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Terminology

Terms such as positive and negative, reinforcement and punishment to describe the type of consequence that any training method uses.  These are frequently misunderstood so here is a very basic guide to this and other terminology used with clicker training.  All training methods use these consequences, knowing the rules that surround their correct usage will benefit anyone who has any interaction with any animal (or human).

Reinforcement or Punishment?

	A reinforcer/reinforcement increases the behaviour over time.  Lack of reinforcement can be used to decrease behaviour.
	A punisher/punishment decreases behaviour (Punishers provide unreliable ways of decreasing behaviour and often include undesirable side-effects) over time.

Negative and Positive

These are not referring to positive = good or negative = bad. 
In simple terms

	positive = add something
	negative = remove something

Think of negative and positive as mathmatical terms not good\bad.

Positive reinforcement. A treat, praise or behaviour that the horse enjoys is provided after the horse performs the desired behaviour.

Negative reinforcement. A leg aid is a negative reinforcement.  The leg is used to squeeze or nudge the horse until it moves forward. The leg aid is removed after the horse performs the desired behaviour.  Negative reinforcement is also known as removal reinforcement

Positive punishment. This is the usual type of punishment that we apply to horses.  A smack of the whip is added after refusing a fence is a positive punishment.

Negative punishment. This type of punishment is used occasionally by clicker trainers (and child psychologists). An example might be a 'timeout' the horse is removed from his friends if he misbehaves.  

Other Common terms

Bridge

A bridge, or more correctly a bridging stimulus is another name for the clicker.  The click marks the desired behaviour as it occurs and "bridges" the time between the response and the delivery of the primary reinforcer.

Consequence or Outcome

The result of an action. Consequences tend to affect future behavior, making the behavior more or less likely to occur again.

Target

Any object that the animal is taught to touch with any part of his body.
 

More Information....

Have you seen the published articles? click here

Wikipedia - Operant Conditioning

  The NZ Equine Research Foundation provides a number of articles for download that may be interesting to anyone interested in horses.