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Dog Training Workshop, and an element of the Dog Science Network
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A Reward
A reward is simply the thing that your subject receives after making the target response, that at least in theory, will serve to motivate him to make that response more often in the future.
Many people use the terms reward and reinforcer interchangibly. However, strictly speaking, a reward can only be considered to be a reinforcer if its presentation is sufficient to cause the rate of the target response to increase.