The Sphere of Influence

The sphere of influence is a term I use when discussing classical conditioning. Classical conditioning as we know pairs a neutral stimulus with a conditioned stimulus so that the neutral stimulus takes on meaning for the animal.

The most popular example is using a clicker followed by a presentation of food, so that the animal comes to know that "click" means food. However dogs see the world very different than us, and aspects of their reality are difficult to comprehend as we can never see the world quite as they do.

One thing that is widely proven through science is that dogs discriminate far closer than we do when forming associations. For example a dog that is not socialized to Black men may display fear if approached by one, even if the dog has been well socialized to White men, Asian men, Indian men, etc. A dog may also fail to respond to reward training if he has been conditioned that the reward will only be present if your bait bag is on your belt.

Enter the sphere of influence. When classically conditioning it's critical to be mindful of all the things your influencing. This counts for both positive conditioning but is very important to be aware of if a dog is being trained with punishment (P+).

When we want a dog to feel good about something - we pair it with food or other pleasurable items. However we must be sure we are pairing the right object in the dogs mind.

If I want to cure dog aggression, I am going to give lots of treats whenever other dogs are present - so my aggressive dog replaces the bad feelings about other dogs, with good feelings. I want to counter condition him that dogs = treats and good things with the end mental result to be dogs = good things (and thus not to be attacked).

However the sphere of influence may instead teach him that me wearing my sweater = good things, or my shoes = good things or walking in the neighbourhood = good things and not other dogs. I cannot be sure which condition the dog is focusing on, if at all. In order to get the dog to focus in on other dogs, I need to insure I change the surroundings and conditions to many different situations, while keeping the one constant I want to focus on the same - in this case other dogs.

If I ignored this principle, My dog would likely have good feelings about a number of different things, however I could never be sure how strong that feeling would be, nor to which circumstance it would be directly associated to.

This is specially concerning if punishment is involved. Consider this example:

"The father of the family is very frustrated with the family dog who is always peeing in the house. The fathers ritual when he comes home is to take the keys out of the door, find the dog and slap him for the pee he discovers each day when coming home. The dog is becoming more and more fearful each time the father comes home. One day the mother comes home around the same time the father usually does, and removes the keys from the door and comes inside. The dog attacks and bites the mother putting her in hospital. The dog is euthanized due to his 'unpredictable' attack on someone who never harmed him."

What really happened here? Because the dog was being punished with a regular set of criteria - he was conditioned to a number of factors, and any number of those may have pushed him over the edge. So the dog learned that

a) a certain time of day predicts punishment
b) sound of keys jingling coming out of door predict punishment
c) the father's presence predicts punishment

However it only required condition a and condition b to be present in order to get the reaction from the dog. The mother was an unfortunate victim of the classical conditioning sphere of influence that was taking place each time the dog was punished. The punishment became too much and finally caused the dog to lash out in a preemptive strike towards what he believed would be a punishment based on classical criteria.

Take another example - a dog gets hit by a car. Just before hitting the dog the car honks it's horn. This dog could be scared of cars, a horn sound, the specific area in which the accident happened, or even the weather at the time of the incident from now on. All these items were simultaneously conditioned from this one incident (conditioning happens much faster with a fear emotion).

So in summary - be very mindful of this sphere of influence in both the positive and negative (punishment) applications

Positive - change the other criteria for reward in each situation keeping one constant to focus on the exact object you want to pair.

Punishment - be aware that any dog that has been punished in the past may have associated the impending punishment with any number of critera including your sex, clothing, sounds or location. Just because we know the dog may be in a safe place far away from the punisher - he doesn't make this same safe association that a human would.