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Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
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Copyright November 1991, Kayce Cover
1st Revision August 1993,
2nd Revision January 1996
Copyright January 1996 Kayce Cover
Revised January 2000, Copyright January 2000 Kayce Cover
757-630-2000
k_cover@hotmail.com
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This revised manual is dedicated to the excellent trainers who are working toward being
certified by Syn Alia.
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Volume I: INTRODUCTION TO BRIDGE AND TARGET TECHNIQUES -
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction....................................................7
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Chapter Four: Planning Behaviors.........................................39
Distractions and Parameters.........................
Planning Behaviors.......................................
Define the Behavior......................................
Goal...................................................
Limits.................................................
Analyze the Behavior.....................................
List the Components by Priority........................
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Introduction:
The Syn Alia Series on Animal Training presents "AN INTRODUCTION TO BRIDGE AND
TARGET TECHNIQUE," a guide to the easiest, most efficient way to teach animals. Scientists have
worked to improve our understanding of how to train animals and communicate with them, making
great inroads in the past 100 years. Professional animal trainers have tested and refined scientific
theories in the field, developing our understanding even further. We are now working on two-way
communication, allowing and encouraging animals to communicate directly to us, rather than just giving
them signals to obey.
When I was employed at the University of Maryland, I conducted a literature search to see what
had been written about these techniques. More specifically on what had been written about the use
of the target, versus just a bridge or a food lure for training, or a comparison of target training with the
rather amorphous process of "shaping". After looking at about 4,000 papers from agricultural,
biological, medical and psychological data bases, I found nothing describing this technique in scientific
literature. There is also virtually nothing available in popular press. Hence, I wrote this manual, to try
to document these techniques and explain what we know about how and why they work.
My qualifications for this task are that I have been a research and development trainer of exotic
and domestic animals for about 20 years, having trained and rehabilitated animals for research and
special applications, such as helping people, participation in research, or working in theater and
entertainment. I have had the delightful challenge of teaching monkeys to help handicapped people,
pigeons to guide the sightless, chickens to be the sole stars of a wild-west show, cows to tell scientists
if they wanted food or a five-minute date with a bull, pigs to voluntarily stand while we stuck them with
a 4-inch needle in order to collect blood, sea lions to breathe on cue, bears to come into transfer cages
for examination.... I have implemented training and demonstration programs at the Smithsonian's
National Zoological Park, the University of Maryland, and a number of private zoos and ranches. My
animals have entertained two presidents and their wives, numerous foreign dignitaries, governors,
legislators, scientists, celebrities, audiences at the Kennedy Center and numerous other theaters and
events, and more than 2.5 million visitors and audience members at educational demonstrations.
However, my most significant contributions were related to protecting the quality of life, the health and
the dignity of the many wonderful animal friends and colleagues with whom it has been my privilege
to work.
It is time that this technique be available to all animal people - scientists, animal trainers, and
pet owners. Many animals that are not effectively trained by more traditional methods and end up
being destroyed could be saved. The family life of pets and owners can be happier and easier. We
can safeguard the health of animals by reducing the necessity of anesthesia and teaching the animals
to cooperate in their own health care and management, and by teaching them to understand what is
going on in the world around them, so that their stress is reduced. We can heighten the quality of our
communication and working partnerships with our animal colleagues, whether for obedience,
equitation, search and rescue, or other specialty work.
I firmly believe that the introduction of these techniques into the general human/animal
community will revolutionize animal training as most people know it today, and drastically redefine what
we expect of human/animal partnerships in all arenas. If you are an animal caretaker, owner,
researcher, trainer or lover, who wants to employ the most humane and efficient training methods
known, this manual is for you.
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Chapter One:
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The Two Requirements of Training
If you can do these two things, you can accomplish amazing results with almost any
animal on earth. Not only can almost any animal learn, but almost every animal can be trained
and in many cases they learn just as quickly as humans do, although sometimes they are
faster and better, but we will not go into that now....
Every animal, including humans, does some things especially well, and other things
not so well. Our goal is to be able to teach animals to help us in those areas where they are
better than we (e.g., drug searches) and to live in our society successfully. In turn, we help
them in those areas where we are more advanced than they (e.g., veterinary medicine) and
guide and care for them in our human dominated world.
There are two big differences between teaching humans and teaching animals. For one
thing, animals do not talk as we do - they are nonverbal. They can learn to understand many
words, but only if you teach them carefully and even then they will not usually be able to use
those same words to tell you anything in return. Also, animals have different lifestyles or
culture than we do. This means that they may think humans do some pretty strange stuff and
have some stupid ideas and customs. Imagine what your dog thinks when you want to clip
his nails. This is not something that his mother recommended he have done. Neither is
getting a bath. Here you come along and want to make him smell like a bunch of flowers just
after he finally got a great stink going by rolling in a bunch of cow manure (no bear will ever
smell him now...). What is wrong with you? Don't you know anything about masking your
scent? The way humans operate, you would think that the only thing their noses are good for
is keeping those weird glass things from sliding off their faces. Sheeeeshhhh!
To return the favor, we think animals are pretty weird too - what is this preoccupation
dogs have with sniffing genitals, peeing on every vertical object they pass and rolling in dead
things. Why does my monkey like to part my hair and pick at my scalp? What does a pig get
out of rooting? Why do fish fade their color back and forth? Every time you think of something
you want an animal to do, the odds are he thinks it is a very stupid idea - that is, if you can find
a way to make him understand your idea in the first place. Perhaps the best policy is to decide
to respect all the things your animal does, and figure out a way to tell him all about your great
ideas in a way that will help him gain an appreciation for our needs. Once you figure out how
to communicate your ideas to an animal, then you re going to have to figure out how you will
PAY HIM for going along with your plans. This is the basis for any working relationship,
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whether with humans or with animals. I am quite aware of the cautious stance scientists take
with interpreting animal thoughts and motivations, however, I state with great confidence, that
the similarity between animals and people is much greater then the disparity, and the most
effective approach when working with animals is to extend the same courtesies and
considerations that you bestow on human colleagues. For example, treat animals with
respect, allow them to save face whenever possible, praise lavishly for successes, ask them
nicely to do things - if you would be an effective animal manager.
Before you can start telling your animal what you want him to do, you have to get him
to listen to you. Many animals do not think that humans have much of interest to offer. Other
animals are so used to humans caring for them that they take them for granted and do not pay
any attention to them, (except when they have to punish the humans for not quite getting
things right). People who work with animals see this happen over and over again. To try and
understand why this happens, let's consider what the animal might be thinking about its
relationship with humans.
If you were an animal, and somebody provided food for you every day and cleaned your
environment whenever required, would you have a lot of respect and admiration for that
conscientious and kindhearted individual? While considering an answer, think back to your
teenage years, when perhaps someone who had done just that for you was reaping the
benefits of your insightful gratitude. I remember sitting around with my adolescent sisters
saying, in a high-handed tone, "If Mom did not want to have to drive us all over she should not
have had children. After all, she knew what she was getting into, it is her responsibility. I
certainly did not ask to be born..." Perhaps the reader marvels that I was allowed to live to
maturity, or perhaps the reader remembers harboring a similar lack of gratitude. In any case,
I was no mental midget and I did not say this TO my mother, but she nonetheless got the
benefit of the underlying sentiment.
Similarly, over the years that I have been teaching this material, I have learned that
most people have no idea who their paper delivery person is or anything about them. This
person may have been delivering the paper for years, but only a handful out of thousands
have been able to identify their personal paper deliverer. I propose that this is because they
do not need to notice the paper person in order to have their paper delivered, and therefore
they do not. There is no percentage in paying attention to the paper deliverer. However, I also
propose that if I announced that you, the reader, could get one thousand dollars (I said IF)
from me by meeting the paper delivery person to collect your paper, and only this way, I
believe that in no time at all you would know a fair amount about the same paper deliverer -
what they looked like, when they came by, how they traveled, etc. If I then added another rule
and said that in order to collect the one thousand dollars, you had to make the paper person
laugh, you would probably work hard to learn about the personality of the same paper deliverer
who has never been important to you before.
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Thus, the energy that you invest in understanding and interacting with your paper
deliverer depends much on what you believe you stand to gain through your perceptions and
the applications of those perceptions. Perhaps animals come to similar conclusions because
if they get everything they need from someone without expending any energy, they often do
not expend any energy. Therefore, in general, as long as you deliver good things to animals
regardless of, or despite, their behavior, they will not spend any energy trying to figure out
what you want, nor in making their behavior acceptable to you, no matter how wonderfully kind
you are to them.
Let's make another short study of human nature. If you are walking behind someone
who drops a ten-dollar bill, which you in turn pick up, what is your reaction? Do you?:
B. Walk up to the person who dropped the money and say in your
best merit badge tone of voice "Excuse me sir but I believe
you dropped this money."
C. Walk up to the person who dropped the money and say "Thank
you very much sir! How did you know that this was just what
I was hoping for?"
99% of the people that I have taught admit to answer B, a few have been caught
responding with A, and are now serving time on highway beautification squads, but nobody
that I have ever encountered even offered C, or an explanation similar to C. I believe that this
is because in our understanding of life and human nature, we do not expect something for
nothing, indeed, we are suspicious of anything that appears to deliver a reward for no return.
We expect that a person who drops something of value before us either did so by mistake or
did not recognize the value of the thing dropped.
Now let's again consider the case of animals being cared for. When you deliver food,
what might that animal be thinking? He might think, "Golly, that Kayce Cover is one swell gal
to take such gosh darn good care of me. Or, he might think, "That Kayce Cover is so stupid,
she carelessly left her valuable food here and I will in turn steal it from her. Or he might think,
"I sure am lucky to live here at a place where humans dump their waste which I know is
actually good food." Or he might think, "I am a godlike animal who is ministered to by a vestal
virgin, as is fitting to my divine nature and position, and her lot in life." I leave it to you to
decide which of the above is more likely. I am inclined to favor the last, myself. In any case,
it is a phenomenon oft discussed by keepers of bears, elephants and other dangerous animals
when news of another keeper being killed by the animals they have cared for, surfaces. Some
animal rights activists maintain that this is evidence that animals are unhappy in captivity,
however, animals show the same proclivities toward other animals in the wild. Respect is
given to those who can command it.
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Therefore, I propose that people bring many animal relationship problems on
themselves because they do not engineer respect into their relationships with animals. Some
people are insecure about their dealings with animals and they do not want to make the
animals feel bad. They end up either being ignored or abused by their animals. These people
may be forgetting that being liked usually follows being respected. A rule of thumb for all
animal trainers: IF YOU HAVE TO CHOOSE BETWEEN BEING LIKED AND BEING
RESPECTED, OPT FOR RESPECT. People do not listen or pay attention to people they do
not respect, so here is something we have in common with animals.
THE SOLUTION:
If your animal does not pay attention to you and try to figure out what you want and how
to cooperate with you, or if he does not respect you, you can fix that. You can create a
respectful partnership between the two of you, with both members responsible to one another,
rather than one of a human pampering a pet or of a pet and master. This brings us to another
rule of thumb: ANIMAL TRAINING IS BASED UPON A MUTUALLY RESPONSIBLE AND
RESPECTFUL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN AN ANIMAL WORKING FOR A TRAINER AND
A TRAINER WORKING FOR AN ANIMAL.
The first step in creating a partnership is to make the good things in life directly
associated with the presence of the human partner, and absent in the human's absence. For
example, the trainer could feed the animal its food by hand in several small meals throughout
the day, rather than just leaving dinner in a bowl.
This will tend to cause increased interaction between human and animal which gives
the trainer the opportunity to reward the animal for interacting. When the animal pays
attention to the trainer, the trainer rewards it. When the animal cooperates with the human,
he is rewarded. Now he becomes even more interested in the trainer. He can do things to
cause the human to give rewards. This makes the human a lot more fascinating to the animal
that he previously was. It gives the animal more control over his life than he had before. It is
a mutually advantageous relationship.
SAFETY FIRST
At all times, the trainer must either make sure that the animal cannot get access to him,
or that the animal has learned not to be aggressive toward him AND HAS DEMONSTRATED
HIS RELIABILITY IN THIS IN SPITE OF STRESS OR TEMPTATION.
If working with an animal who does not respect humans, appropriate safeguards should
be taken by the trainer, who should not allow themselves to be endangered by a disrespectful
or frustrated animal. I usually start working with animals from outside their enclosure, and wait
until the animal learns the basic targeting skills before I go in with the animal. This way, the
animal has a history of success in learning before he has the opportunity to make a big
mistake. Any tendency toward aggression is corrected immediately, halting other training until
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safety is restored.
Many animals will experiment with snapping or lipping the trainer's hand or arm during
the initial training while the trainer is still outside the enclosure. I have an ingrained reflex of
bopping these animals in the nose/snout the instant the attempt is made, which is a challenge,
but gratifying when successfully done, for it causes the animal to take up a new and less risky
hobby. I mention this because many animals will initially try to steal food from the trainer,
rather than wait to be given food by the trainer. This has caused some people to consider it
dangerous to use food in training. It is not the food which is dangerous. It is the impolite
animal's attitude. How would you like to be serving dinner to guests and have them jump you,
brandishing their butter knives, as you were on the way to deposit the food on the table?
