Bird Training Blog

History Revisited … again!

July 18th, 2011

In an article “Primary Reinforcement and History Revisited” posted in April of this year I made the point that knowing the history of a bird was important.

“… the whole history of the bird is part of the antecedent package.”

“… the behavior we see today was shaped by the experiences of the bird in its past, its history.”

This point was taken up in a private email exchange with the writer taking issue with me about this. Their point was that my statements were discouraging to those who may be considering adopting one of the many older parrots looking for new homes. I thought long and hard about this because it certainly was not my intention. Why, you may ask, has this issue come back to the surface?

We recently adopted a dog (Emma) from the Albuquerque Shelter. She is a Border Collie mix who’s age is supposed to be around eight years although we believe she is probably closer to four or five years old. The staff at the shelter were excellent in their approach to our interest in Emma, she had been identified as a “fear-biter” and this together with her age and lack of interest from other adopters meant that she was less than an hour from being euthanized when we arrived to evaluate her. The shelter supervisor took a long time interviewing us and explaining the issues that Emma was believed to have. We had decided before arriving at the shelter that if a “meet and greet” with our other two dogs went well we would adopt Emma. That meeting went very well through the fence and Emma came home with us. I don’t propose to go through all the details of Emma’s first few weeks with us except to say that there were pretty uneventful in terms of seeing any aggression or biting. In fact we have seen no biting, having been so well briefed we have been able to help Emma adjust to her new life in hopefully the least invasive and stressful way. After less than two months it is like she has been here and a part of our pack all her life … we just don’t have baby pictures!

So in this short story, in my opinion, are all the elements that the best parrot rescues appear to apply and to which the majority should aspire. They first of all watch and observe the birds they take in, they may work these birds so that any fear responses and other behavioral issues are reduced and thereby biting is also placed onto a reducing trajectory. Perhaps most importantly they communicate with the potential adopters clearly and honestly what the issues are and how they need to be addressed. They also assess the level of understanding of the challenges being faced by the adopters. In so doing they fill in as honestly and fully as they can the history of the bird. Only by doing this can they not only raise the likelihood that the bird will adjust to its new life but they also set up the adopters for success.

I stand by my original statement that knowing the history of a bird is an important and valuable antecedent. Consider if Emma had come home and we knew nothing of her “fear-biting” history, I firmly believe that somebody could well have been bitten by taking the wrong approach.

In my opinion there is no truth to the age-old adage “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” Given enough time, skill, and motivation there are no lost causes when it comes to animal training. In the past I have trained wild injured birds for educational programs; is it quick and easy … not usually. Is it challenging … without a doubt. Is it highly rewarding .. again without a doubt.

The choice of whether one acquires a chick or adopts a mature bird is down to the individual person. It depends upon what their motivation is; are they looking to get quick (often not long term) results or are they looking to raise their own skills by taking on the challenge of an older bird. It is as always more about the trainer than the bird. Check out Carly Lu’s Flight Blog for a great success story and a demonstration of how an older bird got enriched and a growing trainer stretched their skills.

Sid.

Posted in Articles, Questions, Sid Price, Training | No Comments »

Why did he do that?

July 18th, 2011

I received the following question about the Steve Martin article “What’s in it for me?” I referenced in my welcome blog

… Steve mentions working with the Harris Hawk who was lazing [in] a tree too much. He said they decided to try increasing his weight instead of decreasing it, but gave no reason why. … Is there some reason why he would try increasing the weight first? Or is it implied that they had previously tried lowering the weight and it did not work? – Dr. Linda Rasmussen.

Before I address the question it is worth mentioning that when we are trying to evaluate behavior it is important to only consider what we can actually observe; the facts … just the facts. If we try to base our strategies on what we think the animal was thinking we are on the road to disappointment.

Also, the subject of weight or food management will be covered in more detail in a future Blog. Reducing weight should not be the first step any competent trainer takes.

When I received this question the first thing I did was to go back and read the article again, this time paying attention to the section about the Harris’ hawk and noting any behavioral observations that Steve reported. All that was mentioned was that the bird was “playing around in a tree” and “taking too much time.” In addition to noting the behavior one should also note what happened right before the behavior, unfortunately the article did not tell us that. Finally one should note the history of the bird’s behavior, once again not mentioned in the article. Given this lack of information (facts) the only recourse was to contact Steve and ask him if he could remember why he had chosen to raise the weight of the bird in this context.

