Short-comings of Operant Conditioning?

Chuffy

This maybe why there has not been much increase in that behaviour and why Kivi is still appearing a little mystified.  To me, the latter is a sign something has been missed or done incorrectly, because a hallmark of marker training IME is that suddenly the animal appears completely UN-mystified - a light bulb goes on and it's like: "oh THAT'S what you want me to do! EASY!  Why didn't you say so before??!!"  And then they start "throwing" the behaviour at you - at which point you put it on cue.

Sally is like this.  While I don't use the clicker for everything we do, there are many commands I have taught using the clicker, and she just "gets it" much faster.  Once she understands what I want she really doesn't need the clicker anymore, but who idea of a marker really does drive home exactly what I'm trying to get her to do...

  I have great timing, that's not the problem at all. I just click sometimes when I think he's about to do what I want him to and then it turns out that he wasn't after all or the click actually distracts him from following through, and sometimes I don't click because I was holding out for something marginally different or longer and realise half a second later that now he's confused because he really thought that was it and now he thinks he has to try something different.

Well, no disrespect, but I'd have to say after reading this that your timing is really off and very confusing to the animals, and also that you are being a "lumper not a splitter". Doesn't matter what training method(s) you use, the most important aspects are communciate- which requires really good timing- and motivate, which requires reinforcers that actually matter to the particular animal.

 Well if the most important thing is communication and you need good timing for communication,then no biggy. I'm better off without clickers. I finally managed to teach Kit a little trick and in the end I dumped the clicker. Like I said, once he figured out what it meant he decided to bypass it all together and just tell me outright when he wanted to interact for rewards. We have since got into some nice habits and he will come and work with me most of the time when I go out there. I think that is a small miracle.

As for the clicker, I have persisted with it with KT, especially lately where he has been looking for a bit of mental stimulation. I have changed my technique slightly and just fire whenever he starts doing what I want and leaving it at that. If I'm fast I can shape without him really knowing what he's doing until he's more or less at where I want him to be. I've really just been doing it for a bit of fun, though. I haven't taught him anything new except to fire things at me faster.  

  Well if the most important thing is communication and you need good timing for communication,then no biggy. I'm better off without clickers.

I'm sorry but your technique must be well, not good, if you feel this way. Have you taken any classes/instruction? I took a class once where we spent a good portion of our time clicker-training each other (people) and practicing throwing rewards accurately- choice of and placement of reward is important. Instead of complaining about a highly proven technique that has been used to very effectively train everything from squid to cats maybe you should consider you're not doing it quite right? it takes practice and physical skill to click at the right moments; it takes serious changes to mental habits to switch from being a "lumper" to a "splitter". Clicker training is very simple in concept but not so simple in application. Really good dog trainers do things like go to "chicken training camp" to practice with animals that really don't care whether people exist. I personally use goldfish to hone my skills; your hare would be perfect for this purpose. Cats also a good skill honing animal. What does the animal want? how to communicate with animal what YOU want? questions to think long and hard about.

Your view, MP, is how I judge myself. If there was a problem, I normally assume that I made a mistake. And I'm usually right (about my making a mistake). Which doesn't mean the method was unworkable. It just means I made a mistake. So, I back up and try again (whatever the exercise was.)

OTOH, for some, the use of the clicker is alien or is hindered by a difference in hand-eye coordination. Our own illustrious Glenda has mentioned having a problem actually using the clicker so she often doesn't use one. But she does mark with her voice and has developed that with success. (No offense meant) Being a yankee may help as many northerners have a faster speech pattern. My speech has a southern drawl but I can click with surgical precision.

What I'm saying is, whether I'm good at a clicker or not doesn't matter. I have my ways of communicating and the animals have theirs. As long as we come to some understanding in the middle then what does it matter what method was used?

I've been whining about clickers because I clicked with my hare every day for several weeks and I could see that he was thinking "so what?". He got it; he didn't care. Now that I have taught him something WITHOUT the clicker, I think it will be much easier to teach him with the clicker. Maybe I'll give it another go with him, maybe I won't. We'll see how we go. I also whined about clickers because I was finding my dog to be a bit sensitive and I was having trouble honing in on the degree of his sensitivity and what it meant to clicking. There's click and treat, which is all well and good, but obviously you have to pay attention to the particular animal. I could see that with Kivi I was confusing the situation, and I readily admit that I was the weakest link. You don't have to come down on me yet again over how crap my training methods are when you haven't even seen what I've done and how. Go take a look at the video I posted of my hare standing on his back legs on signal. It's in photos or something.

