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Signaled Differential Reinforcement of Other Behavior to Address Excessive Vocalization in Dogs
Yablon, Kiki
Yablon, Kiki
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Abstract
Excessive vocalization is a common complaint of dog caregivers. Persistence and duration in such behavior may be shaped during inconsistent attempts to implement differential reinforcement (DR) in natural settings where the caregiver’s attention is divided. The present study proposes that the use of correlated stimuli to signal when reinforcement is and is not available during differential reinforcement of other behavior (DRO) could be useful in such circumstances. We evaluated the use of a signaled DRO procedure, designed after an interview-informed pairwise functional analysis, with assessment and intervention procedures implemented by three dog caregivers under experimenter supervision via the Zoom teleconference application. In a pre-test under intervention conditions sans the correlated stimulus, no dogs met the target duration criterion of 5 min for quiet behavior. During intervention, evaluated in a changing criterion design, two dogs met the target criteria of 5 min of quiet for three consecutive trials without resetting, while a third did not exceed 15 s of quiet in a similar number of trials. In a post-test under intervention conditions sans the correlated stimulus, one dog again met the 5 min duration criterion, while another did not. For the dog that did not meet the duration criterion without the signal, performance improved with the reintroduction of the stimulus, though not to target levels.
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Date
2022-08-31
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University of Kansas
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Keywords
Behavioral sciences, differential reinforcement of other behavior, dogs, functional analysis, signaled DRO, stimulus control, vocalization