Last week, as you’ll recall, we had a special guest - a surprise visit from Dr. Jesus Rosales Ruiz. Dominique and I were discussing some reading she’s been doing in Paul Chance’s book, Learning and Behavior. We were stumbling over the differences between schedules of reinforcement, rates of reinforcement, and variable reinforcement. Each one is describing different aspect of reinforcement, but it’s easy to get them tangled up so you forget which definition goes where.

They remind me of all the power cords that wrap around the top of my desk. As much as I try to keep them tidy and separate, they seem to twist themselves together into a confusing knot. At the beginning of last week’s episode Dominique and I were getting ourselves twisted into our own version of a knot as we began a discussion of these terms. So I enlisted the help of Dr. Jesús Rosales-Ruiz to help sort us out.

On the last night of the Art and Science of Animal training Conference in Dallas Texas, we found a semi quiet room in which to record. My intent was to send Dominique just a ten or fifteen minute quick audio postcard, but once we got started, it was hard to stop! So here is the second half of my conversation with Jesús.

Enjoy!