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The Art and Science of Animal Training Conference (ORCA)
March 14, 2015
Dr. Stanley Weiss – Differential Reinforcement and the stimulus control of behavior
Ken Ramirez – Teaching Conceptual Thinking: It’s not asking too much of your dog!
Alexandra Kurland – Equine
Simulators and Science as Metaphor
Steve
White – Training Resilience
Dr. Stanley Weiss – Differential Reinforcement and the stimulus control of behavior
Dr. Weiss was the keynote speaker at the conference. His talk
was rather technical … I have detailed notes from his talk and am
going to share them, but it may be more information than some of you
want. He described a lot
of experiments that he had done where he was looking at behavior
under different stimulus conditions and trying to identify what was
really controlling the behavior. If nothing else, listening to him
talk made me realize how hard it is to design an experiment in the
lab where there really is only one variable and if it’s hard there,
then it’s even harder in real life.
DR. WEISS’S PRESENTATION:
His particular interest is in looking at the relationship
between stimulus control, generalization and discrimination.
He has done a lot of experiments on various aspects of
stimulus control, in particular on what happens when there are
multiple variables or stimuli so that it is not clear what is
actually controlling the behavior.
He has also looked at the interactions between multiple
stimuli in cases where there is more than one S delta.
Overview:
·
Discriminative stimulus – sets the occasion where an operant
behavior can be reinforced.
·
Differential reinforcement is necessary to create stimulus control
·
However often comparable appearing behavior can be the product of
different underlying stimulus control
The relationship between behavior, discriminating stimuli, S
(delta) and reinforcers can be described as a three term
contingency:
S (delta) -> Response -> S (reinforcer)
This basic phrase presents a simple way of looking at how
behavior is controlled by cues (S delta) and reinforcers, but in
real life it is not always so easy to see exactly what is
controlling behavior. There can be multiple discriminative stimuli
and reinforcers present and the animal’s response can also be
affected by the level of generalization, previous associations or
combinations of variables.
In his talk, Dr. Weiss shared how he has studied factors
affecting stimulus control and what we can learn about behavior by
looking at stimulus control and vice versa.
He talked about a few specific experiments involving:
·
Discrimination training
·
Motivation
·
Compound stimulus control – overshadowing
·
Compound stimulus control – selective associations
·
Compound stimulus control – blocking
·
The
incentive-motive process and loss of self-control
STIMULUS CONTROL AND DISCRIMINATION TRAINING:
"Attention can be focused on specific aspects of complex
stimuli through relevant discrimination training.”
He started with an example of discrimination training.
Teaching an animal to select an item based on color is an
example of discrimination training in which the animal’s behavior is
shaped through differential reinforcement.
He had a graph showing the progress of a pigeon being trained
to select green when offered a choice of green or red. Over time,
the number of pecks on green increased and the number of pecks on
red decreased.
If you wanted to refine your color discrimination to ensure
the pigeon was selecting based on color (wavelength) and not
intensity or hue, you would need to vary the saturation and
intensity to prove that those were not controlling the pigeon’s
choice.
The red vs. green choice is what he called interdimensional
training because there’s a clear choice between red and green.
If you graph responses, the line showing the response before
training is flat (all choices are pecked equally) whereas the line
showing responses after training peaks at the wavelength that
corresponds to green. In
this graph, the magnitude of response is inversely related between
the test stimuli and the training of S delta.
You can also do discrimination that he calls intradimensional
training, which in this case would be teaching the pigeon to
discriminate between shades of green.
This would mean varying intensity and hue to so that the
pigeon had to learn to pick a specific shade of green. Again, this
is done through differential reinforcement.
The graph for this shows a
shift in the peak to correspond to the new response.
By adding another level to the discrimination (a shade of
green), we can change how the pigeons see the world. They learn to
differentiate between shades of green instead of just seeing all
green as being the same.
What do we learn about stimulus control from Discrimination
Experiments?
Differential reinforcement and Stimulus Generalization:
·
Generalization – the capacity of stimuli similar to the S (delta) to
control behavior. Without discrimination training, there is complete
generalization.
·
With
interdimensional training (S delta on, S delta off), you get clear
differences, magnitude of response is inversely related between test
stimuli and training of S delta
·
What
about intradimensional (shades of green?) The peak shifts away from
S delta.
·
Discrimination training affects how an animal sees the world.
Once it has learned to discriminate, it can make different
choices. STIMULUS CONTROL AND MOTIVATION:
·
Increasing motivation can lead to more generalization (errors)
·
food
deprivation increases errors
STIMULUS CONTROL AND COMPOUND STIMULUS CONDITIONING: Overshadowing – one element of a compound reduces stimulus control over behavior acquired by another element of the compound.
· Overshadowing happens when a behavior is reinforced or punished in
the presence of multiple discriminative stimuli and they do not end
up having equal control of the behavior.
· It
can make it hard to determine which discriminative stimuli is
controlling the behavior, or to get stimulus control with the
desired discriminative stimuli if there is another one that is
competing with it.
· For
example: You can train
an animal to select a triangle on red vs. a circle on green.
You can train it to select based on the color or on the
shape. If you train for
color, the color will be more relevant than the shape. If you train
for shape, the shape will become more relevant than the color.
It will look the same, whether you train for color or shape,
even though it’s under different stimulus control.
· You
need to do a stimulus-element test: present each element separately
to determine amount of control acquired by each element. Factors affecting overshadowing:
·
Selective attention
·
Salience of elements
·
Selective associations
Overshadowing can be a problem because it means you don’t
really know what is controlling behavior, or you can find it
difficult to use one type of discriminative stimulus if there is
another one that overshadows it.
STIMULUS CONTROL AND SELECTIVE ASSOCIATIONS
He described a series of experiments that showed how you can
end up with similar behavior under different reinforcement
contingencies and what we can learn about stimulus control by
studying selective associations.
He started with a classic experiment where rats were
reinforced for lever pressing under positive reinforcement and
negative reinforcement conditions.
Initial experiment:
Food group –
·
Lever press during Tone + Light = food
·
Lever press in absence of Tone and Light = no food
·
Rats
are observed to lever press only in presence of Tone and Light
Shock group –
·
Lever press during Tone and Light = delay of shock
·
Lever press in absence of Tone and Light = no shock
·
Rats
are observed to lever press only in presence of Tone and Light
So the question was… is the S delta for lever pressing the
Tone, the Light, or both?
When he did a stimulus element test, he discovered that the
rats working for food were being controlled by the light, and the
rats working to avoid shock were being controlled by the tone.
This led to the Appetitive Aversive Interaction Theory of Motivation which says that there are Selective Associations:
·
Food
= positive
·
Shock = aversive
·
Absence of food = aversive
·
Absence of shock = positive
Can this “confounding” be eliminated?