There is no justification for this kind of behavior except if people or animals show all thirteen
ribs, in which case they should be in the hospital anyway for starvation rehabilitation. Within
three weeks into training, you should be able to set your food down anyplace and turn your
attention to your animal, without the animal encroaching on the food in any way. Later, the
manual will describe how to teach an animal to pass food on the way to a target. I used to
routinely swim with my group of adult sea lions, males and females, trailing fish and frisbees.
The sea lions were unerringly polite and never challenged me for fish as I swam.
Never trust an untaught, untested animal to be kind to you because you are kind to
him. The animal might not have ever considered the long term consequences of his actions
toward you or he might not care. In observing human children growing up, there seems to be
a stage that adolescent children, particularly boys, go through in which they tend to amuse
themselves at the expense of the comfort or life of an animal. Pranks such as tying cans to
a cat's tail or skidding on lizards are cruel but unless children are taught to have concern for
the feelings of others, they are sometimes willing to torture and kill animals for sport. Animals
are not necessarily more enlightened than people in this regard. I have seen polar bears
tease and torture mice, sea lions tear the fins off fish and leave them helpless to die a slow
death, orcas have been filmed tossing sea lions around, apparently for sport .... the list goes
on. Perhaps all creatures tend to consider their own wants and comfort to be more valid that
those of fellow creatures. In any case, until an animal has been taught the benefits of having
mutual consideration with other animals and the detriments of self-indulgence at another's
expense, the trainer should be especially cautious because an untrained or improperly trained
animal can be a time bomb waiting to go off. No true expert sets him/herself up for harm by
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trusting animals that have not earned trust or by exposing themselves to aggressive animals
without appropriate precautions.
Conversely, properly trained animals can be very reliable, even if they started out to be
aggressive toward humans or other animals, once retrained. For example, in eight years of
working with seals and sea lions, wolves, bush dogs and cheetahs at the National Zoo in
Washington, D.C., neither I nor any of the upwards of 40 keeper volunteers that worked
directly with the animals was ever bitten by an aggressive animal. This was in spite of the fact
that we swam with groups of animals, spent time in their exhibits with them, took some of them
into the public area, and performed numerous medical and management procedures on these
animals, including injections and blood sampling.
Pets and domestic animals are easy to work with because they are used to the same
environment that we live in and they are comfortable around people. However, they can be
difficult to train if they are not used to learning and working or if they have already learned by
another system. Just like people, animals can be very resistant to change, even if that change
will make their lives better in the long term. Pets are used to being touched and pulled and
pushed and tend to disregard these things coming from humans. Because Bridge and Target
training is non-coercive and non-manipulative, it requires more patience, at first, than many
other methods of training. We want the animal to decide for itself that it WANTS to work.
Usually when you start to train by this method, there are three phases that the animal
seems to go through. These are:
1. Signs of intelligence.
At first, many animals, especially those who have not been well managed, or who are
new to any kind of training, will be very endeared to Bridge and Target training, probably
because it makes their environment more intelligible, because this is a logical system, and
because it gives them some control over their environment in that they can now earn
reinforcers. This is a sort of honeymoon phase that is encountered with naive or untrained
animals.
2. Alienation.
The second stage reveals an alienated animal who has perhaps come to the conclusion
that the trainer, while offering explanations and reinforcers, is also manipulating the animal
and will not give up those reinforcers unless the animal VOLUNTEERS to give up some of its
free will (free will is not allowed to the animal in many training systems, and this is a significant
difference of Bridge and Target training method). This animal often finds it necessary to
punish the trainer, in order to correct this manipulative behavior, by ignoring her. (Also be on
guard for aggression, which is rare). That is fine, because the sooner the animal works
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through this stage, the sooner it will get to the third stage. Any animal with respect for the
trainer will usually not offer inappropriate behavior like nipping or other bad manners. This
type of behavior is not tolerated in any way by the author, who recommends that it not be
tolerated by anyone. Sometimes animals that have some training experience skip phase one
and start out here.
3. Return to Work.
In the third stage, the animal, while busily ignoring the trainer, may be contemplating
the fact that even though that trainer was manipulative, (s)he was also manipulated. That is,
the animal worked for the trainer, but by working the animal in turn controlled the trainer
because the trainer had to figure out how to motivate the animal to work. In other words, the
animal gave work and got reinforcers. The trainer defines the work (s)he is willing to pay for,
and the animal defines the reinforcers (unless the trainer is really good, in which case (s)he
also defines the reinforcers) for which he will work. And while work requires effort and
concentration, it also can bring novelty, better physical conditioning, endorphin and other
innate and acquired reinforcers that the process of working delivers to the animal, in addition
to the reinforcers that the trainer offers.
Perhaps the animal makes a conscious decision to take on a career of training the
trainer to produce better and better or more and more reinforcers, or maybe this all happens
on a more subliminal level, but the net effect is that the next thing that you know, the animal
is back, soliciting the trainer's attention and the privilege of working. This animal can be
termed a "sophisticated animal" and is a pleasure to work with. I look forward to seeing the
animal start to question the trainer because I believe that an unquestioning animal is not as
committed as the animal who convinces itself that by cooperating with the trainer, it is working
for itself.
When the trainer first encounters an animal starting to lose interest in training, the
appropriate response is to turn away, (or freeze action) thereby denying the animal both
attention and the option to earn reinforcers. This is called a "time-out". Thus when the animal
loses attention in the trainer, he loses control over his environment. Sometimes the trainer
may have to leave an animal ten times in a row because the animal is resistant to offering
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work if it is not coerced to do so. This is most often seen with animals who have a history of
working in a manipulative system, such as "if you have a halter on, you MUST go forward or
you will be to go forward." In Bridge and Target training if the animal does not VOLUNTEER
to go forward (in working/learning) he loses the opportunity to go forward, also losing the
opportunity to control the flow and/or selection of reinforcers.
This pause or withdrawal of attention can be called a "time out" and can be very short,
ranging from a few seconds to minutes, hours, or days. (Not inferring that the animals needs
are ignored during a time out, he is just not allowed to work).
When the trainer returns to an animal after a "time out" (s)he should treat the situation
as a fresh start, offering a positive, enthusiastic attitude to the animal. However, the trainer
should not relax her standards. If the animal still does not cooperate, (s)he should give
another "time out". This subject will be explored more in the next manual volume, when
motivation is discussed, but the following may be helpful to know:
This attitude will reappear from time to time when A) you or the animal return from
vacation with a case of laziness, or B) when you have been letting the animals get into a rut
by doing the same things over and over again and then you suddenly get the notion that you
are going to introduce new information, or C) whenever you add significantly to an animals
job description or push them too hard.
Once you get past this attitude of noncompliance with a naive animal, the best way to
manage this problem is to keep your animal working and interested. However, if, being
human, you lapse in this regard, you can go back to the time out to correct the animal's
attitude. In all fairness, you should also deprive yourself of chocolate for the rest of the day,
for setting your animal up for failure.
More specific instructions for increasing your significance with your animal will be given
in the Section II, "How to Train."
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SPECIAL NOTE: Reinforcement is a complicated subject that will be dealt with in greater
detail later. However, for the sake of discussion in this volume, reinforcement refers to various
things that the animal desires but which are not required in order for his routine care. The
author does not ever recommend depriving an animal of the food needed for good health, or
for any other thing that is necessary for the animal. However, there are many little niceties
ranging from praise to food treats, grooming to new experiences, self direction to "time off"
which the animals are quite willing to work for. It is fine to have an animal work for his regular
ration of food, except that if he chooses not to be cooperative he must still receive that food
necessary to his well-being.
The reason that this volume does not talk much about reinforcement and other motivation is
that the new trainer's hands are full just concentrating on the communication technique,
without considering the animal's motivational management.
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Chapter Two:
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THE BRIDGE:
Definition:
BRIDGE: A signal that is conditioned to be reinforcing
because it is paired with other reinforcers which evolves to
pinpoint an instant in time for the animal in training.
The Bridge is a signal which tells the animal the exact instant he has done something
you want, and earned a reward. The reward can be food, scratching, a play episode, or just
the bridge, which becomes praise to the animal. The bridge begins as a signal to tell the
animal food is coming. Because it tells the animal the exact instant food becomes available,
the animal starts to notice things that happen at the same time as the bridge, perhaps because
it wants to figure out how bridges happen and how it can cause them to happen. Because the
animal is paying attention to what happens at the same time as the bridge, the bridge can
become a way to pinpoint the exact time that a behavior which will earn a reward occurs, so
that the animal can figure out which behavior is being bridged. Eventually the bridge pinpoints,
for the animal, the exact instant the animal has been successful in creating the behavior that
the trainer wanted. The significance of the bridge continues to evolve, until eventually the
bridge serves at least four functions. The bridge:
1). Pinpoints the exact instant desired behavior is created.
2) "Bridges" the gap of time between the instant the desired behavior is created and
the instant it is reinforced with food or other things.
3) Becomes a secondary reinforcer, pleasure inducing in its own right (e.g., praise, for
humans).
4) Further increases your significance to the animal. Since you are giving signals that
show you are reacting to the animal's behavior, it will start to examine its behavior in order to
manipulate you to produce more bridges which in turn indicate more food, etc.
Eventually, more than one type of bridge can be used to communicate more precisely
to the animal such things as "keep going, you are on the right track, but you are not finished
yet." (See the intermediate bridge.) Any number of bridges can be conditioned, as long as they
are conditioned one at a time and the animals response to each is carefully tested to ensure
that the animal perceives each bridge as a signal that a reinforcer will occur. There are many
reasons that trainers might use more than one bridge. For example, the "X", the sound of the
letter X, is a very good and easy bridge to use in many situations. However, if you are doing
water work with a dolphin, you might opt to use a bridge with a sound that carries better
underwater, such as a whistle. Or, if you are working with doves in a theater you might want
to avoid making a sound while bridging, so that you do not interfere with the play, so you might
choose to use a flash of light, which will show up well for the birds but be invisible to the
audience who cannot see backstage. Or, if you are working with a deaf dog, you need visual
and tactile (touch) bridges.
Some trainers believe that the bridge is the only communicator required to train an
animal (i.e., no target is necessary). This is illogical. At any instant that the trainer bridges a
desired behavior, hundreds of other behaviors are simultaneously occurring. Every muscle is
in an attitude, the animal is breathing, looking, listening and gesturing in various ways - or it
is not. The animal cannot possibly know which of the hundreds of behaviors is important to
the trainer.
To prove the point one need only perform the following demonstration with a volunteer
and an audience. The volunteer agrees to try to figure out which behavior that he performs
earns the bridge. The audience is given the same goal. An agreement is made that the
volunteer is a motivated learner. Perhaps 99 times out of 100, the volunteer will be bridged
twenty times in a row without having a clue as to why. The author has even had volunteers
that were banging themselves on the head in an unconscious gesture, and never lighted on
that relatively obvious choice. Usually the volunteer ventures that he is being bridged for
looking, or listening. These are things he is conditioned to consider important to the learning
process. The audience usually correctly identifies the bridged behavior long before the
volunteer does. They share the general perspective of the trainer - that of an outsider looking
in, rather than being inside looking out.
It is a fine thing if the animal being trained is the last to know what is expected of him
or how to succeed at his task. As seen with the human volunteer, even when repeatedly
bridged, the animal still may not know what is wanted. He must go through a process of
elimination to isolate the behavior that is being bridged, and that could take hundreds of trials.
It's understandable that many trainers have stopped at this level of communication with
their animals, because the next levels of understanding how to train animals may be unique
to the marine mammal training field. It is not described in psychology literature or any other
academic writings that the author has been able to find. This may be because the study of the
principles and processes of learning, and of how behavior is learned and created, is conducted
by means of experiments which must be minutely controlled and documented in order for their
validity to be verified. Therefore the science of psychology moves meticulously and rigorously
rather than quickly, to cover new ground.
If the process of elimination is eliminated from the training process, efficiency increases
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dramatically, by a factor of at least ten. Instead of requiring an animal to guess which aspect
of its behavior is desired, an efficient trainer will tell the animal. To do this, the trainer uses a
target.
2. "Bridges" the gap of time between the instant the desired behavior is created and the
instant it is reinforced.
Hence the name "bridge". Many people ask "why have a bridge, why not just throw the
animal a reward?" There are many times that you want to tell your animal that he has done
the exactly correct thing, but you cannot throw him a reward. For example, an animal across
the room, who does not bite child pulling his tail, deserves an immediate reward and praise.
However, if you throw food across the room, the animal may knock the child over to get to it,
which defeats all the previous good behavior. Or, he may not see it, in which case he gets
neither food nor praise (the bridge). Or if the food boinks him in the head and bounces away -
you may not have done a very good job of producing a reward. However, the bridge solves this
dilemma. You can call out "X" the instant you see a good behavior, and then reward the
animal with food when appropriate.