While waiting to hear from Steve and being a curious person I pondered what might have been Steve’s reasoning. The example Steve used involved a raptor (Harris’ hawk) and raptors are highly food motivated. One scenario that came to mind was that if one increases food motivation too much the bird may start to look around for food itself. If the bird had exhibited hunting behaviors this may explain why it remained in the tree, waiting for prey to appear. Indeed this is what Steve reported to me; the bird was seen “bouncing around in the tree, biting at bark, and footing the branches”. Footing is the behavior of a raptor grasping very hard, the action it uses to kill or disable its prey. So it seems my hypothesis was close and raising the weight was an attempt to reduce the food motivation to see if this reduced the unwanted behaviors.

This is a good example of how trainers’ should approach a problem; one change at a time. Too often trainers apply the “shotgun” approach and change several things at the same time. The result being that they may never know the real reason they changed the behavior, and so next time they need to take the “shotgun” out again.

Thank you Dr. Linda Rasmussen,

Sid.

Posted in Articles, Questions, Steve Martin, Training, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Reducing behavior means punishment occurred – not!

July 18th, 2011

When there is a reduction in behavior punishment is always in play! Once again I saw this used in a discussion in an Internet group. The discussion centered around the reduction of unwanted behavior, in the particular case it was a free flying bird landing on strangers. I don’t intend to address the poor strategies suggested to resolve this or the much better alternate strategies suggested. Rather I want to talk about the argument put up that even when using the alternate strategy because the unwanted behavior is reduced punishment is still present.

Again, for those who may not be familiar with the use of the word punishment here, I use it in its technical, behavioral sense and that is a contingent consequence that reduces the future frequency of the behavior it follows.

Punishment is a process and not a single event. It is the process over time, by which a consequence reduces behavior. Note that punishment is not the only way to reduce behavior; it is one of several approaches that include differential reinforcement of an alternate or incompatible behavior, extinction, and establishing operations. And this is where the writer who said that even when a positive reinforcement approach is used to resolve the landing on strangers problem, if the landing reduces then it has been punished is wrong. Something completely different and at the totally opposite end of the intrusiveness spectrum is in play and no aversive events are required!

So, let’s think about this a bit. Remember that all behavior serves some function for the subject performing it. So, if a bird is landing on strangers we can hypothesize that social interaction is what is reinforcing (maintaining) the behavior. Rather than punishing the behavior, since this simply attempts to teach the bird what NOT to do; we can devise a training strategy that drains the value of social interaction when the bird is being flown. This strategy was written about by Raz Rasmussen in her blog and also the basis of a presentation she gave at the recent IAATE conference in Albuquerque, NM. For these reasons I won’t go into the details of the strategy used here. What I wish to focus on is that while the unwanted behavior may have been reduced it was not punished. The principle involved here is an antecedent arrangement, technically an establishing operation that serves to reduce the value of the reinforcer that was maintaining the unwanted behavior. The bird chooses not to land on strangers because doing so would result in a now less valued reinforcer than those available from the trainer and/or elsewhere in the environment.

In our efforts to have the smallest set of simple rules to understand and influence behavior it is easy to grab hold of a rule and use it without thinking it through. I have been guilty of this myself in the past; however, I do pride myself on having a very inquisitive mind and an ability to analyze things pretty well. The simple statement that if a behavior is reduced then punishment is in play is one we must be wary of. It is similar to talking about consequences being reinforcing or punishing without the context of the behavior; we must be specific about context when evaluating if punishment is in play. Ask, was a contingent, contiguous stimulus presented or removed that caused the behavior reduction. Then you will know if the behavior was punished or if some other behavior principle is in play.

In this article I have used terms that are not explained in the text, all the terms used here have appeared and been defined in previous articles and I chose not to make this article even longer by explaining each one. Please browse back to these older articles.

ABCs … a training tool

Positive good … Negative bad

A special thank you goes out to Dr Susan Friedman for reviewing this article and contining to empower and encourage those willing to listen on this journey of learning.

Keep soaring,

Sid.

Posted in Dr Susan Friedman, Ethics, punishment, Sid Price, Training | 1 Comment »

Recognizing how not to do it!

July 18th, 2011

Just recently there seems to have been a flood of experts available online to solve all kinds of parrot behavioral issues, it is also worthy of note that many of these experts seem to have tendrils back to a single source. That single source appears to be rather inexperienced in training in general and behavioral science for sure!

I am not going to mention any names or link to any web sites as on the internet the ranking of names and sites in Google and other search engines relies upon other sites’ links to each site. The more times a site is linked to the better its ranking. Besides which my philosophy is to educate people so that they are capable of recognizing who really understands their subject and who is simply selling snake-oil!

While browsing a Yahoo group this morning I saw a link to some information about parrot training, it was a video being promoted to demonstrate the skills of the expert, unabashed self promotion. Well I can’t argue with that, everyone who has a business knows the power of the reputation of the people involved in that business and what better way to illustrate one’s skills than a video on YouTube!