Can you set up an experiment so that the same conditions are
created (lever pressing during Tone and Light) but without using
shock? Would this affect whether the rats were responding to the
Tone vs. the Light?
Second experiment:
First group (food group) –
·
Lever press during Tone + Light = food
·
Lever press in absence of Tone and Light = no food
·
Rats
are observed to lever press only in presence of Tone and Light Second group (chain group) – · Lever press during Tone and Light -> absence of Tone and Light and delivery of food (the rats were lever pressing to turn OFF the tone and light) · Lever press during Tone and Light = no food (if they started lever pressing during Tone and Light, they did not get reinforced) · Rats are observed to lever press only in presence of Tone and Light
When he did a stimulus element test with the second group of
rats, he found that they were responding to the tone, not the light,
even though they were reinforced with food. This was the same as the
results he got from the shock group in the first experiment. By
changing the reinforcement contingencies, he was able to change
which discriminative stimulus was more relevant.
These results showed that in compound conditioning, there are
some biological predispositions that affect what kinds of stimuli
are stronger for different species and types of behaviors.
But these can be changed by
altering stimulus conditions. He said “biological predispositions
influence what is learned in compound conditioning.” We tend to
start with some selective associations and these influence our
learning unless we are specifically shaped to respond otherwise.
STIMULUS CONTROL AND BLOCKING
In compound stimulus conditioning, there is another thing that
can happen. This is called blocking and it’s when there is prior
conditioning history of one or more of the elements and this
prevents the animal from making selective associations.
Kamin’s Blocking Experiment:
Initial preparation:
All animals are trained to bar press for food. (I think they
were rats)
Experiment 1:
·
Control group: Noise +
Light = shock
·
Experimental group (blocking):
Noise = shock, then Noise + Light = shock
After this had been done, both groups showed a suppression of
bar pressing under the Noise + Light conditions. The Noise and the
Light became associated with shock, so when they were presented the
animals responded as if expecting a shock.
The next step was to test and see if bar pressing was suppressed by Light alone. He had a chart showing the results of this experiment. In the control group, there was significant suppression (almost 100%) of the bar pressing behavior.
Remember that these animals were conditioned to both the Light
and Noise at the same time.
In the experimental group, there was much less suppression
(about 20%). Because the
animals in the experimental group first experienced the shock when
paired with the noise alone, the light did not become as strongly
associated with the coming shock. The
“pre-conditioning” of the noise in the experimental group blocked
the animals from making an association between the light and the
shock.
Blocking is interesting because it shows that you can set up
an animal to pay more attention to one discriminative stimulus than
another, just by exposing it to them at different times.
This is useful in cases where you want the animal to use one
discriminative stimulus when it might be naturally inclined to use
another.
The new experiment was a variation on the Tone and Light
experiment (described earlier) where the animals learned to bar
press in the presence of the Tone and Light.
If you remember, the rats that were working to avoid shock
responded more to the tone, and the rats that were reinforced with
food responded to the light.
They set it up to see if they could reverse which
discriminative stimulus was blocked by doing some “pre-training.”
Prior to the experiment where they would occur together, they
exposed the rats in the shock group to the Light alone first, and
then Light and Tone. This set up conditions where the Light was more
relevant. They were able
to do the same thing with the food group by exposing them to Tone
first, and then Light and Tone. At
the end of the experiment, the rats who were shocked were using the
Light as the S delta and the rats that were working for food were
using the Tone. He could actually go back and forth between the two
experiments and condition them to either.
PROPERTIES OF THE DISCRIMINATIVE STIMULUS
Going back to the relationship between the S delta, Response
and Reinforcement, we can now look more closely at two different
aspects of it.
The phrase S (delta) – Response – S (reinforcement)
Describes two processes:
·
The
incentive-motive process is a product of the embedded S (delta) – S
(reinforcer) contingency.
·
The
discrimination process is generated because the operant is only
effective in the presence of particular stimuli (differential
reinforcement). This creates a challenge:
·
Relative rate of response and relative magnitude of
reinforcement covary in most multiple schedules.
·
Therefore, the contribution of each related process
to resulting stimulus control is indeterminate.
·
Or…
in other words, you don’t know if the strength of the response is
due to the strength/weakness of the S (delta) or the
strength/weakness of the S (reinforcer)
THE INCENTIVE-MOTIVE PROCESS AND LOSS OF SELF-CONTROL
Here’s an experiment that shows the effect of the
discriminative stimulus on the intensity of the behavior.
This is similar to one of his earlier experiments, but
slightly different in that rats were trained to lever press in the
presence of Tone OR Light.
His groups looked like this:
Food group –
·
Lever press in Tone OR Light = food
·
Lever press in absence of Tone OR Light = no food
·
Rats
lever press in presence of Tone or Light
“Chain” group –
·
Lever press in Tone OR Light leads to absence of Tone or Light =
food
·
Lever press in absence of Tone or Light = no food
·
Rats
lever press in presence of Tone or Light
The behavior looked the same with both groups, but when he
tested the rats in the presence of BOTH Tone and Light, he got a
three fold increase in lever pressing for the food group.
The chain group continued to lever press at the same rate as
they did with either Tone or Light. The food group rats were
reinforced under the conditions of Tone or Light. The chain group
rats were reinforced in the absence of Tone or Light.
One difference between the groups was that even though both
groups looked like they were doing the same behavior with the same
discriminative stimuli, only the food group was exposed to the Tone
and Light and reinforcement (food) at the same time.
The chain group got their
reinforcement (food) in the absence of Tone and Light.
To understand this, it is helpful to look at the
incentive-motive process (S delta – S reinforcer) vs. the
discrimination process (S delta – Response). The incentive-motive
process is classically conditioned because it is about the
association between the S delta and the S reinforcer.
In the food group, the Tone or Light happened at the same
time as the food so the S delta was associated with an increase in
reinforcement which produces an “excitatory, energizing,
incentive-motive state.”
In the chain group,
the Tone or Light were associated with a decrease in reinforcement
because the rat had to work to turn them off before it got
reinforcement. So for
that group, the S delta was associated with a decrease in
reinforcement and produced an “inhibitory,
suppressing incentive-motive state.”
When Tone and Light were combined, it magnified the response
for the food group because that group was already in an energized
state. The chain group
was not, so the combination of Tone and Light had no effect.
The 3:1 increase in behavior that he observed in this experiment was
also found in a series of other experiments.
He commented that nature has
rules and that any time you find a repeating pattern or symmetry,
it’s worth looking at it more closely.
He did similar stimulus compounding with different
reinforcers (water, shock avoidance, cocaine, heroin) and found an
increase of between 2.5 and 3 for the Tone and Light conditions in
all of them.
So if an animal responds more strongly when stimuli are
combined, what does this mean? There are some interesting
implications because it means that you can use a series of stimulus
conditions to make an animal more likely to lose “self-control.”
They tested this using rats and cocaine.
