teach clapping as a secondary reinforcer
When you give your dog a treat for a job well done, you are using a primary reinforcer, which is something that an animal needs to survive (i.e., food, water, shelter). While food reinforcers can be extremely useful, adding secondary reinforcers to the repertoire gives you alternatives for influencing behavior and expands the trainer skill set. Secondary reinforcers are reinforcers that the learner associates with primary reinforcers. Eventually, secondary reinforcers elicit similar responses to primary reinforcers through classical conditioning.
For example, if you clap for a job well done and follow up with a treat enough times, eventually your dog will work to hear you clap. Clapping is a terrific way to offer reinforcement from a distance (think dog sports) or in situations when it’s not safe or handy to use food reinforcers (such as performing husbandry behaviors on a sick animal).
In this session, Ken is teaching Bruce that clapping is associated with yummy food, so that he can use clapping as a secondary reinforcer for Bruce in the future. Learn all about using reinforcement effectively in Ken’s online course Smart Reinforcement!
THINK OUTSIDE OF THE TREAT POUCH
Ken Ramirez shows you how to use non-food reinforcers effectively in the step-by-step online course, Smart Reinforcement.