Contents
â € ‹â €‹ â € ‹â €‹ â € ‹â €‹ â € ‹Even a hare can be trained to play the drum…
The people’s
It’s not a shame to rule the world, it’s a shame to do it badly.
Vladimir Tarasov, «A Book for Heroes»
Different problems, same solution
Let’s consider the following situations:
- You are a coach and you need to teach people skills, change their attitudes
- Your child is misbehaving and/or doing poorly in school
- The employee carelessly and without enthusiasm does his job
- The boss is yelling at you
- Husband gu.e. treats you or your wife doesn’t like to cook
- You never manage to master a foreign language or tennis
- The cat regularly «marks» the apartment or the dog does not follow your commands
What do they have in common? The fact that there is some living creature whose typical behavior today regularly does not suit you. And you need to somehow influence it so that it changes in the direction you need.
Stability of behavior — let it remain, but let its character become different.
That is, you need to be able to shape the behavior you need — stable, repetitive behavior. And that is training. If you don’t like the word training, you can call it “training” or “education” if you like it better …
How do we do it
We all influence people in some way. How successful? This is a big question.
Each action has 2 parameters:
- Efficiency is when you consistently get the desired result.
- Efficiency is when you get it with minimal resources: time, effort, money, etc.
It often happens that a parent thinks that he is raising his child. But in reality, the opposite is true.
Mom is trying to get her child to come home from a walk “on time”. And swears, and promises chocolates. Yes, but years pass, and still there is no result.
Or the boss (manager, business owner) thinks that he manages the employees. In fact, they control it.
They are constantly late for work. They delay the deadlines for completing tasks and submit reports “out of form”. Rude customers contrary to the «company policy», which says how we love our customers.
The owner pokes the cat with its muzzle into the «pile» made by her at night on the floor.
A wife yells at her husband (or vice versa): “I asked you 100 times to wash the dishes!” or “Well, you can’t get drunk like that!”
And it makes no sense!
Impact types
There are only a few types of how we can influence the student. We will not talk about violence, because. this is not our method.
There is a lot of confusion with terms in this area. Therefore, read my descriptions in order to speak the same language. So:
In practice, rewards and punishments are most often used.
Because they don’t know how to do it any other way. Because it’s easier. Because they hope it works.
But these are illusions. Won’t work. All non-fictional examples from the previous section are related to the use of rewards and punishments. Rewards and punishments don’t work well. Works much better — reinforcements!
Reinforcement
Reinforcement is an event that coincides in time with an action and leads to an increase in the likelihood of repeating this action. Examples:
- You want your employees to always complete your assignments efficiently and on time. And then the employee comes with a report. To reinforce this action, you greet him kindly and smile. In the course of his speech, nod and “hoot” (within reason). In the future, an employee is more likely to do quality work and bring you reports on time.
- You want your wife to cook and she doesn’t like to do it. Once she cooked, albeit a simple fried egg. This needs to be backed up. You hug her, kiss her, and tell her how good she is. In the future, the wife is more likely to cook.
- Usually your husband is gloomy and grumbles a lot. But one day he smiled. In the same second, smile back, hug, and tell him what a beautiful smile he has. In the future, the husband is more likely to smile.
- You are learning to play tennis. Instead of scolding yourself for mistakes, ignore them, and when the blow succeeds, exclaim loudly and with feeling: “yes!”, “yes!”, “class!” etc. The level of play increases dramatically.
- The dog runs away from you for a walk. At one point, she suddenly (accidentally) ran up to you. You give her a small piece of something tasty, pet her. In the future, your dog will be more likely to approach you outside. If, moreover, at the exact moment the dog approaches you, you say “Come to me!”, Then in the future it will begin to respond to this command. Although initially it is a meaningless set of sounds for her.
- The cat poops in the corner. You catch the moment when she does this, and just at that moment you loudly drop something metal on the floor next to her to startle. You can shout “no!” at the same time, so that later you can use this word as a command.
- You are riding a horse and want to turn right. You pull the bridle, it is very unpleasant for her. As soon as she turned to the right, you stop pulling. The horse remembers that in order to stop the unpleasant effect, it is necessary to turn. In this way, she learns and remembers your signal system.
In principle, both positive and negative reinforcement work. But the positive is more effective: it has been tested in practice. Ideal ratio: 2 to 1 in favor of the positive. Otherwise, you will get a nervous child or employee, a cowardly dog. This is not only inhumane, but also inefficient.