Rats normally self-regulate their cocaine intake and won’t
take more cocaine than is comfortable. So it’s easy to determine a
baseline level for each rat.
When rats are conditioned to the Tone or Light and trained to
bar press for cocaine, they still regulate their cocaine intake. But
if they are conditioned to Tone or Light and then exposed to both,
then they lose their “self-control” and will triple their normal
cocaine intake. They could
condition the rats to have a loss of self control when placed in an
environment where there were multiple stimuli for the same behavior.
He could do the same
thing with shock by “pre-conditioning” rats so that they accept up
to three times the amount of shocks in the combined stimulus
condition. He said “This
self destructive ‘loss of control’ is produced by the stimulus
control established to the environmental conditions confronting the
subject. It is entirely
predictable by contingencies of reinforcement operating here.
Therefore, the subject has no ‘choice’!”
He calls this an “environmentally determined self-destructive “loss of control.”
These experiments showed that multiple stimuli can act in combination to magnify the effects of either one alone if they are stimuli that reinforce the same response. They also showed that when the stimuli are in opposition, they appear to counteract each other. This supports an algebraic combination of the two underlying processes – the discriminative-response and incentive-motivational
This is a lot to think about!
I have to confess that my brain reached saturation point
somewhere before the end of his talk so the last part of my notes
was written but not really understood at the time. I had to go back
later, re-read them and do some thinking. I have tried to convey the
information accurately but some of it did get very technical and he
had a lot of graphs. I
apologize if there are any errors. If you want to read more about
Dr. Weiss’s work, you can email me and I will share the papers that
I have on his work with stimulus control.
SUMMARY:
Discrimination Training involves both an incentive-motive
process (S delta – S reinforcer) and a discrimination process (S
delta – Response). S delta is
the discriminative stimulus or cue.
Discrimination is taught through differential reinforcement
and leads to stimulus control.
When a response is first learned, it is generalized, meaning
it has not yet been refined – either in specificity of the response
or association with an S delta. Variability
in behavior means we don’t understand all the controlling stimuli.
Discrimination training is about teaching an animal to respond
to more specific cues and criteria. In
his example with the green vs. red color training, he showed that
pigeons can learn to “see” the differences between shades of green.
So discrimination training is
about teaching cues but also about changing what an animal sees,
hears, finds relevant, etc…
We often refer to discrimination training as putting behavior on cue, and if you’ve ever tried to do that, you know that it’s not always as straight forward as it seems. In addition to teaching the animal to respond to the discriminative stimulus that you have chosen, you also have to make sure that the animal is not using other discriminative stimuli. Some factors that can affect the discrimination process are:
· Overshadowing:
Overshadowing happens when a behavior is reinforced or punished in
the presence of multiple discriminative stimuli and they do not end
up having equal control of the behavior.
The animal will often choose one stimulus as being more
“relevant” and ignore the rest.
If you have multiple stimuli, it can be hard to tell which
one is really controlling the behavior.
· Selective Associations:
Some species are predisposed to pay more attention to certain kinds
of stimuli, or to certain kinds of stimuli for certain behaviors. If
you chose a stimulus that your animal is biologically inclined to
respond to, it will be easier to get the behavior under stimulus
control. If you want to
use a stimulus that is different or that might be overshadowed or
blocked by the more biologically relevant one, then you can
pre-condition the animal to respond to it.
· Blocking: If you present
multiple stimuli at the same time, they are not all perceived
equally by the animal.
This can make it difficult to condition a discriminative stimulus if
there is an existing stimulus that competes with it. The existing
stimulus will “block” the effect of the new stimulus.
· You
can train two identical looking behaviors under different stimulus
conditions. They may look the same, but they will respond
differently to changes in the environment or other manipulations.
Motivational processes clearly
contribute to stimulus control.
· The
presence of multiple stimuli for the same behavior can lead to a
three fold increase in the animal’s response due to the
incentive-motive process part of discrimination training.
This is a result of the
classical conditioning that happens when the S delta is associated
with the S reinforcer or punisher.
This means that animals can lose “self-control” when put in
environmental conditions where multiple stimuli are present.
· This
can result in an increase in behavior (increased cocaine or food
consumption) or a decrease in self-control (self-preservation) as
shown by rats that tolerated up to three times as many shocks.
Finally, as behavioral scientists we
need to be sensitive to co-varying processes that might be operating
and find ways to eliminate this experimental confounding.
We have seen how profoundly informative that can turn out to
be.
What does this mean for us as trainers?
I think it gives us a lot of information about how to choose
and add cues, as well as information about what to do when stimulus
control breaks down. One
of the challenges of getting reliable stimulus control is choosing
salient cues that the animal can respond to under many conditions.
If we know about overshadowing, blocking, and selective
associations, we can choose our cues wisely and recognize when there
are other competing cues.
The information here also tells us why it’s ineffective to
give to two cues at once (a hand signal and a verbal). The animal is
probably only going to use one of them and if we don’t know which
one he is using, we could find ourselves in a situation where our
cues are not effective.
I also thought the part about setting animals up to lose “self
control” was interesting. It reminds me a bit of trigger stacking or
putting an animal over threshold, but I think it probably also
applies to those “over the top” responses we sometimes get from our
horses when they are really excited about doing something. I’m going
to have to think more on this one, well all of them really….
Bob Bailey - Merging Behavior Analysis and Animal Training:
Improving your animal training, from
aardvarks to zebras, using academic publications, self-help
literature, and formal and informal classes.
In his presentation, Bob talked about the different resources that
are available to trainers who want to improve their training or
teaching, and how to find the ones that are going to help you
achieve your goals.
With the explosion of available information, the problem has
changed from lack of information to an overabundance of information
and it’s important to think carefully about who you train with and
why.
He had a timeline showing how educational opportunities for trainers
have changed over the years.
1947 Brelands started their training classes with chickens
1950s – field dog training took off
1960s – 4H
1960s- animal training for movies, etc..
1980s – beginning OC workshops (Karen Pryor)
1990s – animal models (public chicken workshops – Bob Bailey)
2000s – more schools, demos, seminars etc..
2010s – more resources are available through the internet including
courses, webinars etc..
DO YOU WANT TO LEARN MORE?
Bob talked about the difference between wanting to learn more vs.
wishing you could learn more.
He said that you have to WANT to do it and be willing to
translate that into action.
Your success depends upon your willingness to expand
resources to achieve that which is wanted.
So ask yourself:
·
Do you WANT it or
do you WISH it?
Translating WANT into action:
Simple suggestions:
·
Make informed
decisions about where you get your information, who you choose to
work with, etc..
·
There is no
shortage of information.
But finding accurate, valid, useful information can be time
consuming.
·
Just because we
disagree with information doesn’t mean it’s wrong
·
Do you go to a
seminar because you agree with it or to get a new point of view?
How to learn more:
·
Direct experience –
do it
·
Observation – watch
others do it
·
Description – read
or listen
What is best for you?
