> > I cannot for the life of me imagine how I'd felt as a small child if someone > had tried to teach me stuff by ignoring all my attempts to learn and do > things, and only answering "yes" when I guess the exact answer the "teacher" > had in mind. Seems like that would be terribly frustrating - and slow - to > a normal, curious child ... or parrot. I think I would have felt very > shut-out when I was "wrong" too, not very "nurtured." > What your talking about is traditional methods. Clicker training does not ignore attempts to learn..it rewards the try and offered behaviours. Its all about positive re-enforcement. Ask the children or watch a Tag Teach programme. They love it because they feel involved rather than manipulated and can see the progress they are making. They will even tag each other. There is an excellent example of teaching the high jump back flip on one of the puppy training videos by Karen Prior. The elements are broken down into baby steps then chained. The leg lift for take off, leg lift after a run up, arching the back and landing on shoulders. The skill was taught very quickly and everyone was having fun. I have been a sport coach and teacher none of my students felt shut out or frustrated. The confusion arises when people think that the click is a way to manipulate. All it does is say 'Yes' in reply to the question 'Is this right?'. It is never done without the child or adult understanding that concept and the skill is demonstrated where possible. My parrot goes to his perch and asks for the clicker. My horses love training with or without the clicker now. There are sound reasons as it activates the 'natural reward pathway' which is responsible for driving feelings of motivation, reward and behaviour. It creates relationship based on attention respect and trust working both ways. Best of all it creates good feelings about learning and being with people. I can understand your confusion. Sometimes it's really hard to see past traditional methods and trust something new.
Sue