Also consider the high-jumping dolphin that jumped 10 feet yesterday and is asked to
jump 12 feet today. The trainer must reinforce the dolphin the instant it makes a learning
advancement - that is - the instant it reaches the 12-ft height, rather than at the end of the
behavior cycle when the dolphin is back in the water.
A. (s)he can throw the fish at the dolphin at the instant the dolphin makes
the height - but the dolphin may wrench its spine trying to get the fish mid-
leap, or another animal may get it, or the fish might hit the dolphin ...
B. The trainer can throw the fish into the water - but by the time the
performing dolphin gets there another animal may have intercepted the fish,
or the dolphin may have been so occupied by the behavior that it did not
notice the throw and does not look for a fish...
C. If the trainer throws the fish an instant early, the dolphin may abort the
jump in order to go after the fish ...
D. If the dolphin lands in the water and then finds or receives the fish - the
fish is paired with the event of swimming through the water - not with
jumping. It may well decide that in the future it will stay in the water since
that is where the fish appear...
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Consider the solution:
Without interrupting the dolphin's work, the trainer bridges, the instant the
dolphin achieves the new goal. The dolphin is then at leisure to return to the
trainer for other rewards as his work permits. The bridge essentially tells the
dolphin he has "money in the bank."
3. The bridge becomes a secondary reinforcer - pleasure inducing in its own right.
The bridge is a reliable signal that the animal will get something it wants. So strong
is the association between the bridge and positive events for the animal that the animal will
learn to leave food to respond to a bridge, and the animal will also work hard to figure out
what behavior is being bridged.
This is why people try the coin return slot when they hear a certain jingle sound or
why kids wheedle when they hear the hint of pending relent in a parent's voice. Both the
jingle and the recapitulation are signs that the hearer will get something he wants.
Once you can tell your animal the instant he is doing what you want, you have to
devise a way to tell him which one behavior (of the hundreds of behaviors that he creates
every instant he is alive) you like. This brings us to the subject of the target.
TARGET(noun): A prop which pinpoints a critical location for an animal in training. This
location may be a body contact point on the stationary animal, it may be a destination
point, or it may be a place where other critical information will appear. The target can be
an extended finger or fist, the end of a pole, a mark on a wall or a paper, a plaque...
Essentially, the trainer and the animal each extend a target contact point toward the other,
meeting in the middle. Thus, the human extends a pole and the dolphin touches with a
rostrum, or the human extends a finger and the primate extends a finger to touch.
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TARGET(verb): A "point" of behavior. The smallest unit of behavior, consists of an
animal's action to touch a designated spot.
The most important function of the target is to focus the animal's attention on the
critical behavior, or the place where critical information will appear. Like the bridge, it
evolves to have four aspects.
1) The target pinpoints in space the exact spatial orientation, or location, of the critical
behavior.
3) It is the foundation for the formation of any physical motion or attitude the trainer wants
to create, and can be used to define many concepts as well.
When teaching humans, we look for eye contact to indicate attention, and for verbal
feedback to assert understanding. With nonverbal animals, some of whom consider eye-
contact a threat, there must be a different mode of giving information and getting
feedback. The target is that mode. By teaching the animal to match a particular body
point to a point the trainer indicates - such as a muzzle to a trainer's extended target, the
trainer can show the animal exactly where he must be to earn a bridge. In turn the animal
can indicate his understanding of the requirement and willingness to cooperate by touching
muzzle to target when asked.
Any information will be more successfully transferred to the animal if the animal is
prepared to receive it. In sports there is the convention: "get ready. get set. GO." With
only the bridge, the animal may always be surprised by the information sent by the trainer
while it is concentrating on something completely unrelated to training. With the
presentation of the target, the trainer signals the animals for its attention. The target may
be used to give a command, training information, a warning - such as "look, there is a new
person coming in," or to alert the animal to an option - "would you like food?"
An important step in training by target is to teach the animal that the target provides
the information which leads to the bridge which leads to the reinforcer. There can be no
more direct path to food. Food may be presented without a target, but if food and a target
are presented simultaneously, the fastest way to get the food is to target, even if the food
is nearer. At a direct approach to the food, bypassing the target, the trainer will make the
food disappear. This is a crucial step in the development of true cooperation between
animal and trainer. The animal must see that the trainer purposely works to give the
animal what it needs and wants, in return for the animal's cooperation, and food is a result
of this cooperation. The animal must not conclude that it can grab food. It is questionable
to use food to lure an animal into any behavior. A dolphin which jumps to take a fish from
the mouth of a trainer is being paid to grab. Imagine if children were taught to blindly follow
food and grab it, rather than that food comes from a cooperative effort with others for
mutual benefit.
Likewise, many experienced trainers scorn the use of food because they have seen
animals behave dangerously toward people in order to get the food. It is amazing to see
people who let elephants frisk their pockets for treats - it indicates a lack of respect to the
human, at best, and at worst will cost the foolish person his life. However, many trainers
move freely amongst their animals, laden with food, which will be given to the animals
appropriately, and which the animals accept in a dignified manner. The animals do not dart
at the food, try to steal it or beg. They are confident they will be invited to eat, and they
have dignity. If an animal has more to live for than food, and if learning becomes the
source of enjoyment it should be for all living creatures, food quickly becomes a secondary
concern, especially if the trainer manages reinforcers well.
In the next section of this manual we will look at how to teach the animal the bridges
and target(s) and related skills.
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Chapter Three:
How to Train
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HOW TO TRAIN
This is going to be so simple, you will probably have a hard time believing how
powerful it is. All you have to do is teach an animal two signals so that you can
communicate to him. One signal must tell the animal when you like something it does, in
fact the exact instant you like something. The other signal tells him where he has to move
in order to make you tell him you like something he does.
To tell an animal at which exact instant we like what he does, we have to have some
signal that we can use to mark that instant. There are a lot of signals that could be used,
but the bridge needs to have certain qualities. It should generally, for hearing animals, be
a sound. It should be a very short, distinct sound so it is a good way to mark an instant of
time. It is not used a lot in everyday conversation, so the animal is not likely to be confused
about whether we are talking to him or not. And it should be possible to produce using
sturdy, inexpensive equipment such as your mouth, so you never have to worry if you
remembered your "bridger" and you are always ready and able to communicate with your
animal.
_________________________________________________________________
NOTE: There are two glossaries at the end of the manual, one organized according to
subject, and the other alphabetically. A working knowledge of learning theory terminology
will allow you to read the scientific literature and talk to scientists, who are not a bad lot if
you can figure out a system for communicating with them.
_________________________________________________________________
Choosing a Bridge:
The author suggests using the verbal sound of the letter "X", as in the first syllable
of the word "X-ray", spoken crisply and with enthusiasm, as a bridge for the following
reasons:
4. You will save money if I ever help you train your animal!
Now that we finally got all that straight, I am going to remind you that you actually
need TWO bridges. But no worry. The same sound, "x", delivered in slightly different ways,
will serve for both types of bridge. These two bridges, are the intermediate bridge and the
terminal bridge. They are used as follows:
The "X" (large case X) is a TERMINAL BRIDGE. It tells the animal when it has
successfully created behavior that you desired. We use another bridge, the "x" (lower
case), or INTERMEDIATE BRIDGE, to tell the animal that he is doing great, but he is not
done yet. For example, if you call your animal to you, and he looks up from his feed, and
starts to come, you can say, "x x x x x x x X", starting out softly and getting louder and more
enthusiastic as the animal gets closer until you finally say "X" as he contacts the target.
It is reminiscent of the game "hot and cold". In either case, neither "X" nor "x" has any
meaning to the animal until you teach him what they stand for.
You could go around saying "X" every time your animal did something you liked and
he might never realize that it MEANT anything. After all, anytime your mother does
anything nice for you she is always breathing, right? But, we do not pay too much attention
to normal breathing, because we do not think of breathing as a signal in most cases. To
make sure the animal knows that X is a signal, we have to teach him exactly what it means,
much as your parents taught you the meaning of words. Here is how to give the "X"
meaning.
A good way to start teaching your animal the meaning of X is to pair it with a reward.
Every time your animal does something you like (and therefore causes you to say X) you
are going to be rewarding it anyway, so why not start by showing him that X means a
reward is coming. Later on, he will figure out both the X and the reward came because
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of HIS actions. Food is a good reward to start with because almost everyone likes food
from time to time, and in fact, fairly often. Here are the specifics:
2. Put your hands behind your back. Say "X" and watch for
the slightest eye or ear movement (that tells you that
your animal noticed the sound "X") and then say "x x x x
x x x x" until the animal gets close enough to reach the
food and then present the food from behind your back
saying "X!" Do this at least three times, or until your
animal looks over eagerly every time you say "X".
From now on, bridge every time the animal creates the
proper behavior, and give a food reward no more than 30
percent of the time. Use petting, scratching, toys,
playtime, walks, rooting opportunities and other things
for rewards. The more creative and varied the rewards,
the more interested your animal will be.
THE TARGET:
The Target tells the animal where he must be in order to earn a bridge. The bridge
tells the animal "now" you have earned a reward, the target tells the animal "here" you
have earned a reward. The target has several uses: TARGET (noun) is a contact point
that the human presents. If you teach the animal that in order to earn a bridge he can
touch your hand, your hand becomes the target, or target point. TARGET (verb) means
to extend target (contact) point to another target point. You can target your animal by
extending your hand, and your animal will target by touching your target point with his.
Both the noun and the verb uses of this word stemmed from the idea of "targeting" the
animal's attention to a particular place in order to receive training information. Since many
animals will not maintain eye contact with people, nor do they tell us whether they are
listening to us or understanding us, having an animal touch a contact point tells us three
things we could not otherwise know - 1) that he is paying attention, 2) that he understands
where he is to go, and 3) that he is willing to go to his target.
The target can be any contact point, but I suggest that the animal's first target
contact point be his muzzle, since he naturally investigates things muzzle first, and he can
see whatever he is targeting with his muzzle. Let your target be the back of your fingers,
presented in a crisp, distinctive movement, (you want your animal to be able to distinguish
between a casual hand motion and a request to target, and you want the request to draw
the animal's attention). If your animal is likely to bite, then use a pole (see below) as his
first target point. (However, if your animal attempts to bite, end his training session and
correct his aggression. Do not resume training until the aggression is solved.)
With pets and domestic animals, when target signals are introduced, the trainer
must be very firm, because animals with "pet" experience tend to try to ignore any kind of
requirement (e.g., they must target in order to earn a piece of food) - they are used to
getting everything for free. The good news is: no matter how lazy or resistant an animal
is to learning initially, once they start they love the challenge, the new experiences and the
self-control they gain. They also love being the focus of the trainer's attention. It is critical
to remember that training is the most successful means by which an animal can learn to
deal with the human culture he has been adopted into. A trainer is a guide to her animals.
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The purpose of training is not to gain power over another living creature - it is to enable
that creature to participate fully in our shared, but human oriented, environment.
1. Extend your hand, in a snappy motion, toward the animal, about 2 inches from his
muzzle. The instant the animal touches the hand, say "X" emphatically and
enthusiastically and feed him. Repeat this five times, feeding him two of the five times.
2. Repeat 1, but this time, say "HERE" as you present the fingers. By combining a verbal
and a visual cue, the animal has two chances to know what we want. This is also to keep
you from saying "X" as you present your fingers, which is one of the most common
mistakes people make when starting to train by this technique. If you present your fingers
saying "X" at the same time, you are telling your animal he is done before he has done
any thing. Instead, say "here" while extending the hand target and say "X" as soon as he
touches the target and promptly remove your hand. Repeat this five more times and quit
for a while.
3. After a rest repeat 2., but have the animal move different
distances to get to the target - perhaps 2 inches for the
first trial, 5 for the second, 10 for the third, 8 for the
fourth, 2 ft for the fifth and 2 inches for the sixth.
Gradually increase the distance the animal is willing to go
for a target, without making each trial always more difficult
than the last.
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Extending the Duration:
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The Remote Target, or Target Station:
You can make a remote target by drawing a bull's-eye on a piece of paper. Punch
a hole in the top edge so that you can hang or tie it to a fence, crate door or grate, or a
hook on a wall.
Hold the flat target in your hand and present it for the animal to target on so that the
animal sees the plastic target but is not required to touch it in order to target. Bridge as
normal. Next trial, hold the target over your finger, but so that the animal can see the
target finger extending from behind the plastic target, at the side. Proceed as for initially
training the hand target.
Target Hierarchies:
It is important that your animal know which target to contact when more than one
is in view. For example, if there is a target always hanging in the rear of his kennel, to use
for kenneling purposes, you want to be able to call the animal away from the hanging target
and to your hand target, so that you can call him out of the kennel. Therefore, make a
point of teaching him the target hierarchy, which is, when more than one target is in view,
the hand takes first importance, the pole second, and the station target third.