How did you get where you are now?
Are you willing to change your behavior?
In his opinion animal trainers have only slightly improved in
mechanical and observational skills since he started working with
people. He sees that a
lot of trainers are becoming “intellectualized.”
Thinking about doing is not the same as doing.
Imagery may help an already skilled trainer, but mechanical
and observational skills are improved by “doing” – and being
critiqued or observing video.
These performance skills take time and effort.
Animal training is not a spectator sport.
He went into a little more detail on the advantages and
disadvantages of direct experience, learning by observation, and
learning through reading or listening.
DIRECT EXPERIENCE
Most people need more direct experience, which has the following
advantages:
·
It combines the
basics of learning, playing, and doing
·
It has the maximum
requirement for hand-eye
coordination
·
There is the least
rehearsal of unwanted behavior if you have proper supervision
OBSERVATION (seminars, DVDs, demonstrations, etc..)
If you choose to attend a seminar, you should make a point of
learning some basic information about who is teaching it
(background, philosophy, experience, etc…) and also think about why
you are there. You might
want to ask yourself the following questions:
·
Is the topic
relevant to my current or future needs?
·
What do I know
about the presenter? What have I done to know the expert?
·
Why am I attending
it? (going to validate what you already do is not a good reason)
·
How will I use the
information?
·
Am I prepared to
use the information?
·
How do I know if
the expert knows what she is doing?
·
Do I know how long
the expert has been doing it?
·
Will there be a
demonstration?
·
Is it appropriately
priced? Does it fit my budget?
You can get more out of a seminar if you:
·
Prepare 3 questions
ahead of time – go after the information you want
·
Meet the speaker –
you have paid for the chance to meet face to face, so take it.
·
Recognize that good
trainers evolve. It is
harder for teachers to learn because we have to go back and say
“oops” to our students, but good teachers learn to do that in order
to become better teachers and trainers.
·
If you are
teaching, you should have a philosophy – your philosophy will be
your guide.
When attending a seminar and evaluating a trainer, it’s important to
notice how the trainer handles mistakes.
All trainers make mistakes and they should acknowledge them,
adjust what they are doing, and move on. This is important because
it gives the audience permission to make mistakes and shows the
nature of training which is never about just following a
pre-determined recipe.
DESCRIPTION (read and
listen):
·
You can ask
yourself the same questions that are listed under learning by
observation, but be aware that what people say they do is not always
the same as what they actually do, and that video can be faked.
Most people learn using a combination of different resources, so
it’s a matter of balancing time spent working directly with the
animal vs. time spent observing, reading and listening.
SOME THOUGHTS ON TRAINERS:
He had some tips for evaluating trainers.
A good trainer should:
·
Observe
·
Apply a few rules
·
Make it simple
·
Make it worthwhile
for anyone
It’s the rare trainer that can get almost any behavior quickly, so
you should not necessarily expect that level of proficiency.
But a good trainer should be able to get behavior in a
reasonable amount of time. He does not accept a correct behavior as
good enough – he trains for fluency.
If you keep looking for excellence, you will get it. Don’t
accept Good Enough (GE)!
All trainers:
·
Are subject to ego
– having their ego involved
·
Are subject to bias
– have some bias
·
Make mistakes
·
Can improve
·
Can learn new
things
FINAL ADVICE:
Find mentors, peers, colleagues.
Steve Aibel and Al Kordowski –The Least
Reinforcing Scenario:
Its history, definition and usage in Animal
Training
Steve Aibel (Sea World San Antonio) and Al Kordowski (previously at
Sea World, now at Service Dogs, Inc.) talked about the Least
Reinforcing Scenario.
This is a technique for dealing with errors that was first
implemented at Sea World.
Steve and Al wanted to do this talk because they felt that
the LRS has been modified and misunderstood as more people are using
it, and that the original intention and use have been lost.
They wanted to present clear information about its history,
definition and use so that any misconceptions could be cleared up.
The Least Reinforcing Scenario is a technique that was developed at
Sea World in the 1990s.
It was originally called the Least Reinforcing Stimulus but as it
became used more widely, the word “stimulus” was changed to
“scenario”.
Steve and Al believe that understanding and using an LRS correctly
is important because it provides a specific plan for what to do if
your animal makes a mistake.
Dealing with mistakes in a consistent and non-emotional
manner can improve your relationship with your animal because you
both know what to do when something goes wrong.
History of the LRS:
When Al started at Sea World in the 1970s, they were still learning
how to use positive reinforcement training with the animals and
working out how to handle errors.
They tried different things including a delta rod (to
indicate an error), ignoring it, saying “no” and giving a very small
reward (1 fish).
All of these had some limitations in effectively communicating that
an error had occurred and doing so without generating frustration or
anger from the animal (or trainer).
So they were looking for another way to teach the animal to
be calm and relaxed when it made an error.
In 1991, they started using a specific reduction technique, based on
DRO, which they named the “Least Reinforcing Stimulus.”
In the original paper (which is in Ken Ramirez’s book on page
103) the authors say “The LRS is a 2-3 second pause, with eye
contact by the trainer. It is not a fixed or pre-determined posture
that the trainer assumes after an undesired response.”
It functions as a break in the flow of training.
The article also says that “The LRS provides an opportunity
for the animal to learn to terminate the response it is given, think
about the criteria and to try another behavior the next time.”
In 1999, the LRS was renamed the “Least
Reinforcing Scenario” because the word “stimulus” seemed too narrow
for some situations. It also
suggested that the LRS for all situations was the same, but this is
not always the case.
At some point, the use of the LRS started to become more
widespread as trainers working with other species and in other
environments heard about it.
But along the way, the purpose and use seem to have gotten a
bit blurry, so Steve and Al wanted to clear up any misconceptions.
They shared some clear
information about how the LRS was used at Sea World and how you can
use a LRS in your training, while staying true to the original
intention of the procedure.
The purpose of the LRS:
·
Proactively
condition calm behavior after an incorrect response
·
Counter-condition
an appropriate response to non-reinforcement
·
Teach animals to
look for new direction after non-reinforcement
·
Teach a
“non-punishment” attitude in people
LRS is not:
·
A time-out (you can
reinforce the correct response to the LRS)
·
Punishment (the LRS
is intended to teach the animal to stay calm and relaxed after an
error)
·
An aversive event
·
A predetermined
posture (these can become aversive if paired with lack of
reinforcement so fixed postures are avoided)
LRS is:
·
A DRO procedure
·
An alternative to
punishment
·
An increasing
process
·
A reinforcement
opportunity
If you take these three lists together, what you get is that the LRS
is intended to teach the animal and trainer to calmly respond to an
error in such a way that the animal returns back to the trainer or
waits for more information while being relaxed and attentive.
In order to understand how this works, it helps to look at
how the LRS fits into the ABC training cycle and also recognize that
there are two parts to the LRS.
