Bonus Episode 4: Positive Punishment

 In this episode, we take a calm and honest look at Positive Punishment, adding something aversive to reduce behaviour. We discuss why it’s widely used, why it can create fallout, and how it affects emotional state and trust. No judgement, just clear, science-based exploration to help listeners understand the implications.

Voice note your questions on WhatsApp to +353 85 143 8688 to have your questions answered on the Podcast. 

Meet Your Hosts

Barbara Hardman (Bright Horse Equiation)
www.brighthorse.ie

📧barbara.j.hardman@brighthorse.ie ☎️+353 85 143 8688

 Jen Nash (The Equine Method)
www.theequinemethod.co.uk

📧 Info@TheEquineMethod.co.uk ☎️+44 7902920923

Transcript

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So recently one of my socials, I talked about the fact that human nature, we just love to put things into a box. We love to define things and go, this is this, this is this. It's all really neat and it all lines up. But in reality, like even though we have the quadrants of learning and we've got night lovely four boxes, and it's all you know drawn out and they all fit, it's it's a a wave, it's a loop, it's a spiral, they're all mixing into each other and it's happening all the time. And it's actually in real life situations, it's really hard to separate them because they're not designed to be they're designed, they're separated so we can understand and apply them, which is what we're doing in these these shorts. Hello, welcome to the fourth one. Um, but when it actually comes to using them in a practical sense, that's not how it works. There is a really nice um paper that actually details it a little bit better, and it has the quadrants. So you've got your as we've discussed in these bonus episodes, we've got like our negative or positive reinforcement, our negative punishment, and now we're going to talk about positive punishment today. And what it actually has is those four quadrants is like a squiggly line, as a horse and an animal moves between all of them and learns and has skill acquisition throughout all of those quadrants in one setting, in one training session, in a few seconds. Because when it comes to actually the research and the science, we've broken them down into all these separate quadrants so that we can understand each principle as it works together or as it works individually, but in reality, they all work together, they all work together. So before we dive into positive punishment, um, there's a little slightly different start to this one, guys. So apologize, this is the way our brains work. Andrew McLean talks about this when it comes to positive reinforcement, and that there's also an aspect of negative reinforcement involved in it, too. So, for example, if you're hungry, the physiological pressure that's placed on your stomach, you are hungry, that's applying pressure, going seek out food. You know, you perform the behavior by seeking food, you eat the food that releases the pressure, then you eat the food, which is also positive reinforcement for seeking out the pressure, for seeking out the food. You've got two different things happening in that situation. You know, say, for example, again, you know, in that situation, you go and seek out food because you're feeling that negative reinforcement, you're feeling that pressure, you go to find food, you attack, you know, pretend I'm a lion, I attack an antelope, I take down the antelope, and in doing so, I don't take it down quite right and I get gored in the side because I performed an incorrect takedown. That's that is positive punishment. I have been punished for a behavior that I shouldn't have been performed, and then in the same moment, I still kill the antelope and I eat the antelope, and there's my positive reinforcement. Yeah, and then even you can we flip that back to you know, we were talking about the thrushes and the otters were breaking open the shells. There's every possibility that they go through all that effort, and there isn't anything in there, and now it's negative punishment. So negative reinforcement motivated the behaviour, and actually they were negatively punished because there was nothing in it. So it's it's happening all the time. So, welcome to episode four of our bonus episodes that we just dived straight into in that introduction. So, today we are talking about the final one of the quadrant, which is positive punishment. And we also, as maybe alluded to in the first few minutes of this, we'll probably kind of bring it all together a little bit and sort of consolidate some of the learning that we've done over the last three bonus episodes because this is where it all kind of comes together. Because now you're all experts in reinforcement and punishment, and we are gonna talk first of all a little bit about what is positive punishment. So, away take it away, maestro. So, hopefully, we have all our loyal listeners who have followed one, two, and three and are here for episode four. But just in case we've got some new followers, jumping in episode four, we're going to break down the terminology first. So, positive. We're thinking about adding something to the situation. When it was positive reinforcement, we were adding something pleasurable to encourage a behavior, to reinforce it, to strengthen thinking about our bridges, thinking about calling in the troops, reinforcing. In this case, we're talking about adding something to reduce the likelihood of that behavior being performed again, and that's where the punishment comes from. So we're adding something in to have a punishing effect to make the behavior less likely. Sounds great. I want to stop my horse from kicking the stable door. Cool. Sounds great, Jen. How do I stop him? Hmm. Um, well, how do we oh do you know what? Actually, I was literally having this conversation. I know these episodes come out a little bit later than real life, but I was honestly having this conversation. In real life. In real life. I was having this exact conversation with a client yesterday, and they might remember this conversation because they do listen to the episodes. So shout out to you. We had this conversation, and we were talking about door kickers, and I said, Yeah, Ruben's a door kicker. I mean, he lives out 24-7 now. It's like, oh, he's a door