#learning theory

[enthusiastic-consent-training]

One of the reasons that I really value behaviorism both in humans and other animals, is the emphasis placed on the fact that we can’t know the internal life of anyone else. Trying to know how and what someone else is thinking is futile, we can only control how we respond to their overt behavior.

I don’t worry whether my animals love me, I love them and when they’re eager to interact with me, I know I’m a reinforcing presence in some way. Their precise internal emotions aren’t something I can know; I can only know how they respond to me and change my behavior if the reaction is negative. If Midori loves me, great! If he just trusts me and thinks I’m a good resource for snacks and scritches, also great!

Humans have the benefit of being able to better communicate their inner world to others through language, but language is still a behavior. I’ve always been really nervous about how others feel about me and tend to overthink social interactions, and the realization that I can only respond to others behaviors was really freeing. If someone doesn’t want to interact with me, I can only know that when they tell me. If they don’t tell me, worrying about it isn’t really useful; so I may as well work under the assumption that they don’t secretly hate me, until they tell me otherwise.

So it just really pisses me off when my learning professor writes something like:

The first sentence can be a true statement: she doesn’t believe we learn the same way. But then she shifts from sharing her personal beliefs to offering it as a widely accepted fact. But it’s not a fact.

I am not arguing that we think or learn exactly the same way, but there’s no way to empirically prove that another animal is NOT able to think “abstract, complex thought[s].”

Like Frans De Waal, an important primatologist, discusses in his book, Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are?, differences in cognition are probably a gradient like differences in anatomy across taxonomic groups. Grouping it as humans vs. all other animals (not to mention research into plant cognition…) is so odd to me, when it seems obvious that humans and chimps would be far more similar in cognition than chimps and sea slugs.

And De Waal’s other really good point is that when we do an experiment on animal cognition and the species fails: it’s really hard to know if they’re incapable of some cognitive task, or if we’re just bad at designing an experiment to test that particular species (see De Waal’s tool use in primates example). We might be able to prove another animal can do something, but we cannot prove they are incapable of something.

“Humans are capable of more advanced, abstract thought,” is an impossible statement to prove because we’ll probably never know what goes on in a finch or goldfish’s brain. So why even bother worrying about it? It just feels like an inferiority complex where human learning theorists need to know what makes humans special and unique so they make wild unsubstantiated claims to reassure themselves.

Isn’t the fact that we’ve created things no other species has, enough? Why do we need to believe that other species are missing some divine spark? I just think we won the evolutionary lottery and got here first. If crows had figured out pockets and dolphins had hands, we’d be screwed.

[hazellark]

There is so so much value in doing things with intentionality. You have to be paying attention. Like, you can't do everything with intentionality, but when you can, try. Do the thing. Repetition is the mother of learning. How do you think people learn? How do you think AIs are trained? No thing out there is instantly perfect.

I get praised for being a good baker. You want to know what got me there? I paid attention in chemistry, thermodynamics, and kinetics, sure. But I also watched tons of cooking stuff on youtube. My parents made sure that I practiced cooking before I left home. When I make something new, I check several different recipes. I try a thing, and see what happens. I failed a cake recipe several times before I figured out how to get it out of the pan whole. It's one of the things that I chose to invest my time in, and understanding is my payoff.

Skill is taking your brain's database of experience and using it to do something. Someone is "naturally" talented at something? In my experience, they are either A. Good at exactly mimicking what they just saw or got instructions for, or B. they see how pieces of information build to the whole and know how to use those little brain legos. Learning by repetition is not going to look the same for everybody. It may go slowly, but brains are made for pattern recognition. Did you know babbling is a sign of language? Babies don't usually just start speaking words, they start mimicking things, making sounds until they're understood and progress from there.

And not everything is worth intentionality. But if you care, build your little brain library in that area. Ruin a cake? What went wrong, in what way did it go wrong, where did it go wrong, and at what point in the process? Does the recipe have tips? Does a different recipe tout a feature that would fix it? Fail a test? Did you study? How, what parts, how much? People have been doing this kind of stuff for as long as we've been around. It's how we figure new things out. And if you can skip some repetition by raiding someone else's brain library by reading, listening, watching, observing, etc., their work, that's fantastic. If you have experience in something similar, start using that information as a jumping point, and work from there. But your brain library has to get filled somehow for you to be able to reference information.