The LRS includes both the 2-3 second pause and what happens
immediately after.
The LRS as part of the ABC Cycle:
They had a nice diagram showing how the LRS fits into the ABC loop.
The normal ABC cycle for a correct behavior is:
A
(cue) -> B (behavior) -> C
(bridge and reinforcement)
If an error is made, the cycle will look like this instead:
A (cue) -> error
(wrong behavior) -> LRS (which they drew as a box) ->
Why did they draw the LRS as a box?
They used a box in the diagram because they wanted to
emphasize that there are different ways of implementing an LRS.
This is why it is called the Least Reinforcing Scenario.
You can have different scenarios depending upon what you
think is the most appropriate way to respond to the error.
They discussed two parts,
when to start it and what to do after the pause (strategies).
When to start the LRS (the 2-3 second pause):
·
if the animal is
working at a distance, the LRS starts when he returns to you
·
if the animal is
working up close, the LRS would start when the animal is attentive
and gives you eye contact
·
There’s no point in
starting the LRS if the animal is not paying attention to you
·
In many cases there
will be a default behavior that is part of the requirement to start
the LRS so the LRS is used to reinforce returning calmly to a
station or default behavior after an error
LRS strategies for after the pause, you can:
·
ask for a high
probability behavior and reinforce a correct response
·
reinforce the
animal for being calm and attentive
·
ask for the same
behavior again, bridge and reinforce if correct
·
terminate the
session Be mindful of using a LRS too many times in a session. You also want to monitor your animal’s response to the LRS.
The LRS is meant to
reinforce the animal for being calm and relaxed after an error so if
you are using the LRS and the animal is getting more agitated or
choosing to leave the training session, then the LRS is not working
as intended.
They had some video showing using an LRS with dolphins and with a
dog. In both cases, the
animals were able to continue on with the training session and do
the correct behavior.
Teaching the LRS:
Remember that this is a pro-active technique. If you want the animal
to return to a quiet and calm position after an error, you need to
teach that behavior first
·
teach a calm and
relaxed behavior
(stationing, waiting with eye contact, etc…)
·
cue that behavior
after an error and reinforce it
·
reinforce the
animal for offering that behavior after an error without being
prompted
·
decrease the amount
of reinforcement for that behavior and slowly shift from reinforcing
it directly to reinforcing it by asking for another behavior or a
high probability behavior
·
monitor the
animal’s response to the LRS to make sure that it is not aversive
·
monitor your own
behavior/evaluate your own skills because animal “errors” can often
be traced back to trainer “errors.”
The LRS does not “fix” problems. If an animal is making
errors on a specific behavior, you need to carefully evaluate your
own training and make some changes so the animal can be successful.
They mentioned a few times that the LRS is as much for the trainer
as it is for the animal being trained. Trainer frustration over
errors is very quickly picked up by animals and can damage the
working relationship and the quality of behaviors.
The Proficient LRS user:
·
consistent approach
·
importance of
reinforcing correct response
·
understands failure
is ok
·
maintain strong
criteria for LRS
·
counter-conditions
appropriate response so it doesn’t become associated with failure
The LRS is a pro-active technique designed to help animals learn by
reducing learning frustration.
Used correctly it teaches the animal what to do when an error
happens and helps both the trainer and animal remain calm.
Ken Ramirez – Teaching Conceptual
Thinking:
It’s not asking too much of your dog!
Ken Ramirez (www. Kenramireztraining. com) is a past Executive
Vice-President of Animal Care and Training at Chicago’s Shedd
Aquarium and is now the Executive Vice President and Chief Training
Officer of Karen Pryor Clicker Training (KPCT).
He has been a popular presenter at Clicker Expo for many
years and often talks about concept training.
In this talk, he shared some information about how to get
started with concept training, as well as some of his most recent
work teaching a dog to count.
What is concept training?
·
It takes training a step beyond the standard operant paradigm
·
Asks if an animal can think beyond simple cues to generalize larger
concepts
·
Early work on concept training was done as part of cognitive studies
on primates and cetaceans.
Ken was first exposed to concept training when he did guide dog work
before he worked at the Shedd.
In guide dog work, the dogs start off with specific cues, but
then learn to generalize in ways that are similar to concept
training. He
was fascinated by the idea of intelligent disobedience, as well as
how to train behaviors such as recognizing and evaluating object
height to see whether or not the person would be safe.
There were also other aspects of their training where they
had to learn to think beyond what they had been taught.
What are some of the similarities and differences between “standard”
training and “concept” training?
·
Standard training teaches very specific behavior
·
Concept training teaches an idea
·
Creative games make concept training easier – allow you to
transition from standard training to concept training. This includes
free shaping games and more structures ones like Kay Laurence
teaches in her book “Learning Games.”
·
Clear criteria is still important
·
Concept training builds on standard training and takes it to another
level
How to Begin:
Before you start with concept training, you should have some
important preliminary training done. This includes:
·
Solid basics for you and your animal
– (understanding and use of a marker signal, familiar with
setting and sticking to clear criteria, fluent with cueing, animal
is focused and eager to work)
·
Desensitizing them to new things constantly
·
Practicing generalization of behaviors and also testing your cues
(will your dog sit if you are lying down when you say it?, if you
are behind a door? etc…).
This is about encouraging the animal to think and figure out
what you are asking for even when the cue is presented under
different conditions.
Additional Key principles:
When you are ready to put together a plan to do some concept
training, these are some important things to remember:
·
Practice without the animal (become fluent by yourself, then add in
the animal)
·
Do some exploratory training - Is this training without a plan?
Well, sort of. You
should have some idea what you want to do, but it can be somewhat
less formal because the point of exploratory training is about doing
some preliminary work so you know what to put in your plan.
It’s a chance to work out logistics, see how the animal
responds to the set-up and gather information so you can make a good
plan.
·
Train the rule of the concept before testing it. Concept training
always starts by teaching a specific rule and then seeing if the
animal can apply that rule to new situations.
You want to start with a simple behavior, train it
thoroughly, test for it in non-conceptual ways (test for the rule),
and then test it conceptually.
(Ken explained this more later)
What kinds of concepts can you teach?
·
Right/left
·
Up/down
·
Over/under
·
Shape/pattern/color recognition
·
(he had a longer list with more options, there are lots of choices)
Some people choose concepts that have a practical application,
whereas others are just using concept training as a way to improve
their own training skills or to teach their animal something new and
different.
Start by determining what you need (or want) and work from there.
Teaching Modifier Cues:
Left and Right
He had some video of starting to teach left and right targets with a
dog. The initial
exercise was just teaching the dog that the words left and right
referred to directions. He
was sitting with the dog facing him and had two targets, one on the
left and one on the right and would cue the dog to touch one of
them. The dog already knew
hand signals so he started with them, then added the words “left”
and “right” before giving the hand signal, and at the end he faded
the hand signals out as the dog started to respond to the verbal
cues.
