Karen Pryor

Karen's work, area of expertise, and personal observations with marine animals within a controlled environment to teach them tricks, tasks, and specific behaviors

 
If you will read the study that is linked, you will see that Pryor, et al, was not teaching or training the dolphins to do anything. She was free-shaping in an effort to show and prove how positive operant conditioning works. They were only rewarding novel behaviors, specifically, behaviors that had not been seen before, including some behaviors novel to that species of dolphin, and also seeking behaviors that were not trained from standard training sessions. The value of the work is that positive operant conditioning can work creatures of different species but marine mammals were her first subject because that's what she was familiar with.
 
So, let me ask you a question or two.
 
Your dog is playing in the dirt. He recalled perfectly to you. And you beat him until you were ripping hide off. What is the effectiveness of that? Or, you worked the dog for 8 hours and, at the end of the 8 hours, decided the dog had not performed well enough and gave no reward, and decided the dog should start again? Now, before you accuse me of coming up with scenarios that are reactionary just to "prove" my point, the above situations are from my childhood and how I was raised. That is, I am the dog in the situations. Now, I get paid to "play in the dirt." And I am well-paid for it. So, did the corrections have value or not? In both cases, not.
 
But, in my senior year of high school, my grandparents told me they would get me the guitar and amp I wanted if I could get at least 5 As. So, I got 5 As and a B+. They backed out on the reward. But do you see what the promise of reward helped to achieve? My mom agreed that they renegged and she had no problem with me spending my savings to buy it myself.

The dominant wolves do not use food (resources) to teach the other wolves "tricks".

 
By eating first, they decide what everyone else eats. And they decide who eats in what order. Omega has to eat last.
 
Even though I think dogs are like wolves in some ways, living with us is not the same as living in the wild and we can avoid a lot physical altercation by deciding who eats what and when.

Hi Ron,

I generally enjoy the personal nature of your anecdotes in your posts. It's always interesting to learn what motivates people.

I wasn't sure what to make of that post, however. What has it got to do with Karen Pryor, dogs, and training? It sounds clear, from all you've said, that the sh**ty treatment you got as a kid was flat out abusive. But I'm not understanding how you'd like it to advance a discussion about Karen Pryor's work, or any of the posts in response.

Are you worried that Angelique's analysis of the specificity of expertise somehow advocates for mindlessly abusive relationships with the people and animals in their lives? I can't make the connection!

ORIGINAL: ron2
Your dog is playing in the dirt. He recalled perfectly to you. And you beat him until you were ripping hide off. What is the effectiveness of that? Or, you worked the dog for 8 hours and, at the end of the 8 hours, decided the dog had not performed well enough and gave no reward, and decided the dog should start again? Now, before you accuse me of coming up with scenarios that are reactionary just to "prove" my point, the above situations are from my childhood and how I was raised. That is, I am the dog in the situations. Now, I get paid to "play in the dirt." And I am well-paid for it. So, did the corrections have value or not? In both cases, not.

But, in my senior year of high school, my grandparents told me they would get me the guitar and amp I wanted if I could get at least 5 As. So, I got 5 As and a B+. They backed out on the reward. But do you see what the promise of reward helped to achieve? My mom agreed that they renegged and she had no problem with me spending my savings to buy it myself.

ORIGINAL: ron2

Karen's work, area of expertise, and personal observations with marine animals within a controlled environment to teach them tricks, tasks, and specific behaviors

If you will read the study that is linked, you will see that Pryor, et al, was not teaching or training the dolphins to do anything. She was free-shaping in an effort to show and prove how positive operant conditioning works. They were only rewarding novel behaviors, specifically, behaviors that had not been seen before, including some behaviors novel to that species of dolphin, and also seeking behaviors that were not trained from standard training sessions.

I saw an actual video on this. Although, I don't remember if Karen was the person demonstrating the research. It was absolutely amazing and way cool. []

The doggie version of this is "101 things to do with a box"...did you make the connection? I didn't see it in your posts. []

I think we have an entire thread in this section about this, but for those who have not heard of this fun, thinking game, here's one link:

[linkhttp://www.luiniunlimited.com/101.htm]http://www.luiniunlimited.com/101.htm[/link]

Or, just do a random net search of "101 thing to do with a box dog training", and you will get a bunch of other sites.

