Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) is something we all use in our daily lives. Technically our whole lives are based on the principles of ABA. It is most commonly associated with teaching people with Autism. Tip of the Tail uses this proven scientific method in our approach to support you in being the best pet parent you can be. Learning the tools of ABA will enable you to go about your day with your pet in a much more pleasant way. It is learning to communicate with your dog, cat, or even birds. On a side note, B.F. Skinner used ABA to train pigeons to guide missiles to their intended targets during WWII (we will not be teaching this to any animal, but we will teach them to FETCH!). Using Applied Behaviour Analysis to train dogs involves breaking skills down into small discrete steps to modify behaviour for the benefit of both the animal and their owner. Each step is taught in a structured and hierarchical fashion, providing guidance in the form of prompts and providing positive reinforcement for the desired behaviour. The basics of ABA can be remembered using the acronym A, B, C.
A- Antecedent
B- Behaviour
C- Consequence
A-The antecedent is an event/stimulus that occurred immediately prior to the behaviour we are observing/wanting to change.
B- The behaviour is our target goal. This can be a behaviour we want to introduce, maintain, or replace. This behaviour occurs immediately after the antecedent (1).
C- The consequence is the reward/punishment (don't worry, we will expand on this later) that occurs as a result of doing such behaviour (2).
Discrete trials is teaching a skill through breaking it down into manageable parts. An example of this would be teaching the dog "down" or to "roll". Through prompts, or even modelling a behaviour, first the dog needs to learn to maintain its attention on you. Then they need to learn to sit, then down, and then finally roll.
To expand on this topic, we can further teach our dogs to generalize the skill, maintain motivation to perform the command without a treat, maintain their attention on us when something out of the ordinary happens (those bunnies are so tempting for a Karelian bear dog), as well as to reduce challenging behaviour.
OK? So how do we teach our dogs?
While it would be nice to teach our dogs something in a day or two and have them master that skill forever, that isn't how learning works. Even for us humans, if we don't practice a skill, we start losing our ability to perform it as well in the future, until we can no longer perform it at all. The process of learning a new skill, maintaining that skill, or replacing a skill are similar but different. I will be covering these categories in separate blog posts. This was an introduction to the philosophy used at Tip of the Tail.
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