To teach this principle, start with the pole and the hand. Offer both simultaneously,
but make the hand more prominent. Usually the animal will touch the hand because it is
easier. Bridge him accordingly. Repeat this about three times, switching the side that the
hand is on, but keeping it closer to the animal than the pole. Next trial, start moving the
pole target so that it is equidistant from the animal, rather than farther away. Let him have
three successes at this arrangement, switching sides that the targets appear on in a
random manner. Next trial, make the pole target a bit closer than the hand target.
If the animal makes a mistake, immediately remove both targets for a few seconds
and then try again. Keep everything very positive and do not tell the animal no or that he
is bad, just immediately end the trial if he makes a mistake. When the animal cannot be
fooled no matter where the pole is in relation to the hand give him a rest. Then you can
start on demonstrating that the pole has hierarchy over the station.
For this step, repeat as above, but with the pole and station versus the hand and
pole. Once this is completed, do the hand and the station, so that the animal knows that
the hand takes precedence over the station. Next do all three together.
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Start by holding a station target in one hand and touching the bull's-eye of this target
with a two-finger point of the other hand. Bridge the animal upon contact. Next trial, place
the fingers about two inches from the bull's-eye, and draw the animal's attention to the
target by jiggling it a bit. If he starts to go to the fingers, make them disappear and jiggle
the target again. Bridge upon contact. Move the point further from the bull's-eye with
ensuing targets, so that the point tells the animal where to look for the target and the
animal is confident where to go to get his bridge. This skill is very helpful in teaching the
animal to go into a kennel, crate or room.
Conclusion:
The applications for the Bridge and the Target are endless. For example:
"Calm": If you want an animal to be calm, you pick a cue to name the calm state, such as
"easy" (or calm, settle, relax - whatever you would like to have as a cue), and you watch
for instance when your animal is being "easy". Every time you see him being calm, or
"easy", you bridge the animal and say "easy". In other words, you name the present, calm
state and pair it with a bridge, which tells the animal that he is going to be getting
something good, just for being calm. "Come": Teach the animal to touch his muzzle to
a target whenever you present the target and a verbal cue "here". The instant the animal
arrives at the target and touches his muzzle to it, you bridge him (say "X"). Many people
find it hard to believe, but animals will leave food to run to a target when it is presented,
and they learn to pass up food on the way to a target.
Once the trainer has chosen the signal to serve as a bridge, that signal should be
communicated to the animal. Initially, the signal can be paired with the presentation of
food (or anything else the animal likes). As trials progress, the food lags behind the bridge
in increasing increments. The goal is for the animal to perceive the bridge as the signal
that food is coming. Eventually the animal will learn that the food is coming as a result of
the behavior that was occurring at the instant the bridge was issued. The bridge should
have no other meaning to either the trainer or the animal to maintain consistency in the
desired reaction to the bridge or cue.
In the Syn Ali program, although clicks, whistles or any other noise may be appropriate,
the same bridge, for example the letter "X" should be the universal signal for this program.
It will benefit all involved if the signal is universal. Young animals can be started and then
transferred to higher levels of the Syn Ali program enabling more difficult tasks to be
initiated immediately, if the ground work, e.g., bridging and targeting, is ingrained in the
animal. This will save time and money for the animal's owner/trainer. This is also true for
the older animal.
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The trainer has successfully established the bridge when the following conditions
are met:
1) Stand before the animal until it loses interest in your presence.
2) Issue the bridge without any other feeding related cues (such as hand motion).
3) The animal should immediately turn toward the bridge.
Virtually any behavior can be trained faster and easier by targeting. Nonetheless,
sometimes people will report that targeting does not work. The problem is usually in the
way the target was presented, and the order, or logic, of the targeting steps. Once the
logic is repaired, the problems dissolve.
Even if it is the trainer's fault that he is not communicating effectively using the
target, it is still a frustration. A methodical approach to organizing the training presentation
will help prevent this problem and streamline the entire training effort. A bit of discipline
at the outset will save a lot of time in the long run, and is always worth the investment.
The first thing to do is to step back and gain an overall perspective on how targeting
works. It was stated above that targeting pinpoints the location of a desired behavior. For
early trainers working with the animal's spontaneously offered behavior, targeting allowed
specific behavior, or a specific point of a behavior, to be tagged for the animal's particular
notice. Well and good. This allowed the trainer try to bring the animal's notice to things that
he was doing, however, as discussed, at any instant, an animal is creating hundreds of
different behaviors, and even when tagged with a bridge, the animal must still go through
a process of elimination to isolate the one thing the trainer is interested in. The great power
of the target is that it allows the trainer to show the animal the exact point (place, location,
body part) for the animal to contact in order to earn a bridge.
In turn, by showing the animal a series of target contact points, the trainer can lead
the animal through any range of motion or series of motions or position or combination of
positions that he can describe with these contact points. The trainer no longer has to wait
for the animal to spontaneously do some behavior. Any behavior can be described. This
also allows the trainer to introduce behaviors that the animal does not spontaneously offer,
and to introduce concepts such as wait, over, under, through, stop, go, remember....
Two of the great animal behaviorists, Keller and Marian Breland, wrote in "Animal
Behavior" about the many things they taught animals to do just using a bridge. Their
achievements included teaching animals to do whole chains of behavior, for example
teaching a raccoon to climb up a "tree," remove a coin, bring it down the tree and put it in
a bank. When the behavior broke down however, and the raccoon started continuously
"washing" the coin and refused to give it up to the bank, the Brelands had no way to "fix"
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the behavior, and concluded that one cannot train against an animal's instincts with any
reliability.
We now know that this is not so. We routinely cross instincts with the behaviors we
train, and with the proper preparation we can expect more than 95% reliability. Targeting
makes this difference - it allows us to introduce new or specific ideas to the animals, and
it allows us to go in and fix any part of a behavior that "breaks."
Besides the information we can give to the animal with a target, the target gives the
nonverbal animal a means of giving the trainer direct feedback. When an animal touches
the target (s)he tells the trainer two things:
1. (s)he recognizes the "point" of behavior.
2. (s)he is willing to cooperate.
If these two conditions are not met, no training will occur with any kind of efficiency.
Knowing the power of targeting, we need only tap into all that power.
The first caution is: do not use the target to capture a spontaneously offered
behavior by inserting the target to tag the behavior in progress - even though the target
allows the trainer to do this with greater efficiency than the bridge alone allows. It is like
using a baseball bat to bunt a ball - it will hit the ball further than your hand alone would,
but there is a more powerful way to use a bat, and the use of the bunt is very limited.
Even to capture a behavior the animal spontaneously offers, the target is best used
to systematically describe the behavior from beginning to end, at which point the trainer will
name it for the animal, with a cue. In other words, when seeing an animal spontaneously
create a desired behavior - do not interfere. Merely make a mental note that the animal
is physically and mentally able to do this behavior. You can also name it and bridge, but
I do not give food. Instead, I go back and describe the behavior to the animal and agree
on a cue that will represent it. Start from the beginning and describe every part of the
behavior and its limits - just as if the animal had never done the behavior. Once the animal
is following the target to accurately recreate the behavior - name it. In the long-run, this
thoroughness will save time and frustration.
Teaching the targeting concept to an animal is like teaching the alphabet and
phonetics to children. There is a sizable time investment at first, but the children will be
able to read or write anything as a result. The alternative would be to teach the children
to recognize words by rote. A child could be taught to recognize the words stop, bank, bus
stop, in less time than it takes to learn to read - but to teach a child all of language this way
is very inefficient.
An animal is initially taught to touch the target whenever it is presented with some
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specified body part such as muzzle or rostrum. Once the animal acquires this concept,
myriads of behaviors can be communicated.
Immediately the animal can be asked to "come" as long as he can view the target.
"Heel" is a series of target touches to the side of the trainer. "Jump" is a target held just
out of reach. "Get up on the chair" is a target held high enough over a chair that the
animal climbs the chair in order to touch the target, likewise "get in the car."
This is not to suggest that the trainer juggle five target poles at once. Introduce the
muzzle target first, target the muzzle to the ground, link this to a cue - e.g., a two-finger
point to the ground. Fade out the first target while maintaining the cue. Insert the second
target, target the front flipper to the ground, add it to the finger point cue, fade the second
target. Maintain the first two target points on cue, insert the third target... etc.. Even if this
seems tedious, it is more efficient to train correctly the first time around than to correct a
badly formed concept later.
Comfortable Animals:
Most animals will investigate things, leading with the muzzle. An exception is a
primate. Like us they often lead with their hands. Determine what body part the animal
leads with - this will be the animal's first target contact point. Extend the target, for
example, a balled fist or a target pole end - if the animal might lead with its dentition. The
animal will extend to investigate the "target". Bridge the instant the animal makes contact
with your extended target, Follow with another reinforcer. Be ready. Many neophytes are
so absorbed in watching their animal they miss the opportunity to bridge the initial contact
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(note: this is an example of opportunistic training). By the time they correct themselves,
the animal is no longer curious about this "target." If the trainer is prepared, he can teach
the target in less than a minute. This estimate is based on experience with horses, cows,
animals, dogs, cats, - most domestic animals. If the animal will not approach, or if the first
opportunity is missed, keep the faith and read on.
Uncomfortable Animals:
Most exotic animals, even if tame, are not as interested in spontaneous contact with
humans as domesticated animals are. Some do not even want to look at a human initially.
These animals just take a bit longer.
First, make sure that the animal eats well and that it has acclimated to its present
home (general guideline - thirty days) before beginning a training program. Even if the
animal enjoys interaction with the trainer, it requires energy from the animal which should
not be taken away from initial adjustment to new quarters.
Once the animal is ready, start feeding it by hand. If the animal will not eat in your
presence, toss a piece of food to the animal and back off until the animal eats it. Then stay
where you are and toss the second piece to the same spot. If the animal eats - toss the
next one a little further away to give the animal a tension rest. Toss the next one a bit
closer to you. It may take a few days but soon the animal will eagerly anticipate your
presence and eat from wherever you present the food - even directly out of your hand.
While this is happening, establish the bridge.
Now start target training. Insert a padded target pole between the animal and the
food, so that the animal inadvertently brushes the target on the way to the food. The
instant the animal makes accidental contact with the target in the shoulder area, bridge the
contact (shoulder contact appears to be the least invasive to many animals). As the animal
continues to approach to take food, move the target so that the animal intercepts it closer
and closer to its muzzle. Soon it can be moved directly into the path of the muzzle on its
way to food. The animal will usually just bump the target out of the way. Make sure you
are ready to bridge this contact.
The target can now start to proceed the food presentation. As soon as the target
contact is stable, move the target presentation to one side and present the food a little to
the other, and farther back than the target. The instant the animal touches the target,
bridge and feed. If the animal goes for the food first instead of the target, make the food
disappear - so that the most direct path to the food is through the target - even if that does
not look like the most direct path. Pretty soon, it will be possible to put the food between
the animal and the target, and the animal will pass up the food to get to the target. This
is an important step in training - not to be passed up. The animal must decide to cooperate
with the trainer. The animal must not think that it is grabbing food from the trainer. It is
questionable to use food as a lure of any type - including but not limited to high jumps - for
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the above reason.
8. When a second target is introduced, maintain contact with the first target while
touching the second one.
9. For every added target, keep the already established targets in constant contact.
10. A target pole is an extension of the target hand - touch it whenever presented.
11. The target station is the extension of the target pole touch it whenever asked.
12. If more than one target is presented, the order of priority is hand, then pole,
then station.
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Chapter Four:
Planning Behaviors
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Planning Behaviors:
While teaching the concepts of targeting, one should be planning the training of
behaviors. This approach is recommended: forecast the entire captive life of the animal
in training. List all the behaviors that this animal will be taught. Prioritize them. Now break
them all down into components. A component is an ingredient of a behavior. The behavior
jump is a one-target-point behavior but it has two components even in the simplest of
conditions.
Now a word about conditions - every behavior is known to be reliable only under the
conditions it has been trained and tested. A behavior trained in a laboratory with no
audience, no traffic sounds, no loose dogs, no intense lights, and no other trainers or other
animals being trained - can be 99% reliable in the laboratory but will be a mess in the real
world. The animal must be taught about the conditions of the arena in which it will work
before it can be reliable in these conditions.
Conditions can be divided into two categories that can be called distractions and
parameters.
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One of the most important rules of training is to present only one piece of new
information, or one "variable" at a time. More than one variable can be presented in a
session, but only one at a time in a serial sequence. In order to do this successfully, the
trainer must analyze the information that (s)he is going to present. Distractions and
parameters have already been separated out. The next step is to decide exactly what the
behavior to be taught entails.
New trainers are asked to write the exact description of the behavior they wish to
train including the limits of the behavior. There are a lot of complaints from new people
that this is a most difficult thing ... there are those of us not so new people that recall
grumbling about this exercise. It appears to be difficult for people to define exactly what
they want. Yet, this step is crucial because one cannot communicate to the animal what
(s)he cannot clearly state for herself.
