COVER STORY there is a direct connection between stimulus and response. This is how Mother Nature teaches and it can, at times, be a harsh and punishing way of learning. Jump forward to the present day and Kay Laurence of Learning About Dogs brought us microshaping, a highly refined form of error reduced learning that sets up the dog for success every step of the way. She showed the world the art of breaking down behaviors into miniscule parts that are taught individually, and then pieced back together to produce behaviors that are robust, error free and of consistently good quality. She taught us how targets can be used to successfully teach new behaviors to minimize errors and, most importantly, showed us that microshaped behaviors taught through error reduced learning are the product of happy, engaged learners (see pictures, right). Most of us think of clicker training as positive – but is it always? Traditional clicker training is trial and error learning: the dog keeps trying until he hits upon the correct behavior, learning that the absence of the click means no reward – an error – and click means success. Horse clicker trainer Alex Kurland talks of “the click that teaches.” But what does it teach? As we reach for our clicker, we should ask ourselves some key questions: What is our dog learning at every step of the process when being taught a new behavior? What emotion is attached to the behavior? How many errors is our dog making? Is the dog happy, engaged, motivated and focused or is frustration driving new behaviors and if it is, does it matter? Yes, it matters because frustration affects behavior and learning. The behavior rate might be as high as 80-90 percent errors against 80-90 percent successes in errorless learning. How many times can a dog fail before he gives up? It depends on the dog, but surely there must be a better way of communicating? We often see the fallout of trial and error learning during free shaping when frustration levels rise. Dogs may revert to learned helplessness after cycling through their repertoire of known behaviors, or walk out of sessions, lie down, give up and bark through the sheer frustration of not understanding what is being asked of them. Even if the dog finally hits on the correct behavior, much to the trainer’s delight, the learning process for the dog has been a struggle and joyless. What is frustration? According to the Oxford Dictionary of Animal Behavior, frustration can be described as, “A state of motivation that arises in situations in which the consequences of behavior are less than those that the animal has been led to expect on the basis of past experience…Frustration involves an element of expectancy…” According to this definition there must be an element of disappointment involved too. Disappointment leads to stress and anxiety. But how much frustration and disappointment is too much? It depends on the individual learner and their learning history. I am sure that at times I disappoint my dogs but it is not something I would intentionally want to do. New behaviors can be born out of frustration just as they can be driven by puzzle solving in a ‘safe’ learning environment. However, the disappointment ‘label’ that might be attached to a behavior where the underlying motivation is frustration is not a positive learning mindset. While Fluffy may not inflict serious harm on you if she becomes frustrated, a larger captive zoo animal might – and I would not wish to be on the receiving end of a
A behavior taught through error reduced learning is like a jigsaw, where a complex behavior is broken down into many pieces, individually taught. Each piece fits together flawlessly.The ‘ring a bell’ behavior was taught errorlessly by first teaching paw placement on a temporary target, next placing the temporary target on the desk bell and finally fading the temporary target to achieve accurate paw placement.
BARKS from the Guild/November 2015
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