like stuff with the whole wheat cereal that isn't Chex because it's cheaper, and peanuts and almonds and some cheese crackers and spices and parmesan cheese and all of a sudden it's Party in a Bag for snack. Apparently it still has some empty carbs in it, but not all sugar and chemicals and stuff, and me and Coretta got to taste it and boy howdy is that stuff crunchy and delicious. Way More Funner than arguing about healthy snacks, but not so far off from healthy after all.

You want more kid examples? Unlike me, Mattea does not like to get up early in the morning. And she does not like people telling her to get up for school, but she also ignores the alarm clock. The other day Mama went in and sang to her the chorus from this old song:
Hal-an-tow, jolly lum-a-low
We were up
Long before the day-o
To welcome in the summer,
To welcome in the May-o.
For summer is a comin' in
And winter's gone away-o.

Mattea thought that was More Funner than just being told to get up for school. Now Mama sings the song this way:
Hal-an-tow, jolly buffalo
They were up
Long before the day-o
To welcome in the mustard,
To welcome in the May-o.
For buffalo are comin' in
So you better get out of the way-o.

Which is More Funner still. One more kid example. The other day Mattea was super mad about something, and told Mama that she wanted to hit her with something. So Mama got pillows out of the closet, and they both whammed on each other with pillows until Mattea was laughing and not mad. Personally, I found the sight of my people whacking each other a bit disturbing, but I guess the pillows turned out to be way More Funner than Tea yelling and Mama going on about Responsibilities and Self Control.

I think that if people want to make changes in their lives that they should find creative ways to make their lives More Funner. I will give you a hint. Stuff that you do with dogs is More Funner than stuff where dogs stay home and have a nap.

Wags and kisses,
Taz