UNDERSTANDING DRIVES
Denis
McCarthy
Before
reading any guidelines or works on dogs, you should first investigate the
author and determine what authority and achievements in the subject would give
credence to the author’s ability to address the subject in the first place. Therefore, if you have not already read the
preface, please go back and read it before reading any further.
If
you are in process of getting a dog of some sort, it is important when you
begin training the dog that you understand the basics of its intelligence,
learning ability, instinct and drive.
There
are only two known families that show a trait for keeping pets -- two species
of Great Apes and
To
train a dog successfully there are basics that everyone should know. Once these basics have been learned, the
practicality of training your dog becomes more clear
at every move. Anyone attending a training class run by a proven professional
will be taught these basics, they are essential in understanding the psychology
of your dog, why it responds, to what and, above all, when habit formation
interaction between environment and dog is operative.
The
word “instinct” is all too often
misapplied. Instinct is unchangeable
behaviour of any organism which cannot be modified or changed by the total or
any part of the environment offering reward or punishment stimuli. Some people call rewards or punishment
stimuli “positive and negative reinforcement.”
If you come across these terms anywhere, they are the same thing.
The
meaning of this, regardless of terms used, is that all animals capable of
learning carry out a behaviour solely for positive reinforcement either
directly or as a consequence of escape from aversive situations (e.g. Aversion
therapy) or as a result of previous experience which gave a higher level of
enjoyment than anything else available in the environment at the time. In other
words the behaviour of any animal is governed by what that animal perceives as
the greatest reward.
In
order to get a basic understanding of instinct in contrast to learning ability
and behaviour giving rise to a ‘learned response’ it is necessary to offer a few
examples, although articles such as this can be boring to some readers the
benefits of understanding the motivation behind dog behaviour far outweighs the
burden.
Most
people in their lifetime will have seen some species or other of Moth flying to
infinity round and round and sometimes into a hot, lit light bulb. Sometimes they fly directly into contact with
it and sometimes fly away a few inches or even feet always they fly back
regardless of the positive reinforcement of flying away a few feet
No
matter how many times it hits the stimulus (the lit bulb) and burns or injures
itself, the pointless exercise is repeated over and over again., it is
incapable of learning because it is under the sole control of instinct, at the limits of any learning ability
and no aversion takes place.
No
amount of repetition of negative reinforcement (punishment) and burning will
alter its behaviour and eventually it will drop by exhaustion or death, it is
incapable of learning because of the genetic limitations of the instinct, in
other words, if learning ability is not in the genes the organism cannot learn
further or at all.
During
its circling and bumping into the hot light bulb, it will, on occasions, fly a
foot or so away from the bulb. The
distance decreases or eliminates the physical pain and is a positive
reinforcement, or reward. But the moth
does not associate the act of flying a distance with safety and pleasure, it is a pleasure in comparison to flying into the
bulb. Yet no learning process takes
place and no matter how many repetitions of burning or pointless behaviour the
moth cannot learn to keep distance and maybe alight in a place of safety.
The
reason for this suicidal behaviour is the fact that the Moth is under the
control of an instinct which is genetically unalterable in its behavioural
manifestation of the individual and the species and no learning by repetition
of positive stimulus takes place.
If,
through part of this exercise in observing instinct, the light is switched off,
the moth alights and rests. The window
frame is then taken out, giving the Moth an escape route. A light bulb on a pole is placed outside the
house in the garden and activated. The
Moth, instead of making break for freedom and self survival, will fly straight
to the light bulb and repeat the entire exercise again until death or total
exhaustion takes place.
A
moth in this situation is unable to survive, reproduce itself and maintain the
instinct for survival of the species, the later, being the strongest instinct
of all and which underlies the behaviour of all animal life forms, is defeated
by another instinct which because it is an instinct cannot be modified by
learning.
That
gives rise to the question ‘If the survival of the species is the strongest
instinct of all then why doesn’t the moth have the ability to escape?
In
plants this unalterable attraction to light is called phototropism,
I don’t know if it has a name in animals. The reason the strongest instinct of
all, the survival of the species, does not override in the above example is
because that instinct is designed for naturally occurring obstacles to the
preservation of the species and not manmade stimuli.
Another
and final example of instinct is a species of wasp which reverses itself and
burrows into a muddy bank to bore a hole to lay eggs and reproduce itself,
thereby maintaining the survival of the species.
Placed
in artificial conditions where the mud bank is replaced with a concrete wall,
the same wasp will start the same behaviour continually trying to burrow into a
wall which it has no hope to drill the necessary hole to lay eggs, reproduce
and maintain the survival of the species.
It
will not fly around the room and try other (maybe wood) surfaces; it will not
try alternative things such as laying eggs on the floor; it will continually
drill until death, thereby denying the reproduction of itself and consequent
contribution to the survival of the species.
