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Improving in‐kennel presentation of shelter dogs through response‐dependent and response‐independent treat delivery
Author(s) -
Protopopova Alexandra,
Wynne Clive D. L.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of applied behavior analysis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.1
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1938-3703
pISSN - 0021-8855
DOI - 10.1002/jaba.217
Subject(s) - interquartile range , differential reinforcement , reinforcement , population , confidence interval , medicine , psychology , physical therapy , surgery , social psychology , environmental health
In a sequence of studies, we evaluated 2 behavioral interventions designed to decrease undesirable in‐kennel behaviors of shelter dogs. In Experiment 1, we compared the efficacy of a simple pairing of person with food (response‐independent treat delivery) to an increasing interval differential‐reinforcement‐of‐other‐behavior (DRO) procedure and a control condition. Both procedures decreased the median percentage of undesirable behavior from baseline (88.13%, interquartile range [IQR] = 52.78% and 66.43%, IQR = 89.06% respectively), and the control condition increased behavior by 15.13% (IQR = 32.08%), H (2) = 6.49, p = .039. In Experiment 2, we assessed the efficacy of a response‐independent procedure on the whole shelter population. We found a 68% decrease from baseline in the number of dogs that behaved undesirably ( U = –4.16, p < .001). Our results suggest that a response‐independent procedure is equivalent in efficacy to a DRO procedure to decrease undesirable in‐kennel behavior of shelter dogs.