Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Dogs have been held as pets for thousands of years. Dogs held today usually get some sort of training some time during their life. You can train dogs for many different reasons such as general obedience or you can train them for competition. When training a dog every behaviour is followed by a consequence. These consequences are positive reinforcement, positive punishment, negative punishment and negative reinforcement. Positive reinforcement means that the behaviour gets more likely to occur by adding positive stimulus. Positive punishment means that the behaviour gets less likely to occur by adding an aversive stimulus. Negative punishment makes the behaviour less occurring by taking away a desired stimulus. Negative reinforcement makes the behaviour more likely to occur by taking away an aversive stimulus.

In this study I have compared if training method and the use of reinforcement and punishment differ between three different dogs sports (obedience, agility and IPO). 29 owners and their dogs took part in this study where a training session was observed and the use of punishments and reinforcements were recorded. After every training session the dog owner was interviewed about witch training method they used. The dogs were of different breeds, gender, age and degree of training.

The results showed that positive reinforcement is mostly used in agility training and that positive punishment is most frequent in IPO-training. The training methods that were used the most in all of the dog sports were luring and shaping. In agility and obedience they also used targeting, only in obedience trainers used the training method capturing.

My conclusion is that even if you can see a growing trend in the use of positive reinforcement the use of positive punishment is still common in dog training.
I hope that my results will make dog trainers think about their use of punishment and if the use of punishment really makes their training better. There is evidence saying that punishment only makes your dog insecure and does not improve the dog’s performance.