ORIGINAL: ron2

Your dog is playing in the dirt. He recalled perfectly to you. And you beat him until you were ripping hide off. What is the effectiveness of that? Or, you worked the dog for 8 hours and, at the end of the 8 hours, decided the dog had not performed well enough and gave no reward, and decided the dog should start again? Now, before you accuse me of coming up with scenarios that are reactionary just to "prove" my point, the above situations are from my childhood.

I'd say A) Your statements are reactionary, B) "you beat him until you were ripping hide off" < These are the statements only a +R extremist would make, C) There is nothing "scientific" or productive about projecting our emotional baggage upon our dogs, and D) People who abuse children, dogs, and other living beings because "they had it comin'!", should be arrested.

was not teaching or training the dolphins to do anything. She was free-shaping in an effort to show and prove how positive operant conditioning works.

More than that, they were looking for a way to show that dolphins could be creative. Hence, all the background to show that the behaviors which had been shaped in a dolphin of the same species, are in fact not native behaviors of the species. The subtle difference is that they were not really shaping, but capturing. Thus, when the study subject reached the end of its natural behaviors, they wanted to see whether the dolphin could "think up" new things to get the reinforcer.

This wasn't really a study to show the efficacy of RM/R training - it's a really good study that shows everything that goes on in that setting. This was, I suppose, a confirmation of that "next level" of creative thought that's often noticed in animals that have caught on to the operant game.[]

ORIGINAL: nfowler

And guess what? I'm now doing some mild clicker training with Lucy, the rottie who lives behind me, through a fence.

And it's working!

 

I certainly hope you got permission from the owners before you started messing with their dog's brain. []
 
I wouldn't like it at all if someone was doing this with my dog, and I don't do anything with anyone else's dog without explaining what I'm doing and getting their consent.

a true explorer is neither and absolutist nor a blind faith follower.

Just for the record, although I think you meant to say "an" absolutist, I agree with this statement.  But, do me a favor - could you go over to the CM section and post it there, too? [sm=devil.gif]

B) These are the statements only a +R extremist would make

I don't think it's reasonable to call people "+R Extremists" like this. It's namecalling, and it shuts down dialogue.

(what's Ron supposed to say to that except something like "No, I'm not"? And then Ron and Angelique have no options but bickering)

As for the content of the rest of that post, there are a lot of people on both sides of this (ridiculous) fence who are being emotional and reactionary. I think it's emotional and reactionary, for instance, to label someone an Extremist instead of listen to what they have to say. JMHO.

Guys... There was some interesting discussion going on at the beginning of this thread, and I was really looking forward to reading further, but the snarkiness and the "score one for our side!!!" attitudes are pretty disgusting. Emoticons of toasting? Messing with brains? Reactionary extremism? Why can't people play nice here? I come over here to try and learn from both camps (why should there have to be "camps" anyway?), but the petty squabbles, personal attacks, and emotional BS makes it awfully hard to find interesting arguments in the middle of all the BS. I feel like we're in the middle of a high school homecoming race with all the backstabbing and personal attacks going on here! [&:]

I think learning more about Karen Pryor and clicker training research/experiments/demonstrations is quite interesting. If anyone has holes to poke in the studies (applicability of dolphins to dog training could be a valid point), I'd like to hear them nicely laid out with less drama.

I'm not even really sure what the term "extremist" even means any more. It seems that these days, in all areas of life, if you have a strong, well-reasoned opinion, you get labeled an extremist. I'm an atheist, and atheists get labeled as "extremist" all the time because we have a strong opinion that just happens to be contrary to the opinion of 90% of the rest of the people around us. People concerned with the environment get labeled as "extremist" too. It seems like "extremist" anymore just means, " a passionate opinion that I don't agree with or is unpopular."

And reactionary? Yikes. That's a pretty strong word for anyone who's been a student of political science and history and in this context I'm not even sure it makes sense. It's typically used to mean someone violently opposed to liberalism or progressivism, or Marxism.

