conditioning
noun
the process of training or accustoming a person or animal to behave in a certain way or to accept certain circumstances
Positive conditioning
You want to teach your dog to sit, how do you do this? It's simple, reward the dog with a treat or affection. By giving a good thing, this makes the dog want to do it more. This is because the dog will associate doing the behaviour (sitting) more often because it knows that it will get a treat. This method is called Positive reinforcement.
On the other hand, there is a method of training called Positive punishment. You have a dog that jumps up to greet guests. What do you do? One method is when the dog jumps up you give it a bop on the nose, gentle of course, to push it down as dogs generally do not like being bopped on the nose, but it is a harmless way of punishment.
Negative conditioning
Sticking with dog training. You have a dog that jumps up onto the sofa and you want it to stop. How do you do this? With Negative punishment.
When the dog goes up
onto the sofa to get your attention, you take yourself away because in
this case your attention would be the reward. By taking your attention
away by standing up or ignoring the dog, you make it realise that
jumping onto the sofa is not the way to get your attention.
Negative reinforcement is another method of training your dog. With this, we have a dog that doesn't walk on the lead well. We prevent this behaviour by turning around everytime the dog pulls. This is taking away the dogs reward (going forward to a new place) and makes it go backwards on the walk to somewhere it has already been. Eventually, the dog will realise that by pulling it goes backwards and staying to heel will get it where it wants to be.
Moving away from conditioning, but still keeping with dogs, an animal can have a good memory and recall previous events that may cause a certain reward or punishment. An example of this is if a dog was bullied as a puppy by another dog of a certain breed. A similar thing happened to my mother's childhood dog, so I will use her as an example. The dog has a memory of red setters (any breed or size of dog can count, this is an example) being mean to them. So on a walk, it sees one of them. It starts to exhibit scared of anxious dog behaviour such as tail between the legs and lips pulled back with a possible growl or snarl. It may also make itself seem smaller by getting closer to the ground. This is evidence of a previous negative experience causing a negative response.
Environment is also a big thing with animals. If you get a dog and put it in a wide, open space, it will be happy and run about in a playful manner. On the other end of the spectrum, if you get a dog and put it in a small crate for a long period of time, it will react negatively and unhappily. The way people react is also important. If a dog encounters a angry person, they will be able to tell and if the dog is with it's people and an angry stranger walks by, it may react aggressively in a way to defend it's people. Similarly, if it's owner is happy the dog will be as well, or at least act like it is with a wagging tail and soft eyes.
That's all for this post, once again this is based on class work I've been doing. Currently doing a behavioural unit so I hope you don't mind the amount of posts on the subject.
-Dari
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