At this point the dog doesn’t know left and right as concepts, they
are just another set of cues.
If Ken wants the dog to understand left and right as
concepts, he will do the same exercise with several different
objects or behaviors.
Then he will test to see if the dog understands left and right under
new “test” conditions. He
said that it usually takes 3-4 behaviors before the dog starts to
understand that left and right are not cues for specific behaviors,
but provide information about how to do the cued behavior.
Teaching Mimicry:
training a “copy” cue
Modifier cues are one type of concept training. Another type of
concept training that Ken has been working on is teaching dogs to
mimic (copy) each other on cue.
He started this a few years ago with a group of dogs at the
Shedd and showed that a dog could learn to mimic another dog’s
behavior when taught a “copy” cue.
This is not the first time that mimicry has been explored by animal trainers. The Navy experimented with using mimicry to teach dolphins, in the hopes that it would speed up training time. The dolphins did learn the new behavior by copying other dolphins, but some of the precision was lost, so the project was abandoned. Claudia Fugazza has also done some work using her “Do As I Do” protocol in which dogs learn to copy what a person does. I think the verdict is still out
on whether or not mimicry is useful, but it can be fun to play
with.
Teaching Counting: how
high can a dog count?
Ken’s newest project is teaching a dog to count.
Previously he has done counting with other species, but not
in any formal way. It was
just a fun project. Before
starting this, he did some research and found out that there has
been quite a bit of work showing that dogs can count to 3, and a few
studies looked at counting to 5.
But there has been no real documentation and the definition
of counting was pretty vague.
Here are some steps that show how he is doing it:
·
Choose an indicator behavior(s):
How does the dog tell you the number of objects?
He started out with very different behaviors (sit, down,
kennel) but changed to having the dog choose a different target for
each number. You can impress
your friends by writing the number on the target, but the dog will
learn to choose based on the target shape.
·
Decide how you are going to present the objects to be counted:
Ken chose dark colored objects and put them in a white tray.
·
Choose a cue that tells the dog when to indicate the number of
objects, and choose any other behaviors the dog needs to do as part
of the exercise. The cue is what tells the dog when to do the
indicator behavior. I think Ken asked “how many?” The indicator
behavior is not the only behavior you need to train this. You also
need a way for the dog
to tell you when it’s ready to go again.
Ken likes to have the dog return to a position in front of
him, but any kind of default behavior will do.
·
Remember that the first part in concept training is teaching the
rule. In Ken’s
set-up he had a line of whiteboards, each with different numbers of
dots. He would put ask
the dog “how many?” and she would go touch the target next to the
correct whiteboard. But
the first time a new number is presented, Ken shows the dog which
whiteboard matches the number (he would point).
Then once she gets it right a few times, it is just added to
the random list of numbers that he can put out.
·
If you want to be scientific about it, you will want to make sure
that the dog is not cueing off any of your body movement, or some
other variable in the environment. Choosing
good indicator behaviors can make the Clever Hans effect less
likely, but it’s still a good idea to think about possible ways in
which the dog could be getting information about the right answer.
Ken started out with a very
simple set-up and as the numbers got higher, he added in some
modifications (screens, extra people)
that made it less likely that the dog was cueing off him.
Ken is going to continue with this work and see how high Coral (the
dog) can count. He
showed video of her working on numbers up to 10 and he said she is
doing very well.
It was fun to see the videos of Ken working with Coral. They had a
nice routine and it was clear that Coral enjoyed the game.
He ended with the final thought that “we limit ourselves and our
animals by assuming things aren’t possible.”
So whether you want to do concept training for a practical
reason or if you just want to increase your own training skills,
it’s worth doing.
Alexandra Kurland – Equine Simulators
and Science as Metaphor
Alexandra Kurland (www. Theclickercenter.
Com) was one of the earliest people to write about using
clicker training with horses. She is the author of several books and
a DVD series on the subject and is always looking for new ways to
understand how horses and people learn and what leads to success.
Her presentation was a look at how excellence is a product of
both mental and physical skills, which we all have the ability to
learn.
She started off with a comparison of two horses, one with ideal
conformation (and presumably ability) to do its job and one with
some physical challenges.
Then she showed a video of how the horse with less natural
ability could still be trained to move beautifully.
And she asked the question “What made this change possible?”
It turns out that other people have been asking the same question
and they have come up with some great answers about why some people
achieve excellence whereas others do not.
Their work resonated with her because she has seen some of
the same things. She
talked about the work of Daniel Coyle and Carol Dweck.
· In “The Talent
Code” by Daniel Coyle, he writes about travelling to places that
consistently produce above average athletes to see what
make these places “hot spots” for talent. What he found was
that “talent” was not something that people brought into their
training programs, it was something that was carefully cultivated
and nurtured through a systematic method of building skills and
teaching people how to strive for excellence by using deliberate
practice (more on this later).
· Reading The Talent
Code made it clear that the old idea of talent as something you are
born with could be replaced by a new idea, which is that talent is a
product of intensive and very deliberate practice.
· Daniel Coyle was
looking at the development of physical skills, but excellence also
comes from how we think about what we are doing (mental skills).
· Carol Dweck is a
professor of psychology at Stanford University who studies
achievement and success.
One of the things she talks about is the importance of
“mindset.” Mindset is how you
view your own ability and your ability to change.
Carol studies how this affects your ability to learn and
succeed.
· Alex shared a study
Carol did with school aged children who were given a series of tests
and received two different types of praise as feedback.
One group was told they had done well on the test because
they were smart. The other group was told they had done well on the
test because they worked hard.
The group that was told they were smart went on to choose
easier tests (so they could continue to be “smart”) and were more
likely to give up if the work got hard.
The group that was told that they “worked hard” chose to take
on more challenging tests and showed more persistence and
improvement over time.
Your own perception of what made you do well was a key factor in
future success.
·
There have also
been studies showing that the teacher’s mindset affects student
performance. If teachers
are told they are teaching students with above average IQs, they
find they have smarter students who do well.
If they are told they are teaching low IQ students, then the
students don’t seem to do as well.
In one study, children were randomly assigned to the high and
low IQ groups and the teacher’s mindset was the determining factor
in their success. If the
teacher thought you had a high IQ you did well, if he thought you
had a low IQ you did not.
Alex likes to use metaphors in teaching.
Metaphors often come out of stories and people learn through
stories which allow you to present information in a more informal
way, one that often connects to people’s belief systems and is
easier to relate to real life.
She likes to find metaphors that open doors, that lead people
to think about possibilities.
Alex said that if you apply Carol Dweck’s idea of mindset to horse
training, you can see how it can undermine a person’s ability to
work well with an individual horse. If
you have a fixed mindset, then you tend to be harder on yourself and
on your horse, especially if you have a horse that seems to have
“ability.” Your expectation of what that horse should be able to do
will influence your decisions about how to work with it.
