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Karen Pryor
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Can a punisher also be a reinforcer?
A clicker trainer asked me: can a punisher also be a reinforcer? For example, Shutzhund working dogs take stick hits and come back fighting for more. It seems that they do not see it as punishment. Some world class trainers describe these dogs as adrenalin addicts.
The short answer is, don’t equate an aversive stimulus with a punishment. A punishment, technica... read more »
A clicker trainer asked me: can a punisher also be a reinforcer? For example, Shutzhund working dogs take stick hits and come back fighting for more. It seems that they do not see it as punishment. Some world class trainers describe these dogs as adrenalin addicts.
The short answer is, don’t equate an aversive stimulus with a punishment. A punishment, technica... read more »
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Interviews
November 2009,
Karen Pryor
" Quick Start SS: How would you describe your life in only 8 words? KP: Very interesting so far. SS: What is your motto or maxim? KP: Imua, which is Hawaiian for 'forward!' What Readers want to know... SS: How would you describe perfect happiness? KP:..." ...More
" Quick Start SS: How would you describe your life in only 8 words? KP: Very interesting so far. SS: What is your motto or maxim? KP: Imua, which is Hawaiian for 'forward!' What Readers want to know... SS: How would you describe perfect happiness? KP:..." ...More
more interviews »
“I couldn't help wondering where porpoises had learned this game of running on the bows of ships. Porpoises have been swimming in the oceans for seven to ten million years, but they've had human ships to play with for only the last few thousand. Yet nearly all porpoises, in every ocean, catch rides for fun from passing ships; and they were doing it on the bows of Greek triremes and prehistoric Tahitian canoes, as soon as those seacraft appeared. What did they do for fun before ships were invented?
Ken Norris made a field observation one day that suggests the answer. He saw a humpback whale hurrying along the coast of the island of Hawaii, unavoidably making a wave in front of itself; playing in that bow wave was a flock of bottlenose porpoises. The whale didn't seem to be enjoying it much: Ken said it looked like a horse being bothered by flies around its head; however, there was nothing much the whale could do about it, and the porpoises were having a fun time. ”
― Karen Pryor, Lads Before the Wind: Diary of a Dolphin Trainer
Ken Norris made a field observation one day that suggests the answer. He saw a humpback whale hurrying along the coast of the island of Hawaii, unavoidably making a wave in front of itself; playing in that bow wave was a flock of bottlenose porpoises. The whale didn't seem to be enjoying it much: Ken said it looked like a horse being bothered by flies around its head; however, there was nothing much the whale could do about it, and the porpoises were having a fun time. ”
― Karen Pryor, Lads Before the Wind: Diary of a Dolphin Trainer
“The porpoises and whale themselves, in their quests for entertainment, often created problems. One summer a fashion developed in the training tanks (I think Keiki started it) for leaning out over the tank wall and seeing how far you could balance without falling out. Several animals might be teetering on the tank edge at one time, and sometimes one or another did fall out. Nothing much happened to them, except maybe a cut or a scrape from the gravel around the tanks; but of course we had to run and pick them up and put them back in. Not a serious problem, if the animal that fell out was small, but if it was a 400-pound adult bottlenose, you had to find four strong people to get him back, and when it happened over and over again, the people got cross. We feared too, that some animal would fall out at night or when no one was around and dry out, overheat, and die. We yelled at the porpoises, and rushed over and pushed them back in when we saw them teetering, but that just seemed to add to the enjoyment of what I'm sure the porpoises thoguht of as a hilariously funny game. Fortunately they eventually tired of it by themselves.”
― Karen Pryor, Lads Before the Wind: Diary of a Dolphin Trainer
― Karen Pryor, Lads Before the Wind: Diary of a Dolphin Trainer
“I griped about it at lunch one day to Bill Weist and Dr. Leslie Squier, our visiting psychologists from Reed College. I'd been trying to train one otter to stand on a box, I told them. No problem getting the behavior; as soon as I put the box in the enclosure, the otter rushed over and climbed on top of it. She quickly understood that getting on the box earned her a bite of fish, But. As soon as she got the picture, she began testing the parameters. 'Would you like me lying down on the box? What if I just put three feet on the box? Suppose I hang upside down from the edge of the box? Suppose I stand on it and look under it at the same time? How about if I put my front paws on it and bark?' For twenty minutes she offered me everything imaginable except just getting on the box and standing there. It was infuriating, and strangely exhausting. The otter would eat her fish and then run back to the box and present some new, fantastic variation and look at me expectantly (spitefully, even, I thought) while I struggled once more to decide if what she was doing fit my criteria or not.
My psychologist friends flatly refused to believe me; no animal acts like that. If you reinforce a response, you strengthen the chance that the animal will repeat what it was doing when it was reinforced; you don't precipitate some kind of guessing game.
So I showed them. We all went down to the otter tank, and I took the other otter and attempted to get it to swim through a small hoop. I put the hoop in the water. The otter swam through it, twice. I reinforced it. Fine. The psychologists nodded. Then the otter did the following, looking up for a reward each time: swam through the hoop and stopped, leaving its tail on the other side. Swam through and caught the hoop with a back foot in passing, and carried it away. Lay in the hoop. Bit the hoop Backed through the hoop. 'See?' I said. 'Otters are natural experimenters.”
― Karen Pryor, Lads Before the Wind: Diary of a Dolphin Trainer
My psychologist friends flatly refused to believe me; no animal acts like that. If you reinforce a response, you strengthen the chance that the animal will repeat what it was doing when it was reinforced; you don't precipitate some kind of guessing game.
So I showed them. We all went down to the otter tank, and I took the other otter and attempted to get it to swim through a small hoop. I put the hoop in the water. The otter swam through it, twice. I reinforced it. Fine. The psychologists nodded. Then the otter did the following, looking up for a reward each time: swam through the hoop and stopped, leaving its tail on the other side. Swam through and caught the hoop with a back foot in passing, and carried it away. Lay in the hoop. Bit the hoop Backed through the hoop. 'See?' I said. 'Otters are natural experimenters.”
― Karen Pryor, Lads Before the Wind: Diary of a Dolphin Trainer
Topics Mentioning This Author
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| The Seasonal Read...: Winter Challenge 2011: Completed Tasks -DO NOT DELETE ANY POSTS IN THIS TOPIC | 2912 | 468 | 29 feb. 21:03 |
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