The video showed two segments of biting birds and how the behavior was fixed “in minutes”. I doubt it was actually fixed at all, but that isn’t the point of this article. The point of this article is to bring attention to the technique used and more importantly to use this to show the linkage between two things that I try to avoid. Firstly Negative Reinforcement and secondly aversives.

So, imagine a bird standing on a perch, a person approaches and immediately the bird begins to lunge towards the person. The person stops and (being directed by an of-camera voice) then steps back as a “click” is heard. This is repeated with the person approaching closer and closer and a “click” just as they step back. After some time (15 minutes according to the off-camera commentary) the person is able to allow the bird to nuzzle their hand without getting bitten.

What is going on here?

To understand one needs to break down the technique into two parts. First, the approach of the person is clearly an aversive from the bird’s perspective. As I said earlier I believe that aversives should be avoided, they do nothing to add to a positive, trusting relationship with the bird. Secondly, the person walking away appears to be reinforcing the fact that the bird did not bite (not that it really had the chance to; the person was way out of reach!). I certainly did not see any behavioral change that warranted a click and retreat. However, if we assume that the trainer perceived some behavior they liked then asking the person to walk away may have reinforced that behavior. So what we have here is Negative Reinforcement. Again, not a contributor to trust between trainer and bird.

I have read one comment that this technique is flooding. In my opinion that is not the case because the aversive (person too close to the bird) was removed. If this were flooding the person would simply have stood there, maybe even gotten closer until the bird stopped the lunging etc..

What this video shows, in addition to not being the best way to deal with a biting bird, is that typically Negative Reinforcement and the purposeful introduction of aversives are inseparable. In order to apply Negative Reinforcement (removing the person) the aversive (again the person) had to be introduced by the trainer.

Finally, just to drive home the point of what a great example of how not to deal with a biting bird this is let me ask you to think about this … was the bird ever positively reinforced? I certainly didn’t see it, once again nothing that happened in these training sessions worked towards establishing a positive, trusting relationship between trainer and bird.

Here is an article written by Dr Susan Friedman and Lee McGuire about biting. It was first published in one of the best resources for how to train companion birds the right way, Good Bird Magazine.

Sid

Posted in Articles, Dr Susan Friedman, GoodBird Magazine, Sid Price | No Comments »

Primary Reinforcement and History Revisited

July 18th, 2011

I received the following question about Primary/Secondary reinforcement:

“… the delivery of the food from a human hand is something that must be learned (human hand delivering food is safe). So if the food is delivered from a human hand, does that then make it become a secondary reinforcer?” – Curtis White.

No, food is a primary reinforcer; what is happening with the above example is the bird is still being reinforced by the food, something it innately wanted. What the bird has learned is that the approaching hand may contain food; its motivation is to acquire the food, and the bird did not have to learn that the food was desirable. The approaching hand may, with some birds, become a secondary reinforcer as a result of being paired with the primary food reinforcer, but I think it is over-thinking the scenario to say that the “food in the hand” becomes a secondary reinforcer itself.

Also the following was received in response to the “Silver Bullet” article:

“I thought that the need to understand history is a concept based on the medical model. If behavior analysis is the study of the functional relations between behavior and environmental events (Chase, P; 1998), should we need to know the bird’s history to change the behavior?” – Cynthia Schutte.

Yes, my statement that one needs to know the history of the bird one is working with was based upon the fact that the behavior we see today was shaped by the experiences of the bird in its past, its history. Indeed a bird’s history is part of the set of antecedents of the behaviors we observe. While we may not always be able to arrange our training sessions to account for some of those particular antecedents there are many times when being able to do so will assist in changing the observed behavior.

For example, suppose that we are trying to train a newly adopted bird; without knowing at least some of the history of that bird how do we know where to start. Suppose, unknown to the trainer, the bird had previously been forced into and out of a transport crate, trying to train this behavior could be problematic. However, given this knowledge we can adjust our training strategy to desensitize the bird to crates.

It is unfortunate that when some trainers do behavior analysis they typically only consider the obvious antecedents, the ones in the immediate environment, forgetting that the whole history of the bird is part of the antecedent package.

It is important to remember that the consequences of a behavior either increase or decrease the likelihood that the behavior will be presented in the future. Those consequences become a part of the bird’s history and factor into the antecedents of future behavior too. If a bird has a history of getting rewarded for approaching the trainer then when the trainer cues the bird to step onto the hand that history will factor into the bird’s decision to make the step. History plays a very important role in an animal’s decision making and a good trainer needs to know as much history as possible to set their birds up for success.

Keep those questions and comments (TrainingBlogAvianAmbassadors dot com) coming and also don’t forget to join the email list so that you will get notifications of new posts to the blog.