1. The toggle must be flipped until it hits the opposite of the plate (versus the light coming
on, which may not be in the monkey's control if the bulb is burned out).
2. If the trainer stops here (s)he is courting trouble because eventually the monkey will try
to get more rewards per cue by flipping the toggle multiple times per a single command.
So before this situation, frustrating to both trainer and monkey, occurs, it is best to
communicate to the monkey that the cue is indicates one flip only.
3. Finally, the trainer must communicate any other limitations such as do not use the
mouth or sticky hands.
Flipping a light switch is a very simple behavior. A more complicated behavior will
require yet more analysis before it is presented to the animal partner. For example,
consider teaching an animal to rotate in a circle. The trainer must decide if he wants the
animal to rotate on an axis or to make a large round pass. How will the trainer
communicate he wants a round and not an ellipse? In short, once the trainer determines
exactly what conditions he wants he must then define the behavior that will encompass
all the conditions.
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If one looks at behaviors as geometric shapes moving through space and acted
upon by physical forces, then one has a built in rule system for analyzing and defining
behaviors, as described in any Euclidean geometry book. Thus if a trainer wants an animal
to rotate in a circle, he looks at the geometric definition of a circle .
A circle is the set of points that are equidistant from an axis point.
That means that the trainer will require at least two target points to teach the circle concept
- one to establish the axis and one to establish the radius. The axis will be established first
and then held constant. The radius target will rotate around the constant axis. The skeptic
who thinks two targets are not required to teach a circle concept may luck out, but the odds
are against it. I recommend using two targets.
If a circle is the set of points equidistant around an axis, a spiral is a circle moving
vertically on its axis, through space. A flip is a circle also - but with a twist - this circle must
be "committed" while the animal is still in the water because the instant it leaves the water
it does not have much ability to change its motion. A circle on the land will always be on
the ground plane, a circle in the water is zero gravity and can be constantly controlled and
adjusted by the animal, a circle through the air has little friction - but lots of gravity to act
against.
Thus it is most logical to train flips underwater where the animal has good control,
name the completed concept, and then put it in the air. It takes about two-three weeks to
train an animal in good physical condition to finish a flip.
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Chapter Five:
Analysis of Behaviors
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Analyzing Behaviors
COMPONENT: The smallest piece of a behavior after the target. A target vector, or a
target with an additional quality such as motion, duration, or pressure. The basic building
block of a behavior.
Below are several examples of analyzed behaviors. The behaviors are comprised
of components. For our purposes, a component is the simplest organized behavior except
for a simple touch. A component is a touch with some special quality like motion,
resistance, contact duration or orientation to another object (like "mouth around ball").
Components can be grouped into modules - the module being a simple sub-behavior in a
more complex whole. Groups of modules form behaviors. Groups of behaviors form
behavioral chains. Simpler than the component is the concept. Concepts are the basis
of everything the animal learns - but they are often the last thing the animal is taught. This
is because their very simplicity makes them difficult to communicate. How does one
describe time, intensity, eternity or immortality? Often we find ourselves not even trying
to develop concepts - we just teach behaviors and leave the animal to systematize his
learning however he happens to.
1. COME
Contact a target presented by the trainer, from any distance or direction
regardless of distractions.
components:
target
distance
direction
2. SIT
Keep head at standing level while bringing back legs
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forward and haunches to the ground.
components:
target 1. - Keep head stationary.
target 2. - Lead hips from horizontal to the ground.
3. ROLL OVER -
NOTE: The difference in targeting requirements is due to the difference in the physical
environments of the two animals - the dolphin is in the water, and we presumed the sea
lion was on land.
4. PILLAR SPIRAL
components:
module one: Cylinder
target 1 - Muzzle target to describe the vertical axis of the
cylinder.
target 2 - The other end of the axis can be left to gravity in
many cases. If the animal is confused, insert a second
target, extending the flipper tips - the other end of the
cylinder's axis.
target 3 - To either the point of the shoulder or an extended
flipper (depending if want the flippers extended during
the spiral - or not) to establish the radius of the cylinder.
rotate target 3 around the axis to trace the cylinder.
module two: Vertical pillar
target 1 - Muzzle target presented at the desired height to
describe "a vector on the y-axis". Once the animal
contacts the target his task is finished and he may fall
back into the water.
module three: Synthesis- put the "module one" behavior on a
cue and fade out all target contacts. While the animal
is floating in the water - give the "module one" cue and
insert the target pole at the muzzle axis again.
Gradually raise the vertical height (on the y axis) of the
muzzle target with successive trials. When the animal
has achieved the desired height (with good rotation)
assign a cue to this new behavior of modules one and
two combined. Fade out the target.
In the behaviors which were described above, it can be seen that all share at least
one component. Most share two or more. In fact, if any number of behaviors are
analyzed, based on physical stance or motion, they will probably have some combination
of the following thirteen components.
Components
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6. Carry: hold over distance traveled
7. Put (get something to a given destination)
8. Give (release contact)
9. Bat (make rigid contact with a moving target object)
10. Throw
11. Catch
12. Travel to a target point
13. Body contact and manipulation
This may not be an exhaustive list but it covers most behaviors that are commonly
trained.
Behavioral Chains:
When training - time and repetition are very important to the learning process. For
example, the more repeated an event, the easier it is recalled from memory, generally.
Things get complicated right away in trying to understand the relationship of time and
repetition to learning. For example, repetition usually occurs as time progresses. An
increase in time can decrease memory recall - sometimes it is difficult to see where the
trade-off occurs.
In spite of the complex interactions of animal biology, time and repetition, a few
axioms have emerged.
B) We also know that animals seem to remember the things they have done most and
the things they have done most recently.
A misinterpretation of these two facts has spawned the rule of thumb - "Teach
behavioral chains in the reverse of the order in which they are performed" in other words,
teach the last part of the chain first, then the second to the last, etcetera. This saying is
an anachronism from the days before targeting was understood. Here is a modified axiom
that will much more useful to the high-performance trainer:
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C) Divide a complex or chained behavior into its parts, and teach these parts however
logic dictates. Once they are all mastered, teach their order (in the behavior or chain) in
the reverse that it will be performed.
This modified axiom stems from the understanding that an animal can only learn
one thing at a time. He can learn many things in succession, but at any given instant he
can only focus on one new piece of information. When an animal is learning a new
behavior, each component or module is a new concept - a change or variable. If these
new variables are taught at the same time as their order in their complex
behavior/behavioral chain - then the animal is being presented with two variables at once -
the new behavior and the new order.
COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS
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behavioral chain etc paragraph
behavioral chain paragraph of set
with parameters number of words
behavioral chain etc
with parameters
and distractions
This comparison gets a bit tentative at times because each system is uniquely
suited to its task and therefore the systems do not perfectly parallel one another. Targets
and points and letters can all be combined to describe something - like a shape or a
concept or a word. All these things can be modified. In training and physics, they can be
modified by direction, forces, distractions/ parameters or coefficients, dimensions,
intensities, or amounts. Words can be modified by adverbs and adjectives, tense, person,
voice, gender and case.
In all three examples, despite dissimilarities, once one learns the system one can
communicate extremely complex situations and concepts via the extremely simple building
blocks of the system. Literature can be organized into any kind of book, physics into
problems/solutions/theories and behaviors into behavioral chains and habits.
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Chapter Six:
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Creating the Global Training Plan:
Now that we have considered the analysis of the individual behavior and the
behavioral chain here is a way to create a plan for your entire training program:
First, make two time lines for each type of animal under consideration. One is a life
line. Draw one for each type of animal in training. Mark the animal's birth date and the end
of the line is the longevity record for that animal plus some extra. (It is nice to think our
animals will be so well managed that they will exceed all longevity records.) Divide the time
line into years and chart out all the major events of the animal's natural lifetime cycle.
Include weaning, first moults, puberty, onset of breeding life, etcetera. This line may be
different for males and females but both can usually be incorporated on the same line(if
you are planning for a group of animals).
The second line is an annual time line for the year being planned. It can start with
any month of the year - like a fiscal calendar. On this calendar make note of the important
annual events in the life cycle of the animal species. This schedule will vary according to
the sex and age of the animals. For example, males and females may enter into "breeding
season" at different times. Males do not lactate, and females may not shed antlers. Adult
animals do not wean and young animals may have different shed or moult times than
adults. Incorporate any life line events that will occur that year that are not necessarily
repeated annually. Also incorporate any major managerial events that can be anticipated -
such as separation of young form adults or males from females, transfers, worming dates,
physical exam work ups, exhibit repairs, tourist onslaughts, disruptive weather seasons
(e.g., very hot/humid), exhibit openings anything that may require the animal to spend
energy to adapt to an event that is out of the ordinary. (Eventually, all the animal types,
sexes and ages can be put onto one line. Initially, it may be easier to put only one type or
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sex of animal on line.)
The result will be a line for the year under consideration with various dates blocked.
The training agenda will be superimposed over this year line. At times when life is
relatively dull for the animals, the training schedule can be pushed a bit. When the animal
is under a lot of situational stress, the trainer must be careful with training demands.
Besides spacing stress, time lines are useful in setting goals and priorities. For example,
the trainer can lessen an animal's stress by arranging to train veterinary examination
behaviors before the routine physical examination. Crate and transfer training can occur
well in advance of the actual transfer. Animals facing their first "season" can be
desensitized to audience and crowd distractions before the people arrive.
The next step of the process is to make a list of all the behaviors to be taught. As
suggested above, consider teaching any behaviors that will lessen the stress on the animal
during its life. Also on the list will be show and research behaviors, play behaviors, group
management, communication signals, symbols and concepts. Safety behaviors should be
right at the top of the list.
Next is the most tedious step of the process. Break all the behaviors into their
components. If this seems too great an expenditure of time please reconsider. As
behaviors are analyzed and the components are listed, behaviors start falling into teaching
levels. In other words, the various behaviors will have components in common. With the
training of each component progress is made on many behaviors at once. For example,
with a simple target come the behaviors "come," "high jump," and "heel." With a target
transferred to a remote station symbol one can create "kennel," "stay," and "do not charge
the door." "Veterinary examination" and harness training are simply targets maintained in
spite of manipulation of the body. "Brushing teeth" is an upper an lower jaw target with a
disregard of manipulation and taste - so is giving back food or objects for retrieval.
Once components have been analyzed and separated out behaviors can be
grouped according to importance and components in common, and the presentation of
training material can be prioritized. Schedule training goals over the time line taking into
account situational stressors of the animal's yearly cycle.
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Chapter Seven:
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The Individual Training Session
Training sessions can be of any length as long as the animal agrees to participate.
However, one of the most difficult problems the author encountered was a tendency to let
sessions go too long. The animals worked well but when the sessions were significantly
shortened their effectiveness actually increased. A session can be as short as a few
seconds. Sometimes it is best to make one significant point and quit - let the lesson sink
in while the animal appreciates the unexpected free time, a bonus for prompt cooperation.
Sophisticated animals can work at learning for well over an hour - especially if they
enjoy what they do. However, the prime attention span for learning may be about twenty
minutes of maximal concentration to the task. Longer than twenty minutes and the time
may be put to better use by breaking it into two smaller sessions. Sometimes, animals will
want to go longer and will solicit the trainer's attention to interact. Sometimes they will
practice on their own. Many animals love to learn, accomplish goals, and achieve
recognition from the trainer and audience. The author's animals work and play alongside
her - as the situation allows. At times, they have worked for 18 hour stretches. It is not the
norm, but neither is it a problem for trainer nor animal. It is a way of life to live, learn and
work together. Taking the above factors into consideration, training priorities can be
presented in training sessions.
Once the training agenda has been analyzed, it is easy to make great
accomplishments with minimal expenditures of time - and sometimes no actual session.
For example, a tape player with music and sound effect tapes can be used to desensitize
an animal. Relaxation cues can be played at sleep time. Objects that will be used for
training can be put in with the animal during off time, or used as a toy. Objects slated for
desensitization can be left by a gate to flash at the animals as they pass by. Secondary
reinforcers can be introduced for a few seconds as a trainer wanders by. All of these
things are easy as long as the trainer is organized to get them accomplished.
In summary, try to -
1. Vary the lengths of sessions as well as the type, difficulty, and order of material
that is presented.
2. Keep the session concise.
3. Try to always end on a positive note - that is, with the animal being successful.
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Chapter Eight:
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The Training Transaction
One of the most confusing aspects of thinking about animal behavior and how it is
managed is: no animal creates a single behavior. Instead, an animal creates a steady
stream of behavior. Any attempt to break this continuum into separate, specific behaviors
is arbitrary. The trainer must decide exactly what constitutes a specific behavior. Then the
trainer must communicate to the animal this very same information, and they must agree
to refer to a specific segment of behavior continuum by a name or cue. Cues and
behaviors can be changed or exchanged interminably, as long as all parties concerned
understand and agree to honor the changes.
It can be difficult to figure out how to explain something to an animal if one cannot
define it for ones self. The text of this manual, Volume I, is devoted to guiding a trainer's
analysis, definition and communication to their animals.