kicker. My client went, What you're a behaviorist, your horse kicks a door, and I went, It is one of the hardest things in the world to detrain. Because if you use positive punishment or some sort of deterrent when you were there, what happens when the yard are feeding your horse? What happens when somebody else goes by? Um, and even just turning around and shouting at the horse could actually be positively reinforcing because the horse is like, Great, I got their attention. The horse, yeah, now what? The horse doesn't potentially know that being shouted at is bad, especially if they're a young, naive horse, they might just think you're a loud person and they got your attention is exactly what they wanted. And actually, there is a second thing that's happening, talk about you know, our training non-being linear. So when it comes to kicking the stable door, the reason it will persist longer than most other behaviors, so it'll continue, is because the chances are there's an inver a variable reinforcer at play. So, for example, it's like gambling, right? You know, if you think of the slot machines, you put your 50p in or your 50 cent in, you pull the slot machine and you win. Great, I'm gonna try that again. And then you don't win, you don't win, you don't win, you don't win, and then you put the next one in and you do win, just kind of like there's there's more dopamine. You will learn to maintain that. That's why gambling addiction is a thing, like you know, because we're hardwired to do it. So if you've got a horse that kicks the stable door and gets rewarded, and then kicks it, doesn't kicks it, doesn't, kicks it, doesn't, kicks it, gets shouted at, kicks it, gets hit, kicks it, gets a treat, it's actually gonna stay in the behavioural repertoire as a stronger behavior than something that gets reinforced every single time. Might be slower to acquire that behavior, but it will stick around in that brain way longer. Yeah, so that's a whole other thing about reinforcement schedules. And the big one about kicking the stable door. I know most people wouldn't think that they're treating their horse for kicking, they're like, that sounds ridiculous, guys. I would never give my horse food for kicking the door. Yes, you do. It happens on every single yard at dinner time. It happens in every single yard. Door kicking, bucket gets dropped over the stable door, or scoop, or whatever mechanism you use for feeding of to hay net. It happens. So there is actually positive if there's enough positive reinforcement happening, like Barbara said, especially a whole bucket, whole bucket of food for that one action that's worth gambling for. And it goes back to our negative reinforce our negative punishment in our previous bonus episode. If your horse does kick the stable door and you've put in a bucket and then you take that bucket away, that's your that's your negative punishment. How many people still have their horse kicking the stable door? How much has that actually worked? Because there's so many things that happen together when it comes to reinforcement, and hopefully by now you've realized that it's slightly more complicated, which is why we're in business. Um, because behavior is complicated and takes time to figure out. Just to break down the actual positive side of punishment, you know, and that and hopefully I'll say it makes sense at this point. Um, positive is an additive, right? You have to add something in order to stop the behavior from happening. So if we talk about maybe like an emergency situation, Jen, like when when would you use positive punishment in your training or have used it? Well, we alluded to this in the last episode. We talked about in our episode about negative reinforcement, sorry, negative punishment. At the start of the episode, we did a little disclaimer about emergency situations, and the example I used was you're leading your horse and they're spooking and they might be about to bolt, or they do go to bolt, and they're going to run out onto a really busy road, or there's traffic of some sort. For me, that is a completely ethical situation to apply positive punishment if that means you're going to get control and keep everyone safe because it's it's not a training situation, it is an emergency situation, and it might not even be that the horse is about to bolt onto the road, it could be that there are there's not enough space on the path and they're about to bolt into you, and your safety is at risk. In those situations, we have to look after ourselves, and there's a safeguarding element. Those are not training situations, but uh are those are moments where positive punishment might actually be the least invasive. Yeah, no, absolutely. Because ultimately I look at it as going like what is the short-term and the long-term goal? If the short-term goal is to keep everybody safe and make sure that we're all safe in that moment, then we use the tools that we have available to ourselves and then we reflect on what happened and we go, okay, well, can I set my horse up for success for a future situation in order to reduce the likelihood of bolting? Your positive punishment is not a long-term training solution, it really isn't, because ultimately it doesn't give the horse the ability to understand what it is that you want them to do, it gives them no just the direction. And I often say this is like if a dead dog can do it, then it's not a behavior. So we want to create a behavior that they can actually perform. So a dead horse cannot kick a stable door, a dead horse cannot bolt into traffic, so it doesn't set us up for success as trainers and owners to create the behavioural pattern that we actually want our horses to achieve. So in an emergency situation, absolutely, you use the least aversive method, and that means that if it's a choice of running out into traffic and a serious injury happening, or a choice of waving your whip in the air or your or smacking the horse to one side to go everybody get off the road, that's the least adversive, isn't it? It sounds like it's awful, but it's the least adversive situation, that's an emergency situation, however, it is not part of your long-term training goals. You don't go out into a busy traffic, you know, or a busy road and onto a footpath and on the side of the road to and hit your horse as