Downtime After Training

[Jacquiboss&scoop]

Ok , so reward not delayed , how would this relate to latent learning , as the reward was expected to be at the end of the maze without delay ?

the theory appears to be allowance for down time directly after the activity will create a gain in response time\ performance on the next run over and above what would normal in expectation , it suggests a style of thinking that I am not used to being related to animals with the exception perhaps of Apes ? or do I have the wrong end of the stick completely ?

[Aidan3]

In the Tolman and Konzik experiment it was postulated that the rats who were allowed to freely wander the maze for the first 10 days formed cognitive maps of the maze, so when an incentive was introduced to go to the end of the maze they had that store of information to draw on. When the reward was introduced their learning was made observable. The delay was that there were 10 trials prior to a reinforced trial, at which point they quickly caught up to the control rats who had been reinforced since the first trial.

Latent learning refers to learning which is not yet observable. I suppose the idea of letting the dogs rest and think about what they have just done relies on the theory that dogs might think about what they have just been doing and learn more about it, and that this learning is not observed until later trials. So it might be a good idea to give them time to reflect immediately after training, to take advantage of recency effects on cognition.

[Staranais]

I don't know if it counts as latent learning or not, but on several occasions I've observed my dogs not understanding what I'm after in one session, or having great difficulty with a concept, and then the next time we train they seem to get it very easily, or sometimes just go ahead & do what I wanted with no further training at all. I doubt that they are consciously thinking about training sessions in their spare time, but something is somehow making connections inside those little brains while we're not actually training.

Patricia Gail Burnham calls this the "magic trick" in her book Playtraining your dog.

[JulesP]

I crate after a herding run and it certainly seems to help. But I then do another run with her within an hour usually which seems to cement what we learnt in the first run. I wonder if it would it work the same if you didn't train again until the next day?

[corvus]

That's what I've observed, Staranais.

Maybe it's like the way people can go to sleep with a tricky problem and wake up with a solution to it.

[Tiggy]

I know I like downtime after training to think things through and also when I'm reading a training book I'll sit and ponder what I've read for a bit.