When & How Often Should You Train?

 

When & How Often Should You Train?

A study named “The effect of frequency and duration of training sessions on acquisition and long-term memory in dogs.” looked into the effects of training frequency and duration.

Forty-four beagles were divided into four groups. The dogs aged from 5 months to 6 years old. They were all bred in the same location and shared similar daily patterns of food and environment.

The Groups:

• Daily Training (one session per day)
• Daily Training (three consecutive sessions per day)
• Training 1-2 times per week (one session per day)
• Training 1-2 times per week (three consecutive sessions per day)

The skill was a new skill that had not been taught prior (going to a basket and staying there). They were then tested four weeks later to gauge retention.

Results:

“Results demonstrated that dogs trained 1–2 times per week had significantly better acquisition than daily trained dogs and that dogs trained only 1 session a day had significantly better acquisition than dogs trained 3 sessions in a row.”

The main factors sex, age, frequency, and duration did not differ significantly nor did the interaction frequency of training session by the duration of training session.

All training programs resulted in long-term retention of the dogs 4 weeks after the experiment.

Spaced Training is associated with an increase in acquisition and retention.

“Lack of occasions for consolidation processes between massed training sessions has been suggested to cause impaired performance in massed trained animals (Commins et al., 2003; Fernström et al., 2009; Spreng et al., 2002).”

“Sleep has been identified as a state that optimizes the consolidation of newly acquired information in memory (Born et al., 2006; Gais et al., 2006; Stickgold and Walker, 2007) and facilitates retrieval in wakefulness (Hennevin et al., 1995).”

Related Studies:

In 2007, Meyer and Ladewig tested the effects of training with Beagles once a week or daily with Beagles. Dogs who were trained weekly learned the task in significantly fewer training sessions.

Rubin et al. (1980) trained 15 ponies to perform specific maneuvers, such as to clear a small hurdle and to move backward. Their results showed learning criteria in significant fewer training sessions than those who trained seven days a week.

Fernström et al. (2009) found training in Rhesus Macaques once a day and three times a week to be more efficient than training twice a day.

“Donovan and Radosevich (1999) short rest periods in humans appeared to produce the strongest results for simple tasks, whereas for more complex tasks longer rest periods appeared to benefit acquisition the most, and this observation might very well be relevant for animals as well.”

Link To The Study:

Demant, Helle & Ladewig, Jan & Balsby, Thorsten & Dabelsteen, Torben. (2011). The effect of frequency and duration of training sessions on acquisition and long-term memory in dogs. Applied Animal Behaviour Science - APPL ANIM BEHAV SCI. 133. 228-234. 10.1016/j.applanim.2011.05.010