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Pitbulls, breed-specific legislation, the opinion of a board certified behavior analyst

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Fri, 08/31/2007 - 11:39 — Aidan

Kellie Snider, a board certified behaviour analyst specialising in canine aggression, has penned a very interesting blog entitled On Pit-bulls and Courts of Law.

Kellie Snider did her thesis on what was later termed Constructional Aggression Treatment - figuring out what is reinforcing aggression then shaping the aggression into something less dangerous (or even completely safe). In this work, Snider and her mentor Jesus Rosalez-Ruiz looked very closely at the causes of aggressive behavior.

They discovered that although there are often Classical components, aggressive behavior itself is operant behavior - controlled by consequences. A typical example is:

Dog sees stranger > Dog barks > Stranger keeps his distance

The consequence of "stranger keeps his distance" is reinforcing the behavior of "dog barks". This gets really interesting when you start to test this using Functional Analysis, which is a big fancy word for a procedure that is used to find out what is reinforcing (or punishing) a behavior.

You might, for e.g, put the dog in a muzzle and test what happens if the stranger doesn't keep his distance. Do we then start to see "extinction" take place, does the behavior of barking end eventually?

Or what happens if we make the stranger stay put, then wait until the dog begins to calm down, then immediately the stranger walks off -
Dog barks at stranger > dog calms down a little > stranger goes away

Do we get more of this calmer barking? If so, can we up the ante and ask for even calmer barking next time?

So if aggressive behavior is learned, how does this affect things like breed specific legislation or court cases where rulings are decided based on the breed of dog involved in the incident?

Time will tell. I do know that some dogs (and breeds) are more likely to display certain behaviors. Their genetics may determine which consequences they find most reinforcing, and which behaviors they will try first - which could eventually lead to learned aggressive behavior.

Perhaps if governments spent more money on research into the treatment of canine aggression and educating those who are responsible for training our dogs, they wouldn't have to consider such impotent strategies as breed-specific legislation? (Which to my knowledge has never reduced dog bite statistics anywhere in the world that it has been tried)