"Extremist" - try growing up in San Francisco as an evangelical Christian. I went to a really progressive school but we were viewed with as much suspicion as if we packed grape Kool-aid in our knapsacks. I learned really quick to use tolerance and kindness to surprise and defuse those who expected me to breathe fire and damnation.

I don't know if anyone noticed but I did post something on topic back there. I was looking forward to seeing further discussion and came back to the Great Clicker War. How tiresome. It was the last post on page one, but even though I hardly think it was a world shattering insight, I'll try again to maybe get this topic back on track?

was not teaching or training the dolphins to do anything. She was free-shaping in an effort to show and prove how positive operant conditioning works.

More than that, they were looking for a way to show that dolphins could be creative. Hence, all the background to show that the behaviors which had been shaped in a dolphin of the same species, are in fact not native behaviors of the species. The subtle difference is that they were not really shaping, but capturing. Thus, when the study subject reached the end of its natural behaviors, they wanted to see whether the dolphin could "think up" new things to get the reinforcer.

This wasn't really a study to show the efficacy of RM/R training - it's a really good study that shows everything that goes on in that setting. This was, I suppose, a confirmation of that "next level" of creative thought that's often noticed in animals that have caught on to the operant game. []

behavioral modification aka operant conditioning work with non-mammals too. Chickens, goldfish, I've even heard of people clicker-training octopi and reptiles. You can get goldfish to do some pretty fancy tricks using their food and a laser pointer as a Yes marker.

Don't forget Bettas! We had the late great Mr. Fishy I flaring in response to a tap on the tank. Alas for Mr. Fishy I.

Mr. Fishy V, his successor (II through IV, well, don't ask, they didn't last long[]), is not really food motivated. However, he loves his mirror - but I want PJ to try to figure out how to train him and that's a little trickier to work out, how to use a mirror for reinforcement when putting the mirror up causes so much distraction.

Bettas are incredibly smart - well, the ones I've had have been and there seems to be a general concensus among betta people that this is true. They remind me of fishy cats. Siamese cats, I guess.

I really wanted to try the hoop thing with Mr. Fishy V. He's a beautiful flashy fish and he does love to swim through stuff. But that's actually the problem - if you capture the thing too soon, they don't make the right connection.

Bettas are much more likely to give you a behavior that involves their doing something, rather than something geographically related. If you mark the fish going to the top and he also happens to be blowing a bubble, he'll blow a bubble for you faithfully ever afterward - but it may or may not be at the top of the tank.[]

Isn't it fun to watch other brains work?

Ron,
 
Thank you for posting an interesting and informative article. To me it seems that rewarding the novel behaviors via clicker optimizes overall intelligence in mammals and encourages them to use their minds on a regular basis.  At this stage of their lives, I'm quite interested in preserving my dogs' health as they become seniors and cognitive function is definately a part of overall health, so it's quite applicable to our lives.

I wasn't sure what to make of that post, however

 
I've been really busy the last few days and haven't had time to check in.
 
I meant a couple of different things. The incessant, never-ending bickering, sometimes over semantics reminded me of the incessant, never-ending corporal punishment. It just never stops. Then, I was reminded of how the corrections did not achieve what they were supposed to achieve. And that positive motivation can achieve things. Perhaps it was a bit more general in scope and I see that the intent of that post was missed and I am now an extremist. So, that makes me a domineering treat dispenser with an extremist bent. The labels just keep on coming.[]
 
OTOH, there were almost no responses in this thread, to begin with, and now there are plenty. I see, too, that there are thoughts similar to what I had before, in that how could a study from an experiment in 1965 with dolphins have anything to do with training a dog? But, then, I actually read the study. And applied the principles, and got results.
 
I'm not asking for sympathy when I bring up my childhood nor was I meaning to derail the thread. But I did have another thought this evening for another thread. I think it was you that asked why aren't there studies on wolf behavior and how it may be applied to dogs. Well, could you find some, along the lines of scientific rigor seen in Pryor's study? I mean "you" in general, not just you specifically. Also, it would be interesting if there was a comparative study of the effectiveness of the different methods.