This message is from: Marsha Jo Hannah <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Janet McNally <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > The interest in clicker training has always baffled me, because I > never could see how it was 'something new'. It appears to be no > different than good old fashioned verbal reward "gooooood boy" > followed by the pat on the neck, treat, or deserved rest from a > strenuous activity used by horsepeople through out history. With > time your horse will realize that "gooood boy" means he did what > you wanted.
The difference is that the "marker signal" of clicker training has one and only one meaning. Most folks use "good boy" for several different purposes. On any given day, I might utter those words as part of a greeting to an animal, as an "encourager" (you're doing something interesting, keep doing it), as a "marker signal" (you just did exactly what I want, so you can STOP now so I can give you a treat for it), or as the actual reward. So, the horse has to figure out which meaning I'm using (possibly keying on the tone in which I say it), and puzzle out exactly what bit of behavior that happened before or during the "good boy" (which can sometimes take a couple of seconds to utter) is the thing that I want more of. Trainers like the clicker because the sound is short, obvious, and (ideally) is only used to "bridge" between the behavior and the reward. With a bridge signal, one can work at a distance from the animal, telling it precisely what behaviors are worth repeating, then delivering rewards (which can be food, scritches, praise, or the biggie---ending the lesson) in a more leisurely fashion. > My voice is infinitely handier than any other device, leaves my hands > free, and I do not have to buy a clicker, or books and tapes to use it. The <click> (a.k.a. marker signal or bridge signal) can be anything--- whistle, finger-snap, spoken word, mechanical click, or tongue click. Most horsemen use a tongue click (not the "gitty-up" cluck, but a back-of-mouth TOCK sound), because of the hands-free issue. Those who want to use a clicker can "recycle" one---almost any food that comes in a vacuum-packed bottle or jar will have a lid with a pop-up dome in the middle---baby food or Snapple lids are a handy size. That click is more muted than that of the "toy" clicker, but the softer sound can be a plus for a jumpy equine. As for the books, well, I NEEDED to read about the underlying behavioral science. It may have been presented in my college courses, but that was decades ago, and I didn't have any animals to train at the time, so the material may have been "learned" in "take the final and forget it" mode! Understanding the various ways in which "rewards" and "punishments" can be used, and their side effects made me a better trainer, no matter what style I'm using. (Very few "clicker trainers" use "pure" clickering---most use it to enhance other methods.) I was skeptical about it for years, until I gave it a try on some of my donkey's mis-learned behaviors. I was pretty astonished with the results I got---using a marker signal can greatly speed up explaining a behavior to an animal! But, yes, it does have to be studied a little, and one does have to learn how to teach with it, and the animal does have to learn how to learn that way. OTOH, "the clicker game" can be a lot of fun---for BOTH the human and the equine. Marsha Jo Hannah Murphy must have been a horseman-- [EMAIL PROTECTED] anything that can go wrong, will! 15 mi SW of Roseburg, Oregon