Once the behavior is communicated, the trainer must motivate the animal to
duplicate the behavior described. This is the main subject of the next manual, Volume II.
The training process is not broken up as these two manuals are, into the discipline
of communication logic and the art of motivation. Instead, the two are inextricably
intertwined along the animal's behavior continuum.
The trainer starts out with a definition of the behavior to be communicated and a
plan to present this information to the animal in discrete, logical steps - one new piece of
information at a time. Training commences.
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request but interactive with the trainer ("I will not
retrieve, but I will do a flip),
it can bite the trainer for the impudence of the
request.
it can do nothing.
Etcetera...
9. The trainer sets the environment for the next step - to facilitate the next step in learning.
Etcetera, until the entire behavior and the conditions under which it will be required
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are fully communicated to the animal and the animal indicates that he receives and
understands the information and agrees to cooperate by translating the trainer's input into
a tangible behavior.
Appendices
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Appendix One: Terminology Organized by Subject
Terminology is a loaded gun, only as good or as bad as the trainer using it...
potentially lethal to understanding and communication. Many a discussion has been
maimed or killed by someone carelessly shooting terminology at innocent bystanders.
The terminology in this appendix is derived from the body of operant psychology
literature. It is important to all trainers because it is a base for communications amongst
ourselves, and also with scientists in fields related to ours. If used correctly, we gain
understanding, credibility and prestige amongst others who depend on this terminology to
conduct their business - credibility because they will be able to readily see that we
understand concepts we hold in common, and prestige because we went to the effort to
be learn the terminology correctly, demonstrating dedication and understanding.
With the knowledge that terminology is necessary, a glossary of some terms related
to training, operant conditioning and behavior are included. The list is not exhaustive. It
is merely an introduction to some of the most basic and useful definitions. The reader is
encouraged to compare these definitions and explanations to those that can be obtained
in a psychology text book. Many will be exactly the same, but some will not. The author
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has referenced many sources of definitions for the terms included, and has found some
to be confusing, incomplete or otherwise difficult (negative reinforcer is commonly
misused, even by professionals). Therefore, terms are expanded and discussed and
exemplified in some instances.
The reader is encouraged to compare this glossary with that of any psychology text
book defining the same terms. Some terms, such as operant and stimulus, are part of the
body of psychological literature. The term "bridge" is sometimes used amongst
psychologists but is probably more often referred to as a "conditioned stimulus". The term
"target" is not in frequent use amongst psychologists, but is widely used amongst trainers,
however, the author has seen it defined only as a contact point on a paddle or pole, and
not as an action by the animal or a concept, even though in common usage this term has
all three dimensions. A few terms, such as "distraction" and "parameter" are common
words which the author introduces with specific meanings for training contexts.
As with any part of this manual, the author begs the critical attention of the reader
and welcomes discussion and comment. Knowledge advances only with critical
investigation, and any good understanding is strengthened by exercise - the author will be
honored if the reader will exercise hers. As possible, commentary generated by this
manual will be included in the next volume to be considered by all subscribers.
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TERMINOLOGY GROUPED ACCORDING TO USE
Discussion:
Below is a table of "likely" punishers and reinforcers to help clarify how punishers and
reinforcers, both negative and positive, are related to one another.
positive negative
punisher a slap loss of a privilege
reinforcer a food treat removal of a disliked food
The examples listed are neither always punishers nor reinforcers - it depends on the
perception of the individual animal and WHERE THE ADDED STIMULUS IS, RELATIVE
TO THE BEHAVIOR UNDER CONSIDERATION.
Remember that the same stimulus, such as a "bee stinging" can be either a punisher
or a negative reinforcer depending on whether it was administered in response to a
behavior - e.g., the bear stole honey and the bee stung it; (the bear was punished for
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stealing honey); or - the bear killed the bee and removed the sting sensation; the bear was
negatively reinforced for killing the bee.
As seen above, not only can a single stimulus be either a reinforcer or a punisher,
it can serve two different functions in the same application. It can be the punisher for the
behavior it follows and the stimulus which, when removed, becomes the negative reinforcer
for the behavior that immediately follows it.
Analogously, the positive reinforcer for one behavior can be the negative punisher
in another case, e.g., the animal does a behavior - it gets to play with a ball. The animal
disregards a command, the ball is taken away- the ball is first a reinforcer, then a punisher.
When speaking of reinforcers and punishers, refer to the behavior - not to the animal
(or its "character"). i.e., the behavior is punished (or decreased), the dog is not. The
behavior is reinforced - not rewarded. The animal can be rewarded - although it may be
hard for the trainer to know when the animal feels rewarded. It is easier to see if the
frequency of a behavior increases than to make a subjective judgment of the animal's state
of mind.
8. PRIMARY: A quality that an animal responds to innately in a certain way, without any
conditioning from a human. A primary reinforcer might be food, sex, water, sleep ... a
primary punished might be the deprivation of any of the above, fear, pain...
9. SECONDARY: A quality that an animal responds to because its perception has been
conditioned. A secondary reinforcer is something that initially had no significance to an
animal and then became desired by the animal because of its association with other
desired, primary reinforcers - in training this is often food. Once a secondary reinforcer is
established, it can be very strong - just as strong as primary reinforcers in animals that are
in normal drive state (not deprived of anything) and are not driven by hormone surges at the
time.
10. TIME OUT: The cessation of stimulus or response from the trainer, for some interval
of time. In essence, the animal receives no cues from the trainer, but also cannot influence
the trainer to produce a consequence such as food or praise until the "time out" or TO has
passed.
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11. SCHEDULE OF REINFORCEMENT: The type, amount and frequency of the
reinforcement that will be given when a task is completed. There are generally considered
to be three basic schedules:
A. CONTINUOUS: one reinforcer for one task or a set amount of reinforcer for one
task, every task gets paid the same.
Often still preferred for work with birds, but is usually considered dangerous to use
with many animals because it sets up a rigid expectation - a right to payment as it were.
When the time comes that the trainer has no reinforcer on hand, he may have no behavior
or the animal may become frustrated, angry and aggressive. Also this strategy sets the
animal up to plan how many behaviors, and which behaviors he will do today. He can even
manipulate the situation so that he does something wrong which he has to be paid to
correct, earning all the reinforcers he can appreciate that day, and letting him refuse all
subsequent behaviors at no loss to himself.
B. FIXED: A set amount of reinforcer for a set amount of task, for example one
apple for every ten lever pecks. In some case this schedule can cause an animal to work
longer and faster to get a reinforcer.
12. STIMULUS: Any environmental condition which impinges on the animal's sensory
perception.
15. STRESSOR: A stimulus which requires some adaptation from the animal. It is
recommended that stressors be considered as costs of living. Any animal has an
energy/adaptability "budget" for living - just like a human makes a certain amount of
money. If you spend more money on medical bills one month there is less for
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entertainment. All expenditures together cannot exceed the total income without severe
repercussions. Likewise, if an animal is sick - it has less to invest in adapting to a new
environment or strange conditions.
Stressors are valued differently by different animals. Some animals love to have physical
exercise and have a higher tolerance for demands in this area than the normal animal of
their type. Perhaps the same animal has a terrible time holding still for a veterinarian
examination, subsequently finding this "stressful." With good training the animal will
become proficient at the vet examination - it will no longer require as much "adaptation"
effort, and the animal will no longer perceive it as being "stressful." A second animal
could be the opposite, enjoying the veterinarian examination and being stressed by rigorous
physical demands.
16. BRIDGE: A signal that pinpoints an instant in time for the animal in training.
A. Intermediate Bridge: Signals the animal that at that instant it is on the path
to success, but it has not completed the behavior yet. In this manual, the intermediate
bridge is a softly spoken "x", denoted as a lower case x.
17. TARGET(noun): A prop which pinpoints a critical location for an animal in training. This
location may be a body contact point on the stationary animal, it may be a destination
point, or it may be a place where other critical information will appear. The target can be
an extended finger or fist, the end of a pole, a mark on a wall or a paper, a plaque...
Essentially, the trainer and the animal each extend a target contact point toward the other,
meeting in the middle. Thus, the human extends a pole and the dolphin touches with a
rostrum, or the human extends a finger and the primate extends a finger to touch.
18. NEUTRAL CUE: A discrete signal with no initial meaning. Its meaning is acquired
through association with a primary stimulus and related reflex response.
19. CUE: A signal which will elicit a specific behavior or reflex - as a result of a learned
association.
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20. REFLEX: An involuntary physiological reaction to a stimulus - such as drooling when
food is presented.
21. OPERANT: A response to the environment (a stimulus) that the animal initiates to act
upon, or operate his environment. Pushing a lever is an operant, so is barking or sitting
down or biting down.
23. HABIT: A behavior which an animal routinely emits without a cue presented by a
trainer. The behavior may have initially been taught by a trainer or the animal may have
originated it. For example, a person is initially taught by his mother to brush his teeth after
eating. This can become a habit which the person continues without his mother there to
remind him. A person may develop certain gestures while speaking, that were not
specifically taught and are not part of the actual seeking process, and continue these
gesture habits indefinitely. Or a person may be conditioned to eat at a specific time. He
habitually eats at that time, cued by internal body conditions.
25. COMPONENT: The smallest piece of a behavior after the target. A target vector, or a
target with an additional quality such as motion, duration, or pressure. The basic building
block of a behavior.
27. BEHAVIOR: A specific action created by an animal. For the purposes of training, an
animal action defined and named by the trainer.
28. BEHAVIORAL CHAIN: A group of behaviors in a specific order forming a more complex
behavior, and defined as a unit to the animal.
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30. CLASSICAL or RESPONDENT CONDITIONING: Sometimes referred to as Pavlovian
conditioning. Classical conditioning results in a reflex (versus a behavior) which can be
elicited by a cue. A reflex is elicited by a primary stimulus - e.g., savory food elicits saliva,
pain elicits rapid withdrawal, etcetera. In classical conditioning, a neutral cue is associated
with an eliciting stimulus, and eventually becomes an eliciting stimulus. This type of
conditioning does not involve any voluntary choices made by the animal - just a reflex
response or reaction.
34. SHAPING: The process of trying to create a behavior or put a behavior on cue by
selective or differential reinforcement.
Of all the operants the animal offers, approximations of the end-point desired behavior are
selectively reinforced until the behavior is formed. This entire process is considered
successive approximation. The trainer's strategy is selective or differential reinforcement.
This is not usually the strategy used with bridge and target technique. This is because with
a bridge and a target you start with a definite specific instruction. When the animal is
successful, it is given the next instruction. Each step is extremely simple - touch the target.
However as the process continues the set of instructions which communicated the
behaviors are more complex than the first instruction set - but no less specific.
In general, in bridge and target training, if the animal is motivated, it will be successful (it
has all the information it needs to do so.) Therefore, every response will be reinforced.
The behavior goes from simple to complex - but it is always refined. In successive
approximation, the behavior evolves from general to specific, and the animal zeros in on the
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desired response by a process of elimination. In bridge and target technique the animal
zeros in on the desired response by following a target.
Do not be misled to think that targeting will be a long and tedious process. Rather, the initial
progress will be slow because the steps are small. As the animal and the trainer
become proficient in the system, it can become almost as fast as explanations are in any
language. Going back to the reading analogy - consider how much time each human
invests in learning the alphabet, but in the end reading and speaking are very fast and
seem simple (except in front of audiences).
40. ESCAPE LEARNING: The process of learning to emit a behavior in order to escape
an aversive event in progress, e.g., if a room is too hot, a person will leave it to escape the
heat. If the person or animal can predict when the room will be too hot, they can then avoid
the room when it becomes hot. Thus, avoidance learning can directly follow escape
learning.
In animal training, an animal can be taught to allow a series of specific people to touch it.
Eventually, the animal will let all people pet him, even if they are strangers.
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42. LEARNED HELPLESSNESS: The state of considering oneself helpless because of the
failure of attempts to control a situation. Some animals will eventually quit trying.
This is why it is important for a trainer to set the animal up to be successful - so that it will
gain confidence and believe, through generalization, that since he could solve any situation
presented to date, he could solve any situation that could ever be presented. Thus he will
work hard to meet challenges rather than give up and passively accept consequences.
44. PARAMETERS: describe the amount or intensity of the distraction - how long or how
hard the pressure feeling is, how close or numerous or loud the audience. There can be
any number of distractions in an environment and there can be any number of parameters
to a given distraction.
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APPENDIX II: WORKING NOTES
INTRODUCTION
The requirements for learning are probably the same for all animals including
humans. They are simple and only 2 in number:
1. The thing to be learned must be effectively communicated to the student, human
or animal.
2. The student must be motivated to learn and perform.
YOUR SIGNIFICANCE
The animal must be given a reason to interact with the trainer. Start feeding by hand.
THE BRIDGE
The bridge begins as a signal to tell the animal food is coming. It becomes a way
to pinpoint time for the animal. Its significance continues to evolve, eventually serving at
least four functions. The bridge -
1. Pinpoints the exact instant desired behavior is created.
2. "Bridges" the gap of time between the instant the desired behavior is created and
the instant it is reinforced with food or other things.
