Pressure/release with people?

I’ve been thinking about a way to illustrate how the differences between negative and positive reinforcement might play out in a human work situation.

Imagine coming into work and your boss brings you into a room with lots of files and several file cabinets, however you have no idea what your assignment is. You look around a make a move towards one of the files to pick it up. You can see some personal papers within the file and the papers include a name, year and company heading. You set the file back down in its place, sit and wait for instructions.

Your boss comes back in the room and scowls at you, then tells you to take a stack of magazines down four flights of stairs to the recycle area, which you do. You come back to the room with no idea of what the task is, but not wishing to irritate your boss again you look at the files. There are several filing cabinets and a whole table full of files. You look at a couple of files and decide to put them in a cabinet in alphabetical order. Your boss comes in the room, scowls and sends you down the stairs with another heavy stack of magazines to carry to the recycler.

When you return to the room this time you look at the chair and the stacks of files. You know you shouldn’t sit, but you tried to do the filing and still had to carry the magazines for failing to figure out the task. You walk to the files and look at them. Each file has a date, so you decide to file 2 or 3 files according to the year they were created. Your boss comes in, scowls and sends you on the dreaded magazine chore.

This time when you return you decide to sort the files both alphabetically and according to the year. You work quickly not wanting to make the magazine trip again, however your boss repeats his frown/punishment routine and sends you to the basement with two extra stacks of magazines.

When you return for the last time, there is no spring in your step and you are feeling a bit resentful. You know you can’t show the resentment; that might mean more step climbing. You give one last guess to place the files according to business, year and alphabetical order. The only way you know that you did the job correctly is that your boss walks in and this time you aren’t seeing his scowl.

Now imagine a different scenario. Your boss takes you to a room and when you walk in, he waits. You look at the files, the cabinets and start to walk towards the desk with the files on it. Your boss nods, smiles and gives you a Starbucks gift card.

You quickly go back to the desk and pick up a file. You decide to make a guess and file it alphabetically. Your boss gives you another gift card; so you file a couple more and check in. This time you don’t get a card, so you re-evaluate and decide to see if the files should be sorted by year as well. Your boss gives you a card and so you get busy and file 10 more records.

This time when you check in your boss doesn’t smile or give you a card, so you look at the files again. You pick up the file and look at the company heading. Before you have a chance to do anything else your boss gives you a Hershey’s kiss. You know you’re on the right track. You start to sort by company, date and the alphabetical criteria. You file 2 files this way and your boss gives you another card and a Hershey’s kiss. Boosted by the extra piece of candy you quickly file several files and before you finish your boss hands you another card, a Hershey’s kiss and tells you when you’re done you can have the afternoon off.

Now I know this example seems bizarre from a human standpoint, since we have language to help us. In the case of pressure/release, the only way our horses know the instructions or cues is by the release of that pressure. Imagine how it would be to live in that kind of learning environment, the kind of insecurity, possible resentment and uncertainty it could create. Now imagine how it would feel to be rewarded for creativity, guessing and effort.

It doesn’t take much thinking to decide which system most people would choose.

Pressure in training

I just wanted to take a few minutes to share some of the fun I’ve been having clicker training the horses. Lately I’ve been working with a 5 month old miniature buckskin filly named Moonshadow. To say she’s a joy is an understatement. What a privilege it is to train a young, relatively untainted mind while starting her immediately with positive reinforcement.

The most recent event has been a validation of an experiment I started a few years ago. I challenged my knowledge of CT tools by teaching several horses all of the basic yielding and husbandry behaviors using shaping, capturing and some targeting. While doing this I “shelved” the pressure/release/click techniques.

An example of the behaviors I trained to date were yielding the hind end, crossing the fore, backing, side pass, loading in the trailer, picking up the feet for the farrier and learning to lead. Once I trained a behavior, I went back and added familiar looking cues so that someone who used pressure/release would be able to communicate with these horses. I also added many verbal cues. To say the least it challenged my own paradigms for training, but the results have been so profound.

I followed this same path with the unweaned filly, Moonshadow. My goal was to teach her to have her feet trimmed, but she didn’t have any operant behaviors in place. I saw that she and her mom would mutually groom, and since she was unweaned and a bit skittish I decided scratching was a good inroad to build a bond between us. The next thing I did was give her a good scratch at the withers for keeping perpendicular to my body with her head facing forward ; I did this for about 2 weeks.

Then I added a food reinforcer while teaching her to target. With food as the primary reinforcer we began to work on several other behaviors; I wanted to have them in place before I asked her to lift her feet. She was an eager student. We added a bit of mat training, I also shaped her to put her head in her little halter and during this time she learned to offer an “auto-back” when I approached the gate.
We then began to shape lifting the foot. For me, having a nice mat to work on made it easy to drop a treat and it avoided having the horse ingest sand. When she stood near me, I would drop the treat between her legs and then click when she began to lift her left fore in order to back. From there I shaped the behavior of just lifting the foot. She was very quick with this. Then I went back to add duration to the foot lifting behavior. She was so willing to accept this process and once again, if I goofed by raising the criteria too quickly she was always able to walk away (I did all of this at liberty.) Obviously the process reminded me to keep my rate of reinforcement high! Once she lifted her foot I added my cue of touching her on her front canon bone near the knee.

All the while I continued the other behaviors and worked on generalization. This kept things interesting and kept me from getting too focused on the single task of training her to lift her foot. She also became very proud of the fact that she could make me click by backing away from me at meal times as well as the when I approached the gate.

This whole process of working with another weanling has been so reinforcing to me as a trainer. I love the way I feel when I’m focusing on the positive. And in a lot of ways that statement in itself is a huge statement. Focusing on the positive can really become a way of relating to all living creatures. Not in a Pollyanna sort of way, but in a healthy acknowledgment of someone else’s effort. So I’ll keep updating her progress. Thanks for reading.

The scary mower

I’m sooo jazzed with McKee and Handsome. I brought out the humongous mower that drags me around the pasture. That thing is at least 110 HP and weighs a bunch. In “rabbit mode” this thing can move around and where it wants to go, I do my best to hang on and follow..

It’s noisy, big, erratic and very scary to most horses. So imagine my surprise when I was mowing and saw both Handsome and McKee start towards me to investigate. There was no question, that big scary beast was NOT going to rob them of the opportunity to earn reinforcement.

Handsome startled me the most; he is more prone to fear and tends to keep away from situations like this. But what a little trouper he was; he walked right up to my left side and stuck to me like glue (my left side is his default side). Then McKee came over and did the same on the right side. They were doing their default positions for our routine and doing their best to walk along side me with this huge mower roaring along.

Another thing that was fun was that they couldn’t possibly hear the click, so we just communicated with gestures. All our cues for motion, standing beside me, following me and stopping just fell into place and I kept feeding them for their participation.

Finally McKee thought it was a little too much and he moved away. He didn’t really want to leave, but he was having a hard time with this monster. So I put Handsome away and let McKee work it out. We did lots of hand targeting and easy tasks. Eventually I was able to cue him to walk around the mower and come over to his “heel” position where he stayed and continued to mow with me.

I cannot believe how cool it was to watch him challenge himself. I cued him to “station” by the mower and I stepped back to take pictures. The whole process made me ecstatic.