positive punishment as part of your training regime. You go, okay, how can I do some desensitization work? How can I shape this behaviour over time? And we will be covering all of those in future bonus episodes. So we want to give you the skills to train it in a more effective and humane way and in the safest way possible. In season one, we did talk about um as a triangle, and Barbara taught this to me um a couple of years ago, and it's a fantastic way of thinking about how we set our horses up for success. Person environment task. If you're not familiar with that terminology, I strongly advise you go back to our season one and listen to our episode on setting your horse up for success, because that covers a lot of the information that Barbara just alluded to there. But we're going to stay on topic and we're talking about punishment and training and positive punishment. Barbara just talked about there about the the you know, not is not a behaviour. So not doing something is not a behaviour. And in the previous episode, our negative punishment episode, we talked about the void. So if we now think about the horse at that gate onto the road, if we do treat that as a training situation and I decide that I'm going to use punishment as my technique for training, a couple of things might happen. All I'm saying to the horse is don't bolt, don't bolt, don't bolt. I'm not addressing the factors that might be causing that behaviour. Maybe there's some big scary bushes, maybe it's the traffic, maybe it's the ground, maybe it's a separation anxiety. There's a void there in the training where I've said to the horse, do not do this, and the horse is left thinking, Well, I need to do something. So if bolting isn't the option, they might try spinning, they might try biting, rearing, they might start planting in the field, and their behaviour might start way earlier. This is why we have to provide the horse with direction and something else. So positive punishment as a training method on its own is just so ineffective to achieving anything beneficial. We get so stuck in this moment of going, we want to train our horses as ethically as possible and support them and keep us all safe. There we are working with half a ton of a flight animal, so safety is really critical, and being able to identify what it is that we're actually doing and hopefully understanding what positive punishment is and isn't helps give some direction for people. I just wanted to talk a little bit about disruptive stimulus and when it can become a positive punishment. Can you describe a disruptive stimulus disruptive stimulus for our lovely listeners, Jen? Absolutely. So again, I'm going to go back to an example I gave in the previous episode about Belle, my dog, chasing the squirrels. And so what does work quite well is if she's off lead and I've seen her lock onto a squirrel and she's hasn't gone yet, sometimes I will clap my hands or make a noise to get her attention. That has disrupted her charge, as it were. She was getting ready to charge after that squirrel. I've got her attention and I've disrupted her thought pattern there of what she was going to do next. But to make this appropriate and good training, I very quickly connect that to a positive reinforcement. Yes, come here, good girl, click reward. So now I've given her direction, I've said, come here instead, hear something nice, give your attention to me. I'm more interesting, and there's loads of pleasurable things happening over here. So this is where a disruption can help stop the behavior that is about to happen without actually punishing the behavior, as long as it's as long as it's followed up with direction. So again, we're filling that void. This is what's really important here. So where direction a disruptive stimulus can sort of fail for us when we you know create a start of response is when it sort of tips into too much of a fear response or pain, and then we have to ask ourselves, is it ethical? So it's it is really, really important that if we are disrupting a behavior, that we don't trip too far in the other direction, and that we make sure that we, as Jen says, fill that void and support our animal. It's effectively like if you're in a supermarket and someone's looking for you and you shout across and go, Way, I'm over here, you know, you're you're trying to grab someone's attention, but if you were to keep screaming at them and keep yelling and start clattering around, it can really easily trip into positive punishment. So it's trying to find that fine line between actually supporting the behaviour and what you do want and positive punishment. In a in a horsey example, I want to think about you know, we're we're we're breaking in, we're backing a young horse, and we're just getting the rider on the horse's back, and it's a little bit nervy, you can see the horse has got a bit tense, and they're not bolting, they're a little bit in freeze. Um what's often very common is that people start clapping on the horse's shoulder and going, good, that's it, well done, very good, wonderful, come on back in the room, pay attention because they can see the horse has gone freeze, its head's gone up, it's stargazing into something into the distance. The horse is actually trigger-stacked and he's having a really hard time. So people start patting the horse's neck, his bum, his rump, chatting away to him to try and bring the horse back into the room, but you're actually trigger stacking the horse, and then what will happen is well, the horse might not do anything physically, but is internally having a really hard time and learns to connect being sat on with something fearful, or they might trip over that uh threshold and they bolt, they run, they do something. So, although it was meant as something nice, it was actually perceived as a punishment. And sometimes our disruptive stimulus can then become as a cute response to positive punishment. Um, now one example of that being a good thing, and this might sound odd, is when your dog growls. A growling dog is communicating something and is trying to disrupt a behavior, so it is a form of positive punishment. So if you imagine, you know, there's a group of dogs playing, and one of them is roughhousing just a little bit too much, and the other dog doesn't like it. So my dog Izzy has