3. Becomes a secondary reinforcer- pleasure inducing in its own right (e.g., praise,
for humans).
4. Increases your significance to the animal. Since you are giving signals that show
you are reacting to the animal's behavior, it will start to examine its behavior in order to
manipulate you to produce more bridges which in turn indicate more food, etc.
Additionally, more than one type of bridge can be used to communicate more
precisely to the animal.
Once the trainer has chosen the signal to serve as a bridge, that signal should be
communicated to the animal. Initially, the signal can be paired with the presentation of food
(or anything else the animal likes). As trials progress, the food lags behind the bridge, at
first imperceptibly, but with increasing time-lags over the trials. The goal is for the animal
to perceive the bridge as the signal that something good is coming. Eventually the animal
will learn that the "something good" is coming as a result of the behavior that was occurring
at the instant the bridge was issued.
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TESTING THE BRIDGE:
The trainer has successfully established the bridge when the following conditions are
met:
1) Stand before the animal until it loses interest in your presence.
2) Issue the bridge without any other feeding related cues (such as hand motion).
3) The animal should immediately turn toward the bridge.
THE TARGET
The most important function of the target is to focus the animal's attention on the
critical behavior, or the place where critical information will appear. Like the bridge, it
evolves to have four aspects.
1. The target pinpoints, in space, the exact spatial orientation, or location, of the
critical behavior.
3. It is the foundation for the formation of any physical motion or attitude the trainer
wants to create, and can be used to define many concepts as well.
Now start target training. Insert a padded target pole between the animal and the
food, so that the animal inadvertently brushes the target on the way to the food. The instant
the animal makes accidental contact with the target in the shoulder area, bridge the contact
(shoulder contact appears to be the least invasive to many animals). As the animal
continues to approach to take food, move the target so that the animal intercepts it closer
and closer to its muzzle. Soon it can be moved directly into the path of the muzzle on its
way to food. The animal will usually just bump the target out of the way. Make sure you are
ready to bridge this contact.
The first caution is: do not use the target to capture a spontaneously offered behavior
by inserting the target to tag the behavior when it is spontaneously offered by the animal -
even though the target allows the trainer to do this with greater efficiency than the bridge
alone allows. It is like using a baseball bat to bunt a ball - it will hit the ball further than your
hand alone would, but there is a more powerful way to use a bat.
Even to capture a behavior the animal spontaneously offers, the target is best used
to systematically describe the behavior from beginning to end, at which point the trainer will
name it for the animal, with a cue.
CONCEPTS OF TARGETING:
THE BEHAVIOR
List all the behaviors that this animal will be taught. Prioritize them. Now break them
all down into components. A component is an ingredient of a behavior.
COMPONENTS
This may not be an exhaustive list but it covers most behaviors that are commonly
trained.
MODULE
BEHAVIOR
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BEHAVIORAL CHAIN
A COMPLEX BEHAVIOR:
PILLAR SPIRAL
components:
module one: Cylinder
target 1 - Muzzle target to describe the vertical axis of the
cylinder.
target 2 - The other end of the axis can be left to gravity in
many cases. If the animal is confused, insert a second
target, extending the flipper tips - the other end of the
cylinder's axis.
target 3 - To either the point of the shoulder or an extended
flipper (depending if want the flippers extended during
the spiral - or not) to establish the radius of the cylinder.
rotate target 3 around the axis to trace the cylinder.
module two: Vertical pillar
target 1 - Muzzle target presented at the desired height to
describe "a vector on the y-axis". Once the animal
contacts the target his task is finished and he
may fall back into the water.
module three: Synthesis- put the "module one" behavior on a cue and
fade out all target contacts. While the animal is floating ni
the water - give the "module one" cue and insert the target pole
at the muzzle axis again. Gradually raise the vertical height (on
the y axis) of the muzzle target with successive trials. When the
animal has achieved the desired height (with good rotation)
assign a cue to this new behavior of modules one and two
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combined. Fade out the target.
B) We also know that animals seem to remember the things they have done most and the
things they have done most recently.
A misinterpretation of these two facts has spawned the rule of thumb - "Teach
behavioral chains in the reverse of the order they are performed in" in other words, teach
the last part of the chain first, then the second to the last, etcetera. This saying is an
anachronism from the days before targeting was understood. Here is a modified axiom that
will much more useful to the high-performance trainer:
C) Divide a complex or chained behavior into its parts, and teach these parts however logic
dictates. Once they are all mastered, teach their order (in the behavior or chain) in the
reverse that it will be performed.
HOW TO PLAN
First, please make two time lines. One is a life line. Draw one for each type of
animal you have. Mark the animal's birth date and the end of the line is the longevity record
for that animal plus some extra (it is nice to think our animals will be so well managed that
they will exceed all longevity records). Divide the time line into years and chart out all the
major events of the animal's natural lifetime cycle. Include weaning, first moults, puberty,
onset of breeding life, etcetera. This line may be different for males and females but both
can usually be incorporated on the same line.
The second line is an annual time line for the year being planned. It can start with
any month of the year - like a fiscal calendar. On this calendar, make note of the important
annual events in the life cycle of the animal species. This schedule will vary according to
the sex and age of the animals.
Forecast the entire captive life of the animal in training. List all the behaviors that this
animal will be taught. Prioritize them. Now break them all down into components.
Incorporate any life line events that will occur that year that are not necessarily repeated
annually. Also incorporate any major managerial events that can be anticipated
The result will be a line for the year under consideration with various dates blocked.
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The training agenda will be superimposed over this year line. At times when life is relatively
dull for the animals, the training schedule can be pushed a bit. When the animal is under
a lot of situational stress, the trainer must be careful with training demands. Besides
spacing stress, time lines are useful in setting goals and priorities.
Present only one piece of new information, or one "variable" at a time. More than
one variable can be presented in a session, but only one at a time in a serial sequence.
1. Vary the lengths of sessions as well as the type, difficulty, and order of material
that is presented.
2. Keep the session concise.
3. Try to always end on a positive note - that is, with the animal being successful.
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APPENDIX III: TERMINOLOGY, ALPHABETICALLY LISTED:
01. APPROXIMATION: A single step in the refinement process of shaping. Comes from
the idea that each differential or selective reinforcement selects a behavior that is a closer
approximation of the endpoint behavior than the previous response.
03. BEHAVIOR: A specific action created by an animal. For the purposes of training, an
animal action defined and named by the trainer.
04. BEHAVIORAL CHAIN: A group of behaviors in a specific order forming a more complex
behavior, and defined as a unit to the animal.
05. BRIDGE: A signal that is conditioned to be reinforcing because it is paired with other
reinforcers which evolves to pinpoint an instant in time for the animal in training.
A. Intermediate Bridge: Signals the animal that at that instant it is on the path
to success, but it has not completed the behavior yet. In this manual, the intermediate
bridge is a softly spoken "x", denoted as a lower case x.
07. COMPONENT: The smallest piece of a behavior after the target. A target vector, or a
target with an additional quality, such as motion, duration, or pressure. The basic building
block of a behavior.
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09. CONDITIONING: To create a predictable, "automatic" behavioral response in an
animal in response to a cue. The process of learning how signals, behaviors and
consequences are related.
10. CUE: A signal which will elicit a specific behavior or reflex - as a result of a learned
association.
15. ESCAPE LEARNING: The process of learning to emit a behavior in order to escape
an aversive event in progress, e.g., if a room is too hot, a person will leave it to escape the
heat.
If the person or animal can predict when the room will be too hot, they can then avoid the
room when it becomes hot. Thus avoidance learning can directly follow escape learning.
In animal training, an animal can be taught to allow a series of specific people to touch it.
Eventually, the animal will let all people pet him, even if they are strangers.
17. HABIT: A behavior which an animal routinely emits without a cue presented by a
trainer. The behavior may have initially been taught by a trainer or the animal may have
originated it. For example, a person is initially taught by his mother to brush his teeth after
eating. This can become a habit which the person continues without his mother there to
remind him. A person may develop certain gestures while speaking, that were not
specifically taught and are not part of the actual seeking process, and continue these
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gesture habits indefinitely. Or a person may be conditioned to eat at a specific time. He
habitually eats at that time, cued by internal body conditions.
This is why it is important for a trainer to set the animal up to be successful - so that it will
gain confidence and believe, through generalization, that since he could solve any situation
presented to date, he could solve any situation that could ever be presented. Thus he will
work hard to meet challenges rather than give up and passively accept consequences.
E.g., Mother with crying baby; Mother picks up baby; It stops crying; The baby was
positively reinforced for crying; The mother was negatively reinforced when the baby quit
crying.
24. NEUTRAL CUE: A discrete signal with no initial meaning. Its meaning is acquired
through association with a primary stimulus and related reflex response.
25. OPERANT: A response to the environment (a stimulus) that the animal initiates to act
upon, or operate his environment. Pushing a lever is an operant, so is barking or sitting
down or biting down.
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27. OPERANT CONDITIONING: To predictably elicit a specific operant, or behavior, in
response to a cue. An operant is a behavior that acts upon, or operates, the animal's
environment.
29. PARAMETERS: describe the amount or intensity of the distraction - how long or how
hard the pressure feeling is, how close or numerous or loud the audience. There can be
any number of distractions in an environment and there can be any number of parameters
to a given distraction.
32. POSITIVE REINFORCER - frequency of the behavior increased by the addition of some
thing the animal desires, immediately after the behavior.
33. PRIMARY: A quality that an animal responds to innately in a certain way, without any
conditioning from a human. A primary reinforcer might be food, sex, water, sleep ... a
primary punished might be the deprivation of any of the above, fear, pain...
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positive negative
punisher a slap loss of privilege
reinforcer a food treat removal of disliked food
The examples listed are neither always punishes nor reinforcers - it depends on the
perception of the individual animal and WHERE THE ADDED STIMULUS IS, RELATIVE
TO THE BEHAVIOR UNDER CONSIDERATION.
Remember that the same stimulus, such as a "bee stinging" can be either a punished or a
negative reinforcer depending on whether it was administered in response to a behavior -
e.g., the bear stole honey and the bee stung it; (the bear was punished for stealing honey);
or - the bear killed the bee and removed the sting sensation; the bear was negatively
reinforced for killing the bee.
The above example illustrates how important it is to be precise when applying reinforcers
and punishes to behaviors. Behaviors occur in a steady stream. As trainers, we decide
which point in the steady stream we want to increase or intensify. We use a tool such as a
bridge to pinpoint the exact instant on the behavior continuum, for the animal's
understanding.
As seen above, not only can a single stimulus be either a reinforcer or a punished, it can
serve two different functions in the same application. It can be the punished for the
behavior it follows and the stimulus which, when removed, becomes the negative reinforcer
for the behavior that immediately follows it.
Analogously, the positive reinforcer for one behavior can be the negative punished in
another case. The animal does a behavior, it gets to play with a ball. The animal
disregards a command, the ball is taken away.
When speaking of reinforcers and punishes, refer to the behavior - not to the animal (or its
"character").i.e., the behavior is punished (or decreased), the dog is not. The behavior is
reinforced - not rewarded. The animal can be rewarded - although it may be hard for the
trainer to know when the animal feels rewarded. It is easier to see if the frequency of a
behavior increases than to make a subjective judgment of the animal's state of mind.
or
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a set amount of reinforcer for one task, every
task gets paid the same.
39. SECONDARY: A quality that an animal responds to because it's perception has been
conditioned. A secondary reinforcer is something that initially had no significance to an
animal and then became desired by the animal because of its association with other
desired, primary reinforcers - in training this is often food. Once a secondary reinforcer is
established at can be very strong - just as strong as primary reinforcers in animals that are
in normal drive state (not deprived of anything) and are not driven by hormone surges at the
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time.
Of all the operants the animal offers, approximations of the endpoint desired behavior are
selectively reinforced until the behavior is formed. This entire process is considered
successive approximation or shaping. The trainer's strategy is selective or differential
reinforcement.
This is not usually the strategy used with bridge and target technique. This is because with
a bridge and a target you start with a definite specific instruction. When the animal is
successful, it is given the next instruction. Each step is extremely simple - touch the target.
However as the process continues the set of instructions which communicated the behavior
are more complex than the first instruction set - but no less specific.
In general, in bridge and target training, if the animal is motivated, it will be successful (it
has all the information it needs to do so.) Therefore, every response will be reinforced.
The behavior goes from simple to complex - but it is always refined. In successive
approximation, the behavior evolves from general to specific, and the animal zeros in on the
desired response by a process of elimination. In bridge and target technique the animal
zeros in on the desired response by following a target.
Do not be misled to think that targeting will be a long and tedious process. Rather, the initial
progress will be slow because the steps are small. As the animal and the trainer become
proficient in the system, it can become almost as fast as explanations are in any language.
Going back to the reading analogy - consider how much time each human invests in
learning the alphabet, but in the end reading and speaking are very fast and seem simple
(except in front of audiences).