The ethics of training
Often people have a question: how ethical is this? Maybe this is how we make biorobots out of people?
Of course not. In any case, we TRY to educate our environment for its own good:
- It will be better for a child if from childhood he gets used to keeping a beautiful posture, doing exercises and learning with pleasure.
- It will be better for an employee if at work he sincerely rejoices at customers and smiles at them. He will love his job more and earn more.
- For the whole family, it is better if there are warm, joyful relationships in it, and not eternal squabbles and mutual accusations.
But often we do it inefficiently. Reinforcement is simply a way to move from layman to professional world management.
Moreover, high-quality training pleases both you and your trainee, strengthens the relationship between you: remember a good school teacher or sports coach. And unprofessional — not only does not give a result, but also reduces the student’s self-esteem, wastes him and your time. A loser sitting at the back of the class is not stupid, often the other way around. It was just badly taught.
Why «domestic training» does not work
So why? There are many reasons, here are the main ones:
- People believe in learning through the mind. Explain, encourage, punish. Explanations without reinforcement of the desired behavior are often ineffective. And rewards and punishments just don’t work.
- Reinforcements are late. And it turns into a reward or punishment. And this is inefficient. Here a person has to make a mental effort to understand that the fine is associated with his poor work, and this is an “extra link”. The cat, on the other hand, does not understand at all why you poke her muzzle into a “heap” on the floor.
- Reinforcement is done ahead of time. For example, a mother says to a child: “if you come home on time, you will get a chocolate bar.” For professional trainers, this is called «bribery.» This does not work! And only belittles you in the eyes of the student.
- Multidirectional administrative impulses are issued. For example, in my childhood, a family of alcoholics lived in our entrance a couple of floors above us. They kept a German Shepherd. And that’s how she was raised. One: «Come here!» Another immediately: «Sit!» And the sound of impact is heard. What do you think happened to the dog? It was a nervous, frightened creature that whined drearily, and in the entrance huddled against the walls.
Rules for issuing reinforcements
Clearly define for yourself what behavior you want to form in the student. Decide which actions you will reinforce and how. Until you are a very experienced coach, you can write all this on paper. Follow the rules:
- Give reinforcement exactly at the same time as the desired behavior. To do this, the teacher must carefully observe the ward during training and act consciously. You don’t have to be stressed to do this, quite the opposite.
- Reinforcement should be pleasant for the trainee. For a dog, this is a piece of meat, and for a person, a smile. Notice and reinforce the good! This is very contrary to our culture, where it is customary to scold for flaws, and take achievements for granted. But such a negative style of learning and management does not work, but only causes neurosis and resistance.
- Use a variety of reinforcements. Otherwise, you will quickly annoy the ward. It is important for you to understand what is really pleasant for him (or unpleasant, but harmless, if we talk about negative reinforcement).
- For 1 time it is necessary to give out the smallest possible dose of reinforcement. To simply show the learner that he is moving in the desired direction. If you reinforce the desired behavior of the cat with a micro-piece of fish, she will be pleased. And if you give a whole fish, she will eat it for a long time, eat up, and there will be no question of any training.
- You can use conditional reinforcement. That is, what is initially neither pleasant nor unpleasant for the object. The simplest example is a word. The dog does not understand the language. But if you stroke her several times, while saying “well done!”, Then after a while it will be possible to get by with this one word. The most common reinforcement is the name.
- First, reinforce each manifestation of the desired behavior. Then do it less often, preferably in random mode (NOT every Nth time). In professionals, this is called «variable reinforcement schedule.» Oddly enough, this works better at reinforcing the behavior than constant reinforcement.
- Reinforce the desired behavior in different situations. Otherwise, «superstitions» may form. For example, athletes often perform well in their “native gym”, and poorly in others. It helps to train in different conditions.
And one more thing: DO NOT advertise that you are training someone. If you start talking about it (to him or someone else), you will get a lot of negativity. From conscious resistance to public censure. Reinforcement acts bypassing consciousness, and that is why it works. Although you can combine it with training at the level of consciousness (for example, in sports training or at school).
Just act for his good and rejoice with the ward from the results.
What’s next
And then there is your practice. It’s not enough to read about training, you also need to train yourself in the appropriate skills.
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You can express your enthusiasm, doubts and criticism to the author by writing to the address: [email protected]
Good Luck!