What does +R mean?

[cinnamon]

I've seen +R a few times--especially in the Cesar Milan post.

I'm assuming it somehow means postive reinforments?

[Zoom]

Yup, +R is Positive Reinforcement
-R is Negative reinforcement (like taking away a shock to signal the dog has done the command or ceased an unwanted behavior)
+P is positive punishment (meaning "add to", not "good" positive)
-P is negative punishment (taking away of something, like attention)

[houndlove]

The language of operant conditioning is a little tough to pick up at first but after that is really useful as a way of organizing what is going on with your dogs and their training.

Negative (-) Is anything removed from the dog's environment
Positive (+) is anything added to a dog's environemtn
So positive and negative don't really refer to value judgments (ie, good and bad) but more like a math problem: addition and subtraction.

Reinforcement is anything that makes the chances of a behavior happening again greater.

Punishment is anything that makes the chances of a behavior happening again lesser.

So again, it's not like reinforcement=good and punishment=bad, it's more like algebra.

So those four things combine in to +R and +P and -R and -P to describe all the things that you can do to influence a dog's behavior. People who describe themselves as "positive trainers" use primarily +R and -P but generally try to avoid +P and -R.

Also integral to understanding operant conditioning are the concepts of extinction and A-B-C.

Extinction is when a behavior goes unreinforced (yet also unpunished) for so long that it just disappears. A-B-C stands for "Antecedent-Behavior-Consequence". It's the chain of how animals learn what causes what. The antecedent is the state of things before the behavior, then the behavior happens, then there's a consequence (one of the +'s or -'s or R's or P's). A lot of dog owners forget about the "A" part of that sequence, but it's important. It's why a dog who's been trained to "sit" when you stand in front of him and say "sit" won't sit when you then sit down on your sofa and say "sit". The antecedent has changed.

I hope that was helpful. If you google or wikipedia "operant conditioning" you'll get a more in depth, and better, explanation of these terms.

[Lilavati]

Generally, when we are talking about +R training, we mean positive reinforcement with negative punishment . . . but we are also refering not only to a vast body of scientific literature on operant conditioning, but to the methods popularized by particular trainers who applied those methods to dogs. It also tends to include study of dog behavior, rather than discredited theories about wolf packs.

[corgipower]

A lot of dog owners forget about the "A" part of that sequence, but it's important. It's why a dog who's been trained to "sit" when you stand in front of him and say "sit" won't sit when you then sit down on your sofa and say "sit". The antecedent has changed.

I hope that was helpful. If you google or wikipedia "operant conditioning" you'll get a more in depth, and better, explanation of these terms.

Thanks!!
Although I knew that anyway, I often get caught up in the big words and forget the day-to-day meanings when I read threads about learning theories and such. This is the first time I've seen it explained in a way that can truly be understood without thinking ;)

Kudos to you.