Why don’t dogs “unlearn” commands once they stop receiving treats?
In: Biology
It’s called conditioning, and it can be done with pretty much any animal, humans included; leaving behind a long-term or potentially permanent link.
When the dog follows your command and you give it a treat, it learns that doing a certain action (a trick) after hearing a certain sound (a command) results in a reward (a treat). When you then repeat that process time and time again, the dog’s brain eventually learns to associate that process will result with the positive reward, and while that positive reward is now gone, the brain has so tightly linked the action to the outcome that it will make up the outcome on its own.
The opposite metric, as an example, can be used to prevent something. Rather than train the brain to associate the action with a positive reward, train it to associate the action with a negative reward. The brain then learns to link the 2 and while the negative reward is no longer being used, the brain will manufacture it’s own negative reward which then makes it want to avoid the initial action. (One example of this would be humans’ unfortunate use of conversion therapy).
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