41. SHAPING: The process of trying to create a behavior or put a behavior on cue by
selective or differential reinforcement.
42. STIMULUS: Any environmental condition which impinges on the animal's sensory
perception.
43. STRESSOR: A stimulus which requires some adaptation from the animal. It is
recommended that stressors be considered as costs of living. Any animal has an
energy/adaptability "budget" for living - just like a human makes a certain amount of
money. If you spend more money on medical bills one month - there is less for
entertainment. All expenditures together cannot exceed the total income without severe
repercussions. Likewise, if an animal is sick - it has less to invest in adapting to a new
environment or strange conditions.
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Stressors are valued differently by different animals. Some animals love to have physical
exercise and have a higher tolerance for demands in this area than the normal animal of
their type. Perhaps the same animal has a terrible time holding still for a veterinarian
examination, subsequently finding this "stressful." With good training the animal will
become proficient at the vet examination - it will no longer require as much "adaptation"
effort, and the animal will no longer perceive it as being "stressful." A second animal could
be the opposite, enjoying the veterinarian examination and being stressed by rigorous
physical demands.
45. TARGET(noun): A prop which pinpoints a critical location for an animal in training. This
location may be a body contact point on the stationary animal, it may be a destination point,
or it may be a place where other critical information will appear. The target can be an
extended finger or fist, the end of a pole, a mark on a wall or a paper, a plaque...
Essentially, the trainer and the animal each extend a target contact point toward the other,
meeting in the middle. Thus, the human extends a pole and the dolphin touches with a
rostrum, or the human extends a finger and the primate extends a finger to touch.
47. TIME OUT: The cessation of stimulus or response from the trainer, for some interval
of time. In essence, the animal receives no cues from the trainer, but also cannot influence
the trainer to produce a consequence such as food or praise until the "time out" or TO has
passed.
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APPENDIX IV: WORKING OUTLINE
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APPENDIX V: RULES OF THUMB
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APPENDIX VI: FIVE ALTERNATIVE TRAINING METHODS
Amazing and wonderful things have been accomplished between humans and
animals working together, without the benefit of the bridge or target. But when considering
traditional and other techniques of training, it can be firmly stated that the bridge and target
system is the most effective and advantageous training system evolved to date. Here are
a few comparisons with other systems:
1. MANIPULATION:
This is one way to describe much of the traditional animal training process. For
example, to teach a dog to sit, one pulls up on the head and pushes down on the rump. This
technique has allowed many wonderful training accomplishments but has the following
disadvantages.
A. Taught resistance
Many animals will initially resist any push or manipulation. This resistance may not
even be conscious - a typical response to jostling on the subway is to solidify one's
stance. A push often begets a return push, as predicted by Newton's third law of
motion "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction."
B. Passivity
Once the animal learns to tolerate the manipulation, it is not necessarily paying
attention to the manipulation. More likely it is not. Manipulation is used to condition
an animal to disregard intrusions such as veterinary procedures, or the application
of tack. It is not efficient for forming active cooperation. Consider what is
accomplished by molding a persons hand to grip a pencil. When this technique was
applied to the author as a child, the author remembers an urge to stab the teacher
with the said pencil. The author coped by ignoring the intrusion and fantasizing
herself elsewhere. Once the teacher gave up the manipulation as a bad job, the
author felt able to get back to learning how to hold a pencil.
With this method, the animal is first manipulated in spite of resistance, then it is
rewarded for lack of resistance, then it is expected to initiate the behavior on its own
in response to a cue. There is almost always an awkward phase where the animal
hasn't started to take a cue because it is so busy being passive. To get past this,
there is often the use of force - like a swat to the rump, to get the animal to start the
behavior to avoid the swat. Clumsy. (Not to be confused with the animal who does
understand his part and simply is not motivated to participate.)
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C. Useful in desensitization
The critical point is that manipulation does not elicit active cooperation, it elicits first
resistance, and then passive cooperation. The animal learns to pointedly ignore
manipulations while they occur (as long as he is not pushed to the point of running
or attacking.) Thus, manipulation is a useful tool in habituating an animal to
examinations and veterinary procedures, as well as "intensive" handling by children.
2. OPPORTUNISTIC TRAINING
This term will be used to describe situations wherein the trainer tries to capture
spontaneously occurring behaviors by bridging and reinforcing them as they are seen. If a
trainer sees a dolphin flip, the trainer might immediately issue a bridge and subsequently,
a primary reinforcer. The trainer now hopes to see an increased frequency of that behavior.
This is a nice theory but rarely works, for the reasons outlined above in the description of
the need for targets.
A. Inefficient
In any case, in general it takes less time to teach a behavior than it does to have that
behavior spontaneously occur once, much less in response to a cue. Similarly,
engineers can be trained in 4-5 years, while it took millions of years for the first
human to spontaneously discover calculus, one tool of engineering.
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B. Behaviors Break Down
Moreover, the behaviors obtained this way tend to break down easily and there is no
practical way to correct them. The Brelands, who have very impressive credits,
trained opportunistically and by successive approximation (see glossary). However,
they were frustrated by behaviors breaking down spontaneously, and found
themselves unable to correct the problems. They concluded in their book, Animal
Behavior, 1965, that animals could not be reliably taught to do these things, because
it crossed their instinctive behavior. One of the Breland's conclusions was that cows
could not be taught to move quickly to do behaviors.
When the author worked with cows trained by bridge and target they were plenty
fast. A few times the author saw her life race before her eyes as a cow raced toward
her target. Imagine being run over by a locomotive with rubber cement slobber.
Sometime after the conclusion of this training, a writer wanted to see a cow which
had participated in this research training project. The author was happy to comply,
but there was a little problem. The cows had started on new careers as milk-givers
and had joined a herd of about 150 head. The two authors visited the herd. The
trainer called "Maddyyy!"
The trainer was a bit dubious because there were so many cows it seemed like the
chances of sorting out a particular former student.
Suddenly the group of cows parted, a wave in a bovine Red Sea. Roaring up to the
fence, eyes wide with anticipation and calling out a greeting, was Maddy.
"Well, I am."
This is a story with a happy ending. It is always nice when the animal surprises the
audience and not the trainer. It shows that cows are trainable and that they are
willing to work at high speeds under at least some conditions. And it illustrates that
bridge and target training must be significantly easier for all involved, if it allowed the
author to easily accomplish what was problematic for the very talented Brelands.
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C. Capture behaviors that cannot be targeted
3. SUCCESSIVE APPROXIMATION:
This is the process of creating a specific behavior by starting with the natural
spontaneous behavior of an animal and then reinforcing those behaviors or aspects of
behavior which are increasingly like the end-goal behavior, also called "shaping" by some.
The hope is that each step will be more correct, specific or finished than the last. A bridge
of some form is used but a target is not. The desired behaviors are selectively or
differentially reinforced. Selective or differential reinforcement refers to the practice of
reinforcing only those offerings which are improvements or refinements over the last
behavior which was reinforced.
A. Prone to Failure
B. Inefficient
The author became completely convinced of the relative merits of targeting and
successive approximation by pitting the two methods in demonstrations. The author
would agree to train by targeting. The challenger, always a professor of psychology
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or an experienced trainer who claimed to use this technique, would train by
successive approximation. The author has always won decidedly. That is the
author's "animal" (usually a student) would successfully complete the task in a
fraction of the time required by the successive approximation "animal."
As with manipulation, there is a place for this technique. It can be used to enhance
behaviors that have already been formed by target.
If your horse were racing, successive approximation can be used to encourage the
animal to run faster - in other words, to greater effort in the direction that has already
been specifically described by target. Why not use the target here also? At high
speeds or great distances, it can be physically dangerous or impossible to insert a
target, and at the final stages of a behavior when the target is being "faded" out and
the behavior put solely under cue or "stimulus control," successive approximation
helps to polish the behavior.
Similarly, if training a monkey to feed a person by spoon, start with an empty spoon.
Once the monkey successfully moves the spoon in and out of a person's mouth, start
to put a little something into the spoon - a dab of peanut butter perhaps - and use
these to demonstrate the next criterion: the spoon not only has to move in and out
of the person's mouth, it has to arrive at the mouth with its contents intact and leave
without them. This process is one other aspect of successive approximation, where
the basic behavior is precisely defined, but some parameter of the behavior is
increased or intensified over successive trials.
Some claim that training by target in small steps is another form of successive
approximation. However, this is not the traditional use of the term. Targeting is
precise, it is not an approximation. In targeting, the trainer builds from a simple
specific to a more complex specific, but criteria are precisely defined. In successive
approximation, one attempts to build from a general behavior the animal offers to a
specific behavior existing in the trainer's mind. At no point does the trainer describe
the behavior for the animal. It requires the animal to make a series of trial and error
eliminations.
4. IMITATION:
Imitation can be risky to use with new animals or new trainers. Unless done correctly
it will not work and can cause serious damage to your relationship due to the frustration it
can engender. If a trainer shows an animal a behavior, saying "do this" - what is "this"?
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Presented thus, there are too many variables for efficient learning. For any chance of
success the trainer must initially stick to really simple behaviors if imitation is attempted.
Once the animal associates your behavior with some correlative behavior of its own in
response, the behavior can be put on cue. However, the mimic behavior is the animal's best
interpretation of what the trainer did. When training a task with target, the information can
be prioritized and logically presented, one variable at a time. Any aspect of the behavior
can be changed at any time. Moreover, if some part of the behavior "breaks down" it can
be fixed with a target but not with imitation.
If an object is involved and the trainer manipulates the object in some way saying "do
this" the animal has the same problem, although at least it has only one object to focus its
attention on rather than the trainer's total behavior. How will the animal know what the
purpose of the object is, or what the criteria of the behavior are? Consider, if the trainer
feeds himself with a spoon and then hands a spoon full of food to the monkey - the monkey
will eat the food if it is worth eating. Then follows a mutually frustrating stint of trying to keep
the monkey from eating the food. As things improve, the monkey will finally give up on trying
to keep the food and thrust the spoon of pudding toward the trainer. The trainer is now a
la mode with a spoon stuck in the eye, pudding in the hair, and a frustrated monkey. The
trainer will end up frustrated too - justly deserved for improper lesson preparation. It is
something to think about while removing food from hair.
On the up side, imitation requires the human to make an equal physical involvement
in the behavior initially, and this can be very motivating to the animals. When the trainer
shows that (s)he is as invested in the behaviors as the animal is asked to be, it becomes
mutual play rather than directed work. If the trainer goes first, and enjoys it, the rascally
critters will follow - so don't pull up too suddenly. Imitation also allows the trainer to imitate
the animal - letting the animal lead. The animals can appreciate this too - but watch out
where they lead. Some animals have strange senses of humor.
5. OSMOSIS:
This term is used to describe those situations where untrained animals are housed
with trained animals in order that they might learn from the educated animals. It is not
doubted that the animals do learn from one another, and sometimes even actively teach
one another - but one can get old trying to train this way.
First of all, we have no control over whether the animals are motivated to learn and
teach amongst themselves.
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Secondly, supposing they are all very motivated to engage in mutual education, the
trainer must depend on the interpretation of the behavior by the teaching animal. Even with
excellent teaching programs for humans or animals, there is informational drift - the farther
you get from the originator of the information, the more distortion is likely to occur.
Finally, even if the animal understands exactly what the trainer intends he learn, the
trainer must establish the motivational system with the trained animal in order to harvest the
fruits of this knowledge. As is seen with secondary reinforcers, motivational systems are
largely developed through the training process, so in the long run, the trainer may not save
any time with behaviors that are learned from animal colleagues.
On the other hand, it is good to see animals teaching one another and interacting for
a constructive goal. This can build a sense of team accomplishment amongst the animals.
In other words, when it happens, great! But do not base a career on it.
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About the Author: Kayce Cover has 20 years of experience in training domestic and exotic
animals and their human trainers. She has a BS degree in Animal Science from the
University of Maryland where she was also a research consultant. She has also managed
several exhibits for the Smithsonian's National Zoological Park where she oversaw the
training of staff, volunteers, and various carnivores (with an emphasis on enlisting the
animal's cooperation in their own care). Ms. Cover also trained marine mammals at an
oceanarium, and was co-founder of a project to train capuchin monkeys to aid
quadriplegics. The material of this book series has been the basis of educational
demonstrations delivered to over two and a half million people.
The Assistant Editor, Jenifer Zeligs Hurley is a Ph.D. in physiology, from the University of
California at Santa Cruz, Long Marine Laboratory, where Bridge and Target training was
used to prepare California Sea Lions for contributing physiology data while free-swimming
in the open ocean. Hurley teaches and manages 40 trainer/keepers at the University who
volunteer in the physiology research, using the techniques outlined in this manual. Hurley
started her tenure as a marine mammal trainer with Kayce Cover at the Smithsonian's
National Zoological Park at the age of 11, and trained for many other projects, including
animals for theater and pigeons to guide the sightless (at age 13).
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