Danny ChaiAs you may or may not know, I rather enjoy doing tricks with Abby. But sometimes I swear, she’s the one training me, not the other way around.
In high school Psych, I remember learning about reinforcement. There’s both positive and negative reinforcement, where you use rewards or punishments to reinforce behaviors. And for both, you can have different scheduling. For example, you can reward a particular action all the time, or on a fixed schedule (like every 4th time it happens) or on a variable schedule with an average. Meaning, the schedule at which you reward a behavior changes, but overall happens at a fixed average.
As I recall, the most effective form of reinforcement is positive reinforcement on a variable schedule. In essence, this is what gambling is, and why it’s so addictive. Long term, the rate of reward is constant, but the reward schedule varies, and that variable positive reinforcement is very effective.
I swear, Abby does that with me also. Every time I see her, especially when I come home from work, I’m obviously happy to see her, and want her to smile and clap. But I’d say that only happens about 60% of the time. The rest of the time, she either completely ignores me or gives me a blank stare, as if she’s thinking, “who’s this clown?” Uh, hello, I’m the person that wiped the crap off your butt this morning.
Anyway, the fact that her response is inconsistent makes me act like a maniac when I see her. She is training me well.