This is the fourth in a five part series with Dr Susan Friedman. The general topic is schedules of reinforcement. Susan is a professor emeritus in the Department of Psychology at Utah State University. She is well known around the world for her very popular on-line course: How Behavior Works: Living & Learning With Animals). She has co-authored chapters on behavior change in five veterinary texts, and her popular articles have been translated into 17 languages. She shares many of those articles on her web site: behavior works.org It’s a great resource for all of us who want to learn more about the natural science of behavior.

Susan is a member of the clicker expo faculty. Her presentations at the March Clicker Expo prompted this conversation on schedules of reinforcement.

In Part 1 Susan reviewed with us the basics of fixed and variable schedules. She ended with a question about how you get behavior to vary when you are using a continuous reinforcement schedule. We carried that question over into Part 2.

In Part 2 we took a deeper dive into continuous reinforcement schedules. We considered how you get behavior to vary without using a variable reinforcement schedule. Susan talked about moving away from transactional training to training with assent.

Part 3 Susan helped us to understand schedules of co-variation. She defined conjugate and synchronous schedules and gave some very practical examples, especially as it relates to husbandry procedures that may involve some discomfort. Again, she discussed what assent looks like and what it means when an animal says no. What conditions must be present for a conjugate schedule to begin and what conditions mean that the training should stop?

Part 4 is very much about working in teams. Especially when you are working on husbandry procedures that the animal may not be comfortable with, you need to notice and respond appropriately to the subtle signals an animal presents. When one person is in charge of feeding and the other is handling the procedure, effective communication needs to be there.

At the Cheyenne Mountain zoo where Susan does a great deal of consulting work, the goal of each training session is not getting the procedure done. It is having a willing animal for the next session.

In this episode we talk about different magnitudes of reinforcers and the importance of making a distinction in the reinforcers that are available in order for a choice to be made.

Susan talks about the difference between empathy and compassion, and somehow that takes us to parenting styles and a question from Dominique about what to do when a baby cries.