Reinforce behaviors during lesson

  • Published
  • By Lt. Col. Craig Christenson
  • 71st Medical Operations Squadron
Vance Air Force Base, Okla. --  A year and a half ago while living in Idaho, my wife and I went to a horse auction held by the Bureau of Land Management. This was one of those auctions where they sell wild mustangs that were recently rounded up from the desert. Already owning two horses, we certainly didn't need a third, especially since we knew we would be moving to Enid that summer. But good sense and reason don't always prevail. Before I knew it, I was going home to get the horse trailer so we could drive our new 6-month-old mustang home.
Training a young horse that was running wild and free without human contact can be challenging to say the least. A horse can easily learn undesirable behaviors, so training must be carefully thought out and done correctly to ensure a solid foundation for future learning is built.
The trainer must ensure both positive and negative reinforcements are used. One must not confuse positive and negative reinforcement with punishments and rewards. They are very different.
Positive or negative reinforcement is something that happens immediately during the training. For example, when a horse puts his nose on an electric fence, he gets a negative reinforcement immediately. Alternatively, when you ask the horse to yield sideways with steady leg pressure, when he responds even in the slightest, you release the pressure. This is positive reinforcement.
Rewards and punishments are something that happen after the fact. An example of a reward would be giving the horse a couple of carrots after the training session is complete. The horse will certainly appreciate the carrots, but in the interim, he may have thought you didn't even notice he was doing a good job during the training session. A punishment for a training session that did not go well could be not turning the horse out into the pasture to eat grass after the training session, but returning him directly to his stall or leaving him tied to the hitching post longer than normal. This will most likely upset him and will do little to reinforce positive learning.
Positive or negative reinforcement is doing less sooner, instead of more later. This analogy of training a young horse can be directly applied to training in the military setting. Instead of a horse, it could be a young Airman or lieutenant at his or her first duty station, a staff sergeant or captain moving into a new role or even a senior NCO or field grade officer increasing his or her span of responsibility.
Training in the military setting is continuous regardless of the experience level of the individual, and it is important to lay a good foundation when initiating new or continuing education. But remember, training does not always occur in a classroom setting, nor is it limited to learning a set of skills. Many times training occurs continuously during the course of the day while a person is doing his or her job, or it could be reinforcing a set of desirable behaviors. A supervisor will find it much easier to obtain his or her training goals by using positive or negative reinforcement immediately as opposed to waiting for the next feedback session, which may be weeks or months away, to heap praise or to unload a string of negative comments.
Although this analogy may be over simplified, there are certainly lessons that can be learned from it. Rewards and punishments definitely have their place when used judiciously and correctly, but they should not be the primary motivator used when attempting to teach new skills or influence behaviors. Continuous and immediate reinforcement, be it positive or negative, will pay off much higher dividends in the long run.