yeah dude they have a lot of example vids of teaching other things, and they actually give them treats like dogs. I'm not getting into to how I know about this place but it kind of made me feel weird when I first saw them giving them treats. It's actually like dogs. Which I guess is what works but hey it's still weird!
The context is probably the only thing that makes it seem strange. Replace "treat" with "affection/attention/sound cues" and you have perfect normalcy. You reward to enforce a desired behavior.
People wonder why there is an obesity epidemic, just think about this: What happens when a kid hurts themselves? A lot of the times, you see the parent tend to them, and maybe give them some sort of candy or treat. "Oh, you were a brave boy for that shot" (the child is sniffling and chewing his bottom lip to keep from crying) ", here, have a lolly pop!"
After enough of this, the child makes the association that "when I'm hurt, candy makes it better." Boom - three hundred pounds of joy before age twelve.
Feeding is natural "comforter," which is why it can be used to increase a subject's tolerance to given stimuli. You can use it to help kids get over things like fear of spiders, certain noises, clowns, etc. The thing to remember though is that at a certain point, you must reduce the reward phase. There is a point of diminishing returns, where reward becomes bribery (which I re-learned the hard way, and had to correct for, early on in training my Akita).
One of my favorite examples of negative reinforcement, and it was something I used while I was tutoring a couple of difficult cases, is the "do you need my help" trial. The kid is running around, screaming, bouncing off the walls, whatever. Ask them "Do you need my help?" (or whatever key phrase you select). They'll probably keep screaming and so on. Get them to sit down, tell them that if they are perfectly still for (time period) they can do (activity they would like). At the first stir, a tapping foot, a grumble, whatever - you return and repeat the key phrase, and start the time period over. Do this enough (one must have patience, getting paid by the hour to do this in the first place helps), and the kid discovers that they can sit still and be quiet. But, teaching the kid to sit like a statue isn't the point of the exercise. The point is that, after enough sessions, when the kid is caroming off the furniture and screaming like an air raid siren on amphetamine overdrive, all it takes is someone to walk up, and with a calm voice ask "Do you need my help?" Quiet ensues. (Although I did notice that as the cycle progresses, it is important to get the parents involved in the training so that the subject will properly recognize their authority, and not just that of the instructor.)
Edit - It has been a while, so I might have misspoke by terming it "Negative Reinforcement." In all likely hood, the above example would qualify as Positive Punishment. The aim is to reduce a certain behavior via the implied threat of "the chair", but it could also be termed Negative Reinforcement, because once the subject is in the chair, the correct behaviors will get them removed from that condition.
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