She said that these people often bounce from trainer to
trainer looking for the right one because they think that if the
horse is talented, then it should be easy.
Is there a physical component to excellence?
Rather than thinking of talent as an innate ability, can we learn
something by looking at physical changes that happen when people
learn to excel? Yes, but it
helps if we understand how our nervous system responds to learning
and for that we have to look at some neuroscience.
Understanding Myelin:
Alex gave a short description of the process of myelination which is
how nerve fibers change from
being little used and inefficient pathways to being superhighways.
Nerve fibers are insulated with myelin to prevent leakage and
every time you activate a neural circuit, more myelin is added to
insulate it. As the
layers of myelin build up, the pathways become more and more
efficient. Becoming more
skilled at doing something is the outward sign of increased myelin
around those nerve fibers.
We can take away a few important facts from this:
·
Myelin is universal
– we all have it and we can all add myelin to nerve fibers (it is
not unique to “talented” people.
·
Myelin wraps, it
does not unwrap
·
You can insulate
good training skills and habits with myelin
·
The more times you
activate a neural circuit (repeat a movement,
the more myelin will be added
This takes us to “Deep Practice.”
Deep practice is what happens when you set up your learning
to promote myelination of nerve circuits.
How do you do this?
There are 3 tiers:
1.
Look at the task as
a whole
2.
Break it down
3.
Play with space and
time
Let’s look at them in more detail
1. Look at the task as
a whole. This is about knowing where you are going, your goal if you
wish. Alex often tells
people to find a look that pleases their eye.
If you have this image in your mind, you can train for it.
This is partly due to mirror neurons which are activated when we
watch something.
If you watch good riding, your body will want to copy it. Alex
described the experience of being able to feel what someone else was
doing. At the same
time, be careful what you watch or you might end up imitating work
that you don’t like.
2. Chunk the task down
into small units. This is about finding the key, core component
behaviors and perfecting them.
In her teaching, she has students thin slice behavior down
until they can get a clean loop of behavior and then build from
there. If you allow
little bobbles, little bits of “almost-good-enough-but-not-quite” to
be practiced, then those errors will become insulated along with
everything else. It is
better to begin with a small clean piece of behavior and develop it
over time, than it is to start with a more general behavior and try
to clean it up later.
3. Play with Time and
Space. While this all
sounds good, the complication in working with horses is that our
horses are learning from what we do while we are practicing.
I may be focusing on learning better skills with an eye to
improvement, but my horse is learning from what I am actually doing.
This is one reason that Alex often has people practice without the
horse first. By using
equine simulators (usually other people), people can do many
repetitions and build mechanical (technical) skills before they ask
for the same thing from a horse.
These ideas can be applied to working with horses and Alex said they
show the value of setting up exercises that are structured to allow
many repetitions of the same movement, and also to play with time
and space. These are the
kinds of exercises that Alex does in clinics, where people work in
groups and study their own mechanical skills in great detail.
They can ask lots of different questions to deepen their
understanding of what makes something work better.
She finished with a few thoughts on one of the most common questions
about riding and clicker training, now explained through the idea of
deliberate practice. One
of the questions that people often ask is how clicker trained horses
make any progress with all the stopping that happens.
Alex said that you have to see the stopping as an opportunity
to get in more practice.
In a traditional lesson, a horse might do 5 canter departs, so after
10 rides, it would have done 50 departs in total. But the clicker
trained horse might do 20 canter departs in one session.
So after 10 rides, it would have done 200 canter departs.
Which horse is going to be better at canter departs?
She likes to think of the clicker as a skill accelerator.
Working in small pieces, each of which is repeated many
times, is about deep practice and strengthening the individual
components. This forms a really solid foundation for training
related behaviors, or to which one can add new behaviors.
If you are interested in learning more about Daniel Coyle and Carol
Dweck, I suggest you do an internet search.
I was going to post links, but there is a lot of information
out there and it’s easy to find. They have both done TED talks and
have books available. If you
want to read more about Alex’s thoughts on this topic, she has
several blog posts on mindset and deep practice and you can find
them at her blog (www.
Theclickercenter. com).
Steve White (www.proactivek9.com) has many years of experience
training and working with police dogs and is always looking for ways
to teach dogs and handlers to do their jobs better.
Part of doing the job better is making it so the dog can be
good at its job without suffering from the kind of stress that tends
to come along with that kind of work.
In his presentation, he talked about resilience, which is
performance in the face of adversity and the ability to bounce back
and do it again.
Resilience could also be defined as the ability to spring back into
shape and to recover quickly from difficulty.
He listed the following as components of mastering
resilience:
Resilience is a hot topic right now in many fields.
While resilience is often measured in terms of individual
performance, when those individuals are part of a larger group their
resilience can have a more widespread effect because other people
are counting on them.
Because of this, a lot of
companies and organizations are looking at resilience training.
He did mention that resilience training is not without
controversy as it has components of mindfulness and positive
psychology and some people object to the spiritual aspect of it.
If you want to read more
about resilience training as applied to people, two authors who
write about it are Martin Seligman (Learned Optimism) and Richard
Davidson (he has several books).
Steve’s interest is
in looking at resilience as applied to dog training and he broke it
down into two types:
· Emotional resilience
- “the ability to regain emotional balance after a setback rather
than wallowing in anxiety, anger, depression or other emotion.”
Richard Davidson
· Behavioral
resilience – “the ability to retain both short and long term
performance after a setback rather than shutting down or going off
track.” Steve White
I’m not sure that he
means that these two types of resilience are independent of each
other, but more that you might want to start by focusing on one
which can lead to the other.
Steve talked mostly about behavioral resilience.
If a dog is very comfortable and fluent in its work, then
emotional resilience should follow.
So how do you build
resilience?
There are some
parallels with how resilience is taught to humans.
Some of the key factors in working with people are:
·
Calming skills
·
Rehearsal
·
Antecedent
significance
·
Consequence
mitigation
If we apply this
list to dogs, we can come up with some essential components for
creating resilience. Steve put this into a formula which is:
R = (resistance to ratio strain + resistance to distraction) x
motivation
Ratio strain is a
measure of the decrease in the fluency of a behavior when you go to
longer variable ratio schedules.
Resistance to
distraction is the ability to work under many different conditions
where other reinforcers are available.
So to build
resilience, what do we need to do in our training?
· Honestly assess
fluency. Every
behavior should be tested under many different conditions and
assessed for accuracy, intensity, latency, duration, distance and
distraction. As you
might guess, it is helpful to actually have a way to record this
(fluency assessment form) so that your evaluation is complete and
you can track your progress.
· Build resistance to
ratio strain and distraction.
This is part of fluency but requires that you evaluate the
behavior under less than ideal conditions.