The way you do something the first time might not be the way you need to do it. But you need to know how you did it to fix what you did wrong. Nothing comes from nothing. If you want something, start something. Read a guide, watch a video, listen to a lecture. Make bad art, fail a recipe, win at a chess game, try something new and ask questions about it. If you can tell something is wrong, guess what! You've already started building that brain library! You've got a point of comparison somewhere! Think through the notes your brain has on it and figure out what sources to go back to. Build your brain library sections out.

[kyoshalearns]

Some quick thoughts on Kanji mnemonics

This is just an opinion.

When your native language is English and you are learning Japanese, there are some conceptual hurdles to overcome. One big one is Kanji, how to approach it, when the right time is, the best review methods etc etc. For this reason it took me some time to figure out how to process Kanji from learning a new character to effectively reviewing it.

RTK or "Remembering The Kanji" is an influential work that has clearly affected the kanji learning praxis in large parts of the Japanese language learning community. I have not read this book but I know that it ask the reader to come up with long mnemonics to help remember kanji.

Firstly, I agree that mnemonics are probably the best way to remember all the details you need to know. What I don't agree with however is having really long mnemonics, because the longer the mnemonics the harder it is to remember. I have seen people suggest writing paragraphs for one kanji.

Personally I think a mnemonic should be as short as possible and include the 3 main pillars of a kanji character

The meaning in English

Kunyomi pronunciation/s

Onyomi pronunciation/s

Stroke order is a whole other beast but at its core these are the aspects of a kanji character that you need to know before you can say you "know it".

So to me the ideal mnemonic is taking these 3 aspects and fitting them into one short sentence if possible. Lets take the kanji for 1, "一"

The meaning in English: One

Kunyomi pronunciation/s: ひと (hi to)

Onyomi pronunciation/s: : イチ( i chi)

So for this example the mnemonic I use is :

"One day HE TOld me to EAt CHEEse"

It takes some creativity sometimes to fit it into something coherent but the effort is worth it because this one mnemonic builds on your understanding of multiple aspects and is easy to remember/access in your mind.

The mnemonic allows me to reason through the kanji so I make those repetitive associations that eventually make the mnemonic unnecessary.

My whole point is just that I think mnemonics should be short sweet and to the point, highlighting the 3 main pillars of a kanji character, and not a multi-sentence story paragraph that takes too long to write or remember.

[roanthered]

Students standing up to leave at the sound of the school bell is a conditioned response. They have learned that when that bell rings, they are able to leave the classroom and have some free time, which is very reinforcing for most students. This response ends up backfiring on the teacher if they need the students to stay a few minutes late. That conditioned response is so strong that the students will struggle to stay seated and calm. They will also struggle to learn during that time, because they are using a lot of mental energy to fight the conditioned response.

Conditioned responses can be changed. One way is by providing an even stronger reinforcer. If the class is playing a fun game and the bell rings before they can finish, students are much more likely to stay behind and ignore the bell in order to continue playing the game. In a different scenario, teacher could tell the class that they will pass out candy as soon as the lesson is finished as a reward for remaining after class. The students that like candy stay behind in order to get that reward.

Alternately, the teacher could use a form of punishment. What do you think the students would do if, as soon as the bell rings, the teacher tells them that any student who does not remain to finish the lesson will get extra homework that evening? Some students will decide that they do not want the extra homework and stay seated. This group of students will likely still struggle to stay still and on task during this time, because the desire to leave is still there—they’re too focused on listening for the OK to leave to learn! For other students, this threat may not outweigh the reinforcement of leaving at all. They hardly even consider the extra homework because they do strongly want to leave. Later when they actually have to complete the punishment homework, how do you think they are feeling? Odds are, they’re cursing the teacher for assigning the homework, rather than themselves for leaving early and earning extra homework as a consequence. This emotional response can actually increase the students’ desire to leave at the bell in order to get away from the mean teacher that assigns extra homework.

