Effects of Stress on (Human) Cognition

Click the title of this post for a link to the info that inspired this post. Summary: mild stress offers maximum benefit to cognition, no stress, moderate stress, and extreme stress interfere with cognition.

Anyone interested in footing the bill for me researching if there is a parallel in canine brains? Anecdotally, it appears there may be.

No stress: Waiting for good behaviors, though very effective and something I use & recommend for specific situations, does not lend itself as well to rapid escalation of criteria.

This situation is one I occasionally see when I walk into a client's home. I like this one. It's well-intentioned, even if it isn't maximally effective. Plus, it's always easier to increase stress than it is to decrease stress.

Mild stress: "The sweet spot" Insistence, mildly forceful elicitors=physical guiding or pressure on flat collar or harness, or CORRECTLY used training devices. Benefits learning as compared to no or moderate stress.

Using some elicitors, distractors, insistence definitely increases the rate at which I personally can progress a dog through a single training session.

Does that make it a good idea for a struggling dog owner to begin increasing stress on a dog? NO! The potential problem is the next paragraph. A little is good, so a LOT is ... NOT BETTER!

Moderate stress: Yelling, fear, confusion, excessive frustration, incorrectly used training collars, headcollars, alpha rolls, shock collars-- poorly selected, poorly timed, poorly executed. Bad training interferes with progress.

The ease with which mild stressors become moderate and even extreme is a great reason not to use ANY training tool without supervision.

This vision is primarily what I encounter when I walk into the home of failing owners--generally it's adolescence when they have realized they are in over their heads and should have gotten help before--who make me cringe by doing all of the above (except shock collars and alpha rolls--I'm not watching you break your dog or get yourself bitten). The "bad" dog is overstimulated. The owners generally are not intentionally causing extreme stress, but their "training" is actually COUNTERPRODUCTIVE!

I do definitely notice a cognitive delay during the owner handling that I do not find when I handle the same dog in the same environment with the same tool. Even if the dog DOES learn, and not break (as with extreme stress), it's at a slower pace. Who wants that?

I wonder if this cognitive delay is why punishers slow behaviors down -- presence of stress chemicals, processing of strong stimuli interferes with learning?

Extreme stress: Deliberate harsher use of training tools than most accidental misuse. ALSO Long-term use of moderate stressors accumulates.

A primarily positive Schutzhund group I trained with splintered because one individual was beyond harsh with his dog. Harsh but fair punishers that are effective, I can stomach, if the dog can. Unfair punishments (ones whose causality is not identified by the dog) are just abusive. They cause stress, which I find practically to be significantly more deterimental to the dog than brief pain.

But, separating myself from the stomach-churning feeling,... Well, let's address that for just one minute. I would like to congratulate myself for displaying extreme impulse control in not sending and accompanying my own dog to "address" this individual's behavior. Good girl, Nicole.

The dog just broke. He whined, he forgot things he knew, ... his general body language was not right, and the barking I heard from his crate was just psychotic in nature. I suspect it was only good breeding for ridiculous stability (he was from a very good line) and the release afforded by being able to hold a sleeve and thrash that kept this poor dog even mildly functional. He was able to do very little correctly.

From a "do whatcha gotta do" perspective, extremely harsh punishments ARE NOT extremely effective. They are NOT guaranteed to create the "single-event learning", as the dog can easily misidentify or never identify the cause of the punishment. This failed learning sets up a situation where the handler places the dog under the kind of long-term stress that is associated with decreased human cognition.

It makes perfect sense to me that excessive stress hormones overwhelm the brain, and over time begin to actually break it down. There is, in my mind, absolutely no justification for such treatment of a dog. Ever. I'd rather see you euthanize the dog than continue with your "training". ("Oh, I want my dog to be intense." Psychotic does not equal intense. For either dogs or people. Grr..... )

There's a reason for such treatment: you're a powerless pathetic idiot asshole who doesn't have a clue what you are doing... but there's no justfication.