Hysteresis
Hysteresis is not a term that you will hear a dog trainer use. However,
since you are an engineer it is important for you to realized that all
animals have hysteresis. Once an animal has learned something it is impossible
for that animal to return to the state it was in before the learning occurred.
(O.K., perhaps that is not the real definition of hysteresis.)
So when a trainer says "the behavior was extinquished through lack of
reinforcement," remember about hysteresis. The behavior may have been
extinguished to external viewers, but the animal is still capable of exhibiting
the behavior or of building on what it had learned.
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