Punishment CAN work; however, because it teaches the learner what NOT to do rather than what they SHOULD do, it is much more likely to increase different behaviors or cause new behaviors to be selected in response, which are not always beneficial to the teacher. While studies are still being done on the negatives and fallouts of using positive punishment, one thing is for sure: positive reinforcement, when used correctly, is incredibly effective at changing the underlying emotions behind conditioned responses. The students who were reinforced saw staying after the bell as fun! The students who were punished still see staying after the bell as boring or undesirable, but they learned that leaving at the bell (when risk of a punisher is present) is even worse.

[music-education]

What do you believe about learning and teaching?

[thecinematichorse]

I'm not sure which horse actor it was (if not multiple) but I have heard from what I consider a reliable source that at least one of the horses used for Shadowfax was trained with shock collars for LOTR. To me that is wildly inappropriate, especially for horses. I kind of think you should maybe disclaim that when posting about LOTR horses, perhaps? It also concerns me that Viggo can have been so in love with those horses and never raised concern about severely aversive training methods.

I had some concerns about publishing this, but I think I’m gonna go ahead and do just that, because there’s a few things that I wanna address:

00) For those wondering, there were two horses that played Shadowfax: the first was an Andalusian stallion named Demero, who had melanoma and was retired from the set before dying in 2003; and the second was the more-famously known Andalusian stallion named Blanco.

01) It is really hard to reliably trust an anonymous person’s claim that someone they know has insider information. Whether or not this is true, this is exactly the sort of claim that I wouldn’t even consider entertaining as true unless verified by other sources. 

Like this one, Humane Hollywood as a part of the American Humane Association:

02)  I am going to highlight this sentence from the above: 

“During filming production has indicated that the use of the device was infrequent and monitored by production veterinarians. When production learned of AHA’s objection to the device, they prohibited further use.”

03) People can still love animals and do things that others might consider unethical or unfair. You can love something and be ignorant or misinformed about it (and horse lords knows this is true throughout the spectrum of equestrianism.) That is very definitely a thing. Anyone who has been an advocate for animals is confronted with this truth, and there’s a certain level of dogmaticism in condemning people for the things they think they are doing out of love or responsibility to their animals. I’ve done both before before, friends have done both before, and at the end of the day it’s not overly productive and doesn’t tend to make people receptive to change.

04) See above for Viggo: how do you know that he knew that shock collars were aversive? How do you know that he understood the language of behavioral science and behavior modification, and therefore understood the mechanics of how shock collars worked? How do you know that he recognized that it might have been unfair to the horses? How do you know that he didn’t just trust the horse trainer’s judgment, which is a valid assumption to make when you don’t know very much about something such as horse training? 

Furthermore, how do you know that he didn’t raise concerns about the treatment of the horses? (nb: I couldn’t find anything on this any which way, so this is pretty firmly in the “Who even knows?” category for me.)

This is a pretty heady assumption to make, my dude. I have a tendency to give actors the benefit of the doubt because the overwhelmingly vast majority of them really have no concept of horses, behaviorism, or training of animals. It’s unfair to throw a “Your Fave Is Problematic” accusation at them like this.

05) I am absolutely not going to put a disclaimer on every single post. 

06) I’m also not interested in getting into debates about behaviorism, what counts as aversive, or the implied aversive = abusive angle here. Frankly, the thing I’m most interested in is the training context for which the shock collars were used. The last movie (Return of the King) was released in 2003, and presumably filmed in 2002/2003, so we’re talking about animal handling that’s from nearly two decades ago, as well. 

-Moira

[folkdogs]

What Is Positive Punishment in Dog Training?

Everything you need to know about the use of positive punishment in dog training.

If you are a new dog owner, or even if you’ve been around dogs for a while, this article is for you. It covers the technical definition of positive punishment, examples of what it is, what we know about the risks of using it and what professional organizations advise.