arthritis, she's getting older, and she definitely doesn't like to, you know, she definitely doesn't like rough housing with younger dogs. So she will bare her teeth and she will growl. That is a disruptive stimulus. The other dogs will sort of stop and back away because it's disrupting the behavior. If they don't do that, then it escalates. That disruptive stimulus escalates, and she will snap or lunge her bell. Uh, you know, or she's not really a bitey wall, but she will lunge and she will go, right, that's it, we're having enough, particularly with the the younger dogs, because there's something else maintaining that, you know, because she has arthritis and she cannot play the way she used to. That is a form of positive punishment. It's adding something and that behaviour to disrupt the behavior that's happening from another dog, and that's interspecies. So it's actually really good for dogs to be able to growl and communicate like that and have that disruptive stimulus, have that socialization period where they can clearly communicate to stop other behaviours from escalating. So, where we can see this in horses, and I want to be very careful here, the horses do not perceive this that we know of as positive punishment against us. They're actually just trying to slow us down. So there can be times, um, particularly when horses who don't want to be tacked up, and even if you've got them in the cross ties or they're tied up, they will try to perform maybe swinging their quarters around, nipping, biting, stamping, distance increasing behaviors to try to create distance between you and the horse, which and if they do actually bite you or nip you, it's positive punishment. The horse is using positive punishment to punish your behaviour. Your behavior isn't trying to approach them with attack. But the fundamental thing is we need to remember what's motivating this behavior, what's maintaining this behaviour, and chances are there's a reason that horse wants you to slow down. Maybe they're scared of the tack, maybe it's uncomfortable, underlying health condition, bad previous experiences, the list goes on and on and on. There's always a bigger picture here. That doesn't mean that the horse is awful for using positive punishment. He's using, or she's using, a really effective communication tool. And chances are the horse has chosen positive punishment because other ways of communicating haven't worked in the past, they've been ignored and they've had to escalate to that level. And I say, like with our other bonus episodes, we know we've discussed this a lot. These are helpful definitions to help us understand and become better owners, trainers, and supporting our animals, but they only work as far as we need to understand what's maintaining the behaviour. And as Jen says, there could be other underlying medical issues. I talked about Izzy having arthritis, you know, she's really trying to communicate with other dogs, it's just a little bit too much. And when we understand that yes, arthritis is sore, and although we're medicating for it, she can't handle things, she's a little bit older and she's finding it more difficult, then it gives us empathy and compassion for that animal. We understand why that behaviour is happening. If a horse is turning around and turning their hindquarters because they want to escape pressure or they want to move away from other horses that are making them feel uncomfortable, or dogs are trying to do the same, we would do the same in an uncomfortable situation. Then if we understand that there might be something else maintaining it, there might be a medical issue, they might be a little bit older, they might be having a hard time, as Jen will often say, he's just having a bad day today. When we understand that, then we can adapt and use better training methods to support that animal in that situation. So if we try to summarise positive punishment, it's the addition of something unpleasant to make the likelihood of a behaviour less likely to happen again. So typically that comes in the form of hitting, smacking, you know, banging the horse head with the heck collar or even just frightening the horse. It's things that aren't pleasurable. Are they appropriate as your go-to training method? No, they're really not because they leave the horse with this massive emptiness of, well, what do I do next? It's not constructive, it doesn't support learning. Is it applicable in an emergency situation? Sure, yeah, but that is not a training situation. So this is where it comes down to we don't promote positive and we don't promote punishment techniques in effective training. It is happening all the time, whether we like it or not, but it's not our go-to. As long as we're aware of them, we can try to mitigate them and make things more reinforcing rather than punishing. Just like with all the other reinforcements and punishment, like anything, timing is really important. Understanding why it's happening short term, it's very important that if you have to use positive punishment in an emergency situation, that your timing is correct and that it is a short-term mitigation for a more serious situation, and that we don't apply it to our everyday. So, just as Jen says, we look for other things in our quadrant to be able to support long-term skill acquisition and learning within our horses. So I hope you found these really, really useful. Uh, this is bonus number four. We're going to move on to other training topics in the next couple of bonus episodes. If you have any questions or stories that you want to share, absolutely please message us. We'll do our best to be able to answer them as soon as we can. And if you found this bonus episode useful, please share it with you know friends, colleagues, partners, you know, um, whoever you think might find this interesting. And join us in the next Thanks as always, guys. As Barbara said, next couple of episodes, we're going to be talking a little bit more about how we put this into practice, a little bit more in training techniques. So, like she said, if you've got questions, send them in voice not as if you want to have have a little moment on the podcast. We'd love that. Oh, and love a good voice you. Yeah, love a good voice note. Um, yeah. Till next time. Ta-ra! Bye guys! And I'll say ta-ra back. Ah, gen.