thank you!
It is a negative reinforcement method, though.
But the thing is, people think negative reinforcement is bad; it isn't.
Not unless you are reinforcing an unwanted behavior.
This is how +/- reinforcement and +/- punishment were taught to me in my abnormal psych. It was the easiest way to get it. So it's just the gist:
*Positive reinforcement- you give something to someone to make them feel good, or to reinforce a behavior (hopefully you are reinforcing a positive/good behavior):
Dog sits, you give cookie to dog to reinforce a sitting behavior again. That's
positive reinforcement.
*negative reinforcement-you take away something to make someone feel good or take away something to reinforce a behavior:
Ella sees other dog, Ella freaks out, Ella calms herself down, trainer walks away with dog (the dog Ella doesn't like) and Ella feels good now because the dog is away. HOPEFULLY, you are reinforcing a calming, good behavior. But the calming behavior has to happen first, before the dog is taken away. If all goes well, your dog will LEARN to think that
A. not all dogs are bad and they will not be hurt by an encounter with another dog.
B. to think about calming itself and not reacting because if it calms itself, then bad thing goes away. Which I can totally see what CP is talking about how you want to avoid reinforcing avoidance behaviors because, just because a dog can calm itself around another dog, you don't want the dog to think that if it calms itself ALL THE TIME, the bad thing (the dog) will go away ALL THE TIME. Because the dog may NOT go away ALL THE TIME.
Punishments. These are generally the bad thing.
Positive Punishment-you give something to someone to make them feel bad. You punish to STOP a behavior. You never CHANGE the behavior, though. You don't teach a dog to CHANGE their behavior, only to not do something when you are around because they want to avoid receiving something unpleasant (think a prong pop, a smack, yelling, hitting).
Negative punishment- you take away something from someone to make them feel bad. You take away something to punish a behavior in hopes to stop the behavior.
Again, not teaching anything good here, just bad stuff, really.
Take away a teenager's car keys because they came home late.
You take away television because your son didn't do his homework.
though, I'm not sure how negative punishment would work with dogs. My brain is tired and hot because I just got back from my walk with Ella.