Behavior in My Dog

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Luz Rosario 3/6/2014 Flynn Psy101 My Dog Nicky There are many ways that humans and animals could learn or change their behavior. I remember my first dog called Nicky that was back in 2009 when I used to live in the Dominican Republic. Nicky was a two years old dog who did not want to respond in a good behavior; so I tried to change his behavior toward the primary and secondary reinforcement. The primary reinforces are biological, food, drink, and pleasure are the principal reinforces are secondary or conditioned, examples include money, grades in schools and tokens. The secondary reinforces acquire their power via a history of association with primary reinforces or other secondary reinforces. The secondary reinforces of this study is to train Nicky to sit. First I would introduce the discriminative stimulus the word “sit” I could just say “sit” and when the dog sits I would give it some food. The food would be the primary reinforce. Immediately after I gave it the food I would say, “Good Dog” is my secondary reinforce of praise, then I will repeat the process many times, gradually with less food but the dog would continue to sit when I told it to. Shaping is a great way to help dog new behaviors. It is a step by step process, instead of expecting my dog to master new behavior all at once; shaping my dog’s behavior means I am reinforcing each small step toward the bigger goal. In this study I was not expecting that my dog Nicky would sit at the first time I told it to but with reinforcement and helping the dog out, it will finally sit on it owns. Classical conditioning is a learning process that occurs through associations between an environmental stimulus and a naturally occurring stimulus. In this case my dog was frightening to sit down and going down to the basement because it was dark and once it fall down of the stairs. Extinction refers to the gradual
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