The other day I had a first appointment with this adorable little girl and her human mom, and Sadie expended a lot of energy during that first half of our appointment moving back and forth between jumping on the sofa cushions next to me and bringing a toy to and pushing it at her mom, barking at us through much of her activity.
If you have ever been on the receiving end of that kind of persistent behavior from a dog, you know, it is not always the easiest of tasks to simply ignore it in hopes that the dog will stop what it is doing and find something else to do instead.
And actually, just ignoring a problem behavior as a stand-alone behavior modification strategy is very difficult to do. One of the reasons is because when a reinforcer that has been maintaining a behavior is suddenly removed, the result is a burst in intensity and emotional behavior known as an extinction burst. If you are able to truly maintain NO reinforcement at all for the behavior, it will ultimately decrease, but what more often happens is that at some point you end up failing to continue ignoring and inadvertently teach your pet that the stronger, super-sized version of the behavior is what works to get consequences of value.
Another factor to consider when it comes to just ignoring a behavior is the fact that the reinforcement for that behavior may not be coming from you. This is bootleg reinforcement, and when it is occurring, no amount of ignoring on our part will be effective.
And yet another factor is that even if you have successfully extinguished a behavior, you should count on seeing it again. It is called recover. If you can ignore it once it recovers, it will extinguish again more quickly and for longer…until the next recovery, that is.
One more thing to give you thought on this subject. When a learner gets reinforcement for a behavior ‘sometimes’, that learner is actually learning to gamble. Intermittent reinforcement schedules builds extremely strong behaviors.
Let’s circle back to that appointment this week.
What was causing this barking/bringing a toy behavior to occur and what was reinforcing it? Well, for one, my appointment was in the evening when Sadie’s activity is typically at its height (after resting most of her day) and she hadn’t had much exercise before I came. Additionally, her mom had just come home from work and we were focused on our conversation (or trying to). All of these factors were antecedents or setting events for the behavior to occur.
And, when Sadie would bark, jump on the couch or bring a toy to her mom, she got attention and activity.
Those are some pretty good reasons for her to be doing those behaviors, at least from Sadie’s perspective!
What stopped Sadie’s barking?
I began teaching Sadie to lay down next to us with high value treats. Then we made a little game of it. She would lay down, I’d give her treats in position and then send her off to go get a treat that I tossed. Very quickly she began choosing to come and lay down at our feet because that behavior now had a reinforcement history. It worked to get her attention, good food, the opportunity to run to get something, and mental stimulation.
Then, if Sadie, had gone back to barking, jumping on the couch, or pushing a toy at her mom; if we ignored those behaviors, chances are likely she would have tried laying down since she now had a reinforcement history with laying down. AND, when she did lay down, we would reinforce her heavily for that choice. The reality is that Sadie simply had no more need to bark once we began teaching her the value of laying down. She had a new means for getting what she wanted.
This approach is called Differential Reinforcement of an Incompatible Behavior (she cannot lay down with relaxed muscles at the same time she is jumping on the couch, grabbing a toy, or barking incessantly). DRI or DRA (Differential Reinforcement of an Alternative Behavior) combines extinction with reinforcement to change the frequency of a target behavior. With these strategies, the frequency of the problem behavior is decreased while the frequency of the replacement behavior is increased.
It is a win-win for everyone!
