"Animal scientist Temple Grandin says autism helps her see things as animals do. Grandin talks about her work designing humane slaughter systems for animals, and her unique way of looking at the world."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5165123
1) What aspects of the interview relate to the material we are covering in our class? 2) What terms and concepts did they use correctly (or incorrectly)? 3) What aspect of the interview did you find the most interesting and why?
Of most relevance to this class was Dr. Grandin’s discussion on how to change contextual stimuli in slaughter houses to make the experience less distressing to the animals, and also to increase the efficiency of the process by negatively reinforcing desired target behaviors in cattle. Historically, she explains, cattle drivers have used positive punishment in the form of whipping, shocking, or yelling at cattle in order to direct them down paths towards the slaughterhouse. Her work with animal behaviors has indicated that if you simply remove several of the most commonly feared aversive stimuli for cattle they will willing, (i.e. be reinforced) to walk wherever the cattle drivers want them.
Examples include adding appropriate lighting in dark areas, or removing blinding lights in others; making sure reflective surfaces are minimized so that cattle, whose eyes are lower to the ground than humans, are not being blinded by shiny metal gates, etc. Most of these are negative reinforcement because they involve the removal of an aversive stimulus (viz. fear causing stimuli) which subsequently causes the target behavior of moving towards the slaughterhouse to increase.
They seldom used any of the actual terminology of behavior modification, most likely because the lay audience would not have been familiar with them. Her insistence that people working with animals need to avoid using punishment in favor of reinforcement was directly in line with the previous chapter’s description of the common pitfalls of punishment. Also I really liked how, since it is very unlikely that the world will become vegetarians, and it may not be medically responsible to do so, she advocated working very hard to make the process as pleasurable as possible, or perhaps, to remove as much anxiety and displeasure as possible. Behavior modification, with an emphasis on a variety of reinforcing options, and focus on disruption of operant behavior over punishment when reinforcement is not possible, offer great hope that this process may become more and more humane, if we only work at it.
Terms: contextual stimuli, negatively reinforcing, target behaviors, aversive, positive punishment, disruption of operant behavior.