I'm the first to sing the praises of clicker training. I know that everything Kivi learns from clicker training sticks like glue in his little mind, especially if he thought it up all on his own. So I use that where I feel it will get me to my goal quickest and easiest and I use something else when it won't. I don't know why you think I have no training goals. I've never said I didn't. I always know what I'm after, even if the answer to that is to see what my animals want to do. 

It's quite annoying when you keep speaking down to me as if I don't know what my animals want. I'm a zoologist. I did my honours thesis in behaviour. I know how to work out what an animal wants. In fact, working out what an animal wants is the greatest joy in sharing my life with animals in the first place. I also know how to read my animals, believe it or not. And I wholly accept that they are vastly better at reading me than I am at reading them. So I concentrate on being consistent and giving them as many clear cues as I can. I don't have a hare that can practically read my mind by bumbling about screwing up timing and using all the wrong rewards.

So once again, in case you missed it. I haven't given up on the clicker and I wasn't blaming it for my failure. I was trying to explore whether easy short-comings in a human were short-comings in a broader training method. I am sticking with the clicker and practicing, but I'm doing my hare method, too.

Finally, I haven't taken a class because there are none to take here and last time I went to a class of any kind the trainer eventually verbally abused me for asking about clickers in the first place and not wanting to use a no-pull harness. And that was a delta accredited trainer! I have since decided they can all go jump and I'll do things at home. Kivi sits, downs, stays, walks on a loose leash and has a decent recall (we suffered a setback when he abruptly decided he didn't like the treats he'd been doing backflips for yesterday and would prefer to play with dogs. We had to rewind and are still getting up to speed again.). He also knows back, touch and paw, and he responds pretty well to hold up, this way, this side, and hang about while on walks. I am working on firming up his stay and making his recall a conditioned response. I am happy with this. I train as I see the need. He's a great dog and my training methods you so despise have been working exactly as I intended them to. Thanks.

 

corvus

I'm the first to sing the praises of clicker training. I know that everything Kivi learns from clicker training sticks like glue in his little mind, especially if he thought it up all on his own. So I use that where I feel it will get me to my goal quickest and easiest and I use something else when it won't. I don't know why you think I have no training goals. I've never said I didn't. I always know what I'm after, even if the answer to that is to see what my animals want to do. 

How do you know its the clicker and not the dog's senses to see and interpret the human body language that comes first.  Could the clicker be just a redundency or even relevant for that matter.  Light does travel faster than sound.  I am amazed at Bob my foster bullmastiff and how easy it is for him to take directions.  I talk normal to the dog meaning I use a lot of variation in words to express what I want.  I am sure I am not aware of the not so subtle body language but the dog is. 

corvus

I'm a zoologist. I did my honours thesis in behaviour. I know how to work out what an animal wants. In fact, working out what an animal wants is the greatest joy in sharing my life with animals in the first place. I also know how to read my animals, believe it or not.

I don't doubt that though I would have thought they would have taught the basics of OC in some kind of course describing animal behavior, but I could certainly be wrong.

And don't take my humility as a judgement against you. But I was meaning what I said, that I judge myself that stringently, which, I suppose, may be a bit much for some. Some people may or may not believe this, but I'm actually more like MP than most. I have a tendency to say what I think or what I know regardless of politics or who's feelings it's going to hurt. As well as judgement on myself. Then again, it may be easier for me to accept that I made a mistake using the clicker and OC principles because I don't have creds or academic background in the animal or behavioral sciences. So, let me offer you a mistake I made in my own field of expertise. I mistakenly told a guy that he could put three dimmer lighting circuits on one neutral (3 phase 277 lighting). Forgot all about Kirchoff's law. I've studied electricity and electronics since 1975. I even went to college and got little pieces of paper saying I know what I know. I started doing this kind of work in 1983. I have the biggest electrical license the state issues. And I maded a boneheaded mistake, in front of everyone. No hiding, no excuses. So, I goofed. This is not about my ego, this is about getting the job done, whether it hurts my feelings or not. An apprentice caught me out on that, BTW. So, just because I readily admit my mistakes and don't always assume that I am right doesn't mean that you should judge yourself as I judge myself. You go right ahead and do your thing and I bet it's going to work out fine. But a number of us are going to keep right on using clickers and describing it with OC and that's fine. I am an unrepentant clicker. Just accept that, as the sun rises.