Think of all the possible scenarios in which you might need a
behavior and train under those conditions. Steve had a video of
practicing in water because sometimes that’s where the “bad guys”
are.
· Socialization,
stress inoculation and generalization.
Are you taking these into account in your training?
· Narrow repertoire
width – it is better to do a few things well than many things only
so-so. I asked him about this because it would seem that having many
behaviors to reinforce might make it easier for the dog to be
successful, but he says his dogs are all specialists. It is much
easier to keep a few behaviors strong than it is to maintain a
larger number.
· Motivation –
motivation is one of those “hard to define” things where you know
when you have it, but don’t always know how to build it.
Part of motivation is finding the best reinforcer for that
dog. Dogs can work for
many things including food, a ball, toys, tug, praise, etc… They had
a police dog that worked for a teddy bear, so guess what the
officers was carrying around in his back pocket?
Steve says that
finding/building motivation is about building a big enough “why.”
Why does the dog do it? Summary:
I think a lot of this can be applied directly to horses.
If we want to take our horses out and about, then we need to
prepare them for all the things that can happen and make sure our
behaviors are really strong.
I thought this presentation dovetailed nicely with Phung’s
presentation on training for free flight because good results are
the product of careful and thorough training.
Both talks are inspiring me to think more about some of my
training goals and add some extra steps.
Phung Luu-
Birds
in Flight
They do this through
bird shows where they have birds fly over the audience’s heads,
showing natural behavior and interacting with people.
It’s a totally different
experience than watching a bird from a distance or in a cage.
While the end result can seem simple (the bird flies from one
person to another), there is a tremendous amount of preparation and
training that goes into teaching the birds to do this.
In his talk, Phung
explained the process and what they look for at each step along the
way. While the steps I
am going to share are written for training birds for free flight, I
hope you will read them and think about how they can apply to
training many different behaviors.
The steps outline a nice system to train behaviors
efficiently and effectively which are two of the goals of Phung’s
program.
He said “If you want incredible flight, you have to put out
effort to get it – you can cheat the system every now and then, but
not often.”
Step 1:
Develop trust in interactions with the trainer
· When do you start?
There are some species where they start working with them at
an early age, either by imprinting them or hand rearing them. There
are other species where they prefer to have the birds be reared by
their parents and start later.
It depends upon whether a high level of interaction at an
early age makes the birds more confident such that it minimizes
stress (good for more flighty species), or if the confidence makes
them a little too bold (which can be a disadvantage with predatory
birds like hawks and owls).
· They also take into
consideration the long term affect of early interactions with the
trainer. Phung said they
always have to consider if the amount of interaction is done to make
the job easier for the trainer, or for the welfare of the bird.
Some birds are easier to handle if you start earlier, but too
much human interaction can interfere with their ability to interact
naturally with their own species.
It’s important to build a relationship with the trainer
without interfering with the natural development of the bird so that
it can interact with its own kind.
Step 2: Establish
trust and associations with the environment
· Psychological
component: It’s important to
expose the birds to as many natural experiences as you can so that
they are comfortable with many different types of environments and
changes in the environment. They take the young birds out and let
them see lots of different things and also let them walk, run, or
fly in areas with different ground cover, trees, bushes, etc…
· Physical
development: Early
development of flying skills is important.
The young birds are given lots of opportunities to fly so
that they can practice their flying skills, get stronger and learn
to fly under different conditions.
This is about developing motor skills.
Step 3: Build a 100%
positive association between the bird and the trainer (this is the
target)
· The relationship
between the bird and the trainer is crucial.
If the relationship is not solid, it will show up in the
bird’s willingness to return after free flight and also in all the
other husbandry behaviors that are part of caring for the bird.
He had some nice video of vaccinations and talon trims with
birds that were very comfortable being handled by their trainer.
This comes from having good mechanical skills and spending time
developing foundation behaviors.
· Develop, build and
refine purpose and attention span for the learner.
Teaching birds to have longer
attention spans or more focus on the trainer comes from a good
balance of food and other reinforcers.
In some cases, the motivation may be all about the food, but
birds that only work for food are going to be less reliable than
birds that have learned to work for other things. This is where
secondary reinforcers and the trainer’s skill in creating
interesting training sessions are important.
· Apply error-reduced
teaching strategies.
It’s always better to set your learner up for success so that it can
learn to do behaviors with confidence.
For free-flight birds, Phung takes into account variables
like weather conditions so he is not asking a bird to return into
the wind, or to fly on a day when there are not good thermals.
Error-reduced teaching strategies also include choosing to
set up training so that unwanted behaviors are less likely.
Step 4: Test and
establish the learning speed of an individual
· Phung didn’t spend
much time on this, but the idea is to review each bird’s progress
and learning speed to see if it is ready for step 5.
Step 5:
Allow the bird to learn, experience and refine its flight
skill. · By this point the bird has already had practice flying in a familiar environment and should be ready to fly in new environments or in the presence of novel objects. Taking the bird to new locations can provide additional challenges and they can also vary other conditions (weather, time of day, wind conditions, etc…).
· Safety
considerations: Part
of learning to fly well is learning to avoid potential dangers in
the environment. There
are some risks associated with flying and Phung takes time to teach
the birds about power lines, high tensile wire and other possible
structures they might encounter while flying.
·
Introducing
telemetry: Another way
to minimize the risk to the birds is to use telemetry to keep track
of the bird as it flies.
There are several types of tracking equipment that can be used and
he often uses a pack that mounts on the bird’s back. He desensitizes
the bird so it is comfortable having it attached.
Telemetry is not just useful for finding lost birds, it also
provides information about whether not they need to go search for
the bird. In general, they want the bird to find its way home so the
tracking device allows them to locate the bird and then wait a bit
to see if it will return on its own.
Step 6:
Identify target (goal behavior)
· With birds of prey,
they often demonstrate lure chasing.
Phung had a video that showed an exercise they do with the
birds of prey. They teach the bird to catch a mouse that is thrown
up in mid-air as the bird approaches.
This is a way to evaluate the bird’s skills, learning ability
and also to see what other training might need to be done before
this goal can be reached.
Step 7: Strengthen
flight through repetition and increased criteria
· Continue to expose
the bird to new situations and train for stronger behaviors.
If the bird is going to be used in a show, they might want to
train additional in-flight behaviors.
This step is about increasing fluency and allowing the bird
to continue to develop its flying skills.
These basic steps
can be adapted to apply to training any behavior.
I can think of a lot of applications for horse training, not
just for liberty work, but also for any kind of work where there is
the potential for competing reinforcers or distractions.
Phung said that if the training breaks down, he always goes
back to Step 3 which is building a 100% positive association between
the bird and the trainer.
He had some nice video showing three Crowned Cranes going
through the steps and their final flight.
Fun Fact: They talk to their birds while the birds are flying. Sound travels very far in a vertical direction so a bird flying 100 feet up in the air can easily hear a person on the ground.
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