Karen Pryor's Blog, page 5
September 24, 2013
History of Clicker Training I
Behavior analysis is the science that underlies the technology of reinforcement training. Applications of behavior analysis include performance management, in industry and business; precision teaching, in schools; behavior modification, in clinical practice; and clicker training. The annual meeting draws some 2000 psychologists, from around the world. The speech reproduced here was given as part of the opening ceremonies. Karen Pryor's address at the Animal Behavior Society convention in Chic...
May 31, 2013
Making Cats Friendly, Clicker Style
Clicker training, the science-based system of teaching behavior with positive reinforcers and a marker signal, is becoming immensely popular, world-wide, with some dog owners and trainers, while still being rejected by others. It seems so alien, so different from traditional training, that many are very reluctant to try this new system on their already well-trained dogs. Why not leave your dogs out of the picture for the time being, and explore the clicker experience for yourself, with an ani...
April 2, 2013
101 Things to Do with a Box
101 Things to do with a Box: A Good Exercise for an Older, Suspicious, or Previously Trained Dog
This training game is derived from a dolphin research project in which I and others participated, "The creative porpoise: training for novel behavior," published in the Journal of Experimental Analysis of Behavior in 1969. It has become a favorite with dog trainers. It's especially good for "crossover" dogs with a long history of correction-based training, since it encourages mental and physical fl...
October 17, 2012
A Harness (or Two) for Misha
Karen Pryor went to Germany and came back with… a new harness for Misha. Well, two, actually. Read on.
Clarissa v. Reinhardt has a goal: all dogs should be safe, well, and happy. To this end, at her establishment in the Bavarian Alps in Germany Clarissa runs a training school (with ten acres of outdoor training grounds), an animal shelter (with living rooms and gardens for the dogs), a publishing house (clicker training strongly endorsed), and a store (selling organic nutrition and wellness s...
January 1, 2012
How to Cure a Cat-Chasing Dog
When I brought Mimi the Burmese home at the age of 12 weeks I was quite worried about my older dog. I felt sure that my young poodle, Misha, and the new kitten would rapidly become friends and playmates (which they did). However Twitchett, a 9-year-old border terrier, represented a serious threat. In fact, one senior animal behaviorist had e-mailed me advising that I rethink my plan of getting a kitten.
November 1, 2010
Teach Your Cat to Play Piano
It's easy to teach a cat to play the piano; I've often done it in other people's houses, with their cat, as a sort of after-dinner amusement. Here's how.
June 1, 2010
On Being a Changemaker
So you've become a clicker trainer! Naturally you are very excited. You want other people around you to stop using punishment-based methods and start clicking. So you introduce the clicker at your dog club or high school or wherever you are using it. And guess what: people not only don't change, they get mad at you.
February 1, 2010
Chase the Dot: The Ultimate Cat Sport
Pet stores sell lots of interactive cat toys you can use to amuse your cat: feathers on springs, battery-operated mice, and so on. We sell a few toys of our own, too—the Kong Swizzle Bird Cat Toy, the Kitty Lure Caster, and the Cat Dancer. One of the best toys in the world for most cats, however, is the laser pointer, which you can get from any office supply store.
November 25, 2009
Can a punisher also be a reinforcer?
A clicker trainer asked me: can a punisher also be a reinforcer? For example, Shutzhund working dogs take stick hits and come back fighting for more. It seems that they do not see it as punishment. Some world class trainers describe these dogs as adrenalin addicts.
The short answer is, don’t equate an aversive stimulus with a punishment. A punishment, technically, is anything that shortens or stops a behavior. In these cases, you or I might do less of whatever we did that triggered an adversary to strike at us; a fighter might do more. An aversive stimulus is not necessarily punishing; it depends on the recipient. Rain is punishing to cats, who might respond by going inside; reinforcing to ducks, who might respond by going outside, and a matter of indifference to cows; who stay where they are.
We need to separate the 'thing' --the cookie or the stick or the click or the newspaper headline or whatever--from its outcome. What defines its function is not what it looks like to common sense, but how it changes the behavior. If that stick doesn't slow the dog down then no matter how scary it looks to us, it's not functioning as a punisher. If the dog won't take the treat, no matter how delicious it looks to us, then in that situation it is not a reinforcer.
Technically, a treat has no specific definition; it’s just anything we’ve chosen that we think our learner might like. One man’s treat is often another man’s poison. It’s the reinforcer that we define as anything the animal will work for. Only the animal can truly tell what that particular item might be.
It’s one of the often misunderstood subtleties of Skinner’s thinking. His vocabulary deals with processes and the resulting postcedents—outcomes—rather than with one type or another of specific items or events.
To hear more about Karen’s views on Punishment and the Public, sign up for ClickerExpo and join us in Portland or Kentucky!
Get more on Karen Pryor at SimonandSchuster.com
September 29, 2009
Laptop joy
Zoo has supermodern auditorium, yay. Here's your connections, yes you have sound. Gave my New talk re the experience of reaching animal minds, sharing with audience what THEY can do. New vids, new pics I took WITH my own new camera. All ran smoothly, ended on time, many laughs, v. popular, andLaptop came through like a great working dog. Sure, I can do that, watch me! Good laptop!!
Get more on Karen Pryor at SimonandSchuster.com
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