Corvus, I'm a bit confused. It sounds like it's the clicker that's an issue, not the OC?

If Kit pokes his head out and is rewarded, whether you click or not, it's still OC. With Nyx, I can't use a clicker -- she gets the CC aspect of click = treat, but she doesn't get the OC aspect of sit -> click and treat. She gets frustrated and begins to demand that the "treat dispensing machine" (clicker) give her the treats. So I stopped clicking and went with sit -> treat. That's still using OC, and it works much better for her.

 Yeah, I didn't explain myself very well. I was wanting to share shortcomings with clickers combined with the fact that I think classical conditioning sometimes works better. I was having a brain freeze at the time I wrote the subject and couldn't think of a short way to sum that up.

I don't really know what you're getting at, Ron. You wear your judgement like a crown of thorns. I'm not really sure why you think no one else examines themselves as frankly and harshly as you do. Some of us just let it go as soon as we make that judgement. You live and learn, so there's no point in dwelling on it. It's not your judgement that is so harsh, Ron, it's your determination to relive it and bury it in your heart to relive it again later on. I'm a scientist, which means I was trained to be ultra aware of what I was doing at all times and whether that could be compromising my results. It's second nature to examine my actions in minute detail and think of the broader effects. I was trained by some great scientists who teach that deciding you were wrong is just as good as being proved right. I'm not afraid of being wrong. It doesn't even cross my mind to be afraid of it because there is no wrong in behavioural science. I share what I think for discussion and make my own decisions at the end. Discussion isn't very interesting when everyone is too busy telling me I did it wrong to discuss why it might not work so well with some individuals.

Also, I'm not trying to convince anyone to stop using clickers, or bagging the method. I'm daring to stand up and say I have had some problems with it that make me think it is not suited to every animal necessarily, and that includes humans. I don't think it is suited to me. It adds a layer to my communication that I find cumbersome at times. And apparently my hare finds it cumbersome as well, because he decided to ignore it and stick with what he knew. Good for him. At least I got him thinking, which is always good for an animal that so readily comes to depend on routine. I feel like I have made a doorway, though, and I am hopeful we will find more ways to communicate in future.

And DPU, that is a very good point, and very close to a point I was trying to make, which is that I think my dog was trying to read from my body language what to do to get a click and if I shut down on him and give him no clues, he gets frustrated and impatient and I have to find something to click very quickly. I don't know if I can ever hope to wean him off this, or even if I want to. Is it so bad that he's trying to work out what I want through my body language? After all, that's exactly the kind of thing I would set out to achieve if I knew how. I've been thinking about starting to play hot and cold with him to give him more guidance. I don't think I need a "clicker savvy" dog that can do it all on his own.  It's still a fun game if I give him hints.
 

Really good dog trainers do things like go to "chicken training camp" to practice with animals that really don't care whether people exist.

I really want to do this.  Clicker training has little application to what I do, but reading animals is supremely important.  I deal with two different species whenever we work livestock.  Ramping up my knowledge of motivating a prey species can only help me, I believe. 

Marker/reinforcement training is not so much about the magic of eliciting behaviors, though it's tempting to try to make it all about that.  It's about building a level of communication that offers precision right across species and vastly different learning and perception styles.

corvus

I'm daring to stand up and say I have had some problems with it that make me think it is not suited to every animal necessarily, and that includes humans. I don't think it is suited to me. It adds a layer to my communication that I find cumbersome at times. And apparently my hare finds it cumbersome as well, because he decided to ignore it and stick with what he knew.

And DPU, that is a very good point, and very close to a point I was trying to make, which is that I think my dog was trying to read from my body language what to do to get a click and if I shut down on him and give him no clues, he gets frustrated and impatient and I have to find something to click very quickly. I don't know if I can ever hope to wean him off this, or even if I want to. Is it so bad that he's trying to work out what I want through my body language?

corvus

I don't really know what you're getting at, Ron. You wear your judgement like a crown of thorns.

Again, I was misunderstood but that's okay. But I did want to say that the second sentence is a delicious turn of phrase. Well done, Corvus. You may be right, though I think differently but it is such a piece of poetry that it merits a kudo.

ETA:

The mental image of that statement would be totally complete if I still had my hair long. It's really short, right now.