Both
the Wasp and the Moth were driven entirely by instinct; and, because it was
pure instinct, it was unalterable and no amount of repetition of aversive
stimuli, i.e. attempting to reproduce the species by burrowing into an
impenetrable obstacle, induced a learning process. The reason no learning process could be
induced is because learning is beyond the genetic limitation of the wasp.
Both
the Moth and the Wasp are highly successful species and have survived since
long before and despite of the evolution of Man, but, because the instincts are
genetically determined they are unable to undertake the learning process beyond
the genetic limitation of those instincts and have consequently remained
unchanged for aeons.
Neanderthal
itself survived as a species longer than any other Anthropoid, lasting some 250
million years. The species was a supreme hunter but was limited in learning
ability compared to other species of anthropoid which eventually evolved into
modern man
Slowly
anthropoids evolved into the first genetic engineers, the farmers and animal
geneticists, and on into the modern Human. All the anthropoids had supreme
learning abilities and instinct as such was soon no more than an underlying
foundation for all kinds of diverse behaviour which overtly showed no signs of
the underlying instinct.
As a
quick example of drive: a guy might ask a woman if she wants a coffee; the
underlying ‘drive’ is the reproduction of the species, therefore the underlying
reproduction drive is a motivation for the act of buying a coffee.
Drives
are derived from the original instincts, the predominate
instinct of all species is the survival of the species.
This
instinct is invariable regardless of organism but the capacity to learn in a
species modifies the instinct to a point where overt behaviour has to be
analysed in order to assess (a) the cause and future predictability of a
behaviour, and (b) the degree, or strength of the active drive behind a
behaviour in order to assess the best way of modifying it if that is what we
want to do.
Drives
are the underlying motivations of behaviour in the higher animals, i.e. animals
capable of learning or as it is usually phrased “intelligence.”
The
manifestation of learned behaviour as opposed to instinct behaviour is so
sophisticated and complex that most people do not recognise the foundation
instinct. Paradoxically many people do
state “It is instinct” when in fact
the behaviour to which they refer is a drive
which is capable of change by exogenous or endogenous stimuli and learning
takes place as a result of PR (Positive Reinforcement or reward) or NR
(Negative Stimuli or Punishment).
In
order to understand drives, as opposed to instinct, it is again useful to give
some examples, leading up to the dog. These simple examples will make it easy
to understand drives and the resulting behaviour of animals with learning
abilities or as we like to call it intelligence. The examples are more
intricate than the Moth since I am now dealing with animals which have a
genetic predisposition to learn or have useable intelligence.
For
those of us who have experience in the countryside we have probably seen a
farmhand calling cattle to a fence at feed time. On closer observation we would see the cattle
starting to anticipate the farmhand’s presence prior to his arrival. This anticipation is due to some kind of
biological clock and the changing light conditions as the time approaches and a
prior learning experience which tells the cattle food is on the way. It is not
uncommon to see cattle slowly start to head toward the feeding point long before
the farmhand approaches.
This
behaviour is entirely manifested by the prey drive, the active seeking of a
food source. In the case of cattle in the above circumstance the walk to the
feeding point is learned, the result of a repetition of a reward and induced by
man.
Any
cattle which have not arrived at the feeding spot readily come to his
call. These cattle could be said to be “trained” and trained on the underlying
drive to hunt food. The word “hunt”
is usually applied to predators, however, migration of herding herbivores and
the cattle behaviour illustrated above is hunting “prey” and it is the prey drive which motivates the cattle to recall
or the wilderbeast to migrate.
What
is important to note in the above example is the fact that it is the prey drive
which motivated the cattle’s behaviour.
They could be called by the farmhand in the learned expectancy of
finding food of a certain type.
If a
few minutes after the cattle start to eat, another person throws a different
food 50 meters further on in the field and makes a call, or any kind of
specific identifiable noise, and that batch of food is more favoured by the
cattle, then as soon as the smell of the new food is detected by the cattle
they will, without exception, leave the first batch of food and go to the
second. The calls have become associated with food, a positive stimulus or
reward.
If
the above events are repeated a few times and the first farmhand calls the
cattle, they will come whether or not he has food; but, if part way on their
journey to the first farmhand, the cattle are called by the second farmhand
from the opposite direction, they will turn and go to the second farmhand even
if the first farmhand keeps calling.
If
both farmhands go several times to the field without food and call the cattle
but do not give them food when the cattle reach them, soon the cattle will stop
going to the farmhands. The cessation of food is a negative stimulus or
punishment, the cattle behaviour is not being reinforced and the negative stimulus
or punishment eliminates the recall behaviour.
The
understanding of drives, thresholds and what motivates a dogs behaviour is how
trainers train a dog to behave in a way conducive to the dog being unstressed under
almost all circumstances and grow into or become an enjoyable family member as
a different species living problem free within the family.
This
basic overview of how animals, including dogs, learn is the beginning of
understanding dogs and how to live with them.
In
the next chapter I will show in simple terms how learning takes place in dog
training.
Copyright 2002; Denis Carthy. All Rights Reserved.
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