>>>> I personally don't like the variation of clicker training that varies >>>> giving of the reward for the correct behavior because of this >>>> sentiment. > > >> Can you clarify? I'm not sure what you mean by "varies the giving of the >> reward."
>as I understand it, there's a group or theory within clicker >trainers that think it beneficial not to reward the horse EVERY time he gets >the right answer when training and establishing a new behavior. If you're talking about a variable rate of reinforcement, that is when once an animal knows a behavior pretty well, you vary the number of times they have to do the behavior before clicking and rewarding. Maybe one time you ask for a behavior and click and treat, next, you may not reward until the second one, then you might reward three in a row. It's very much like people playing a slot machine. If you got something every time, it would be boring. We noticed with the killer whales, if you whistled and rewarded every ball jump (where they jump out of the water and touch a suspended ball hanging over the pool) the whales would gradually get lazy- knowing they would get paid no matter what, jump with less enthusiasm, sometimes not touching the ball at all. If they got a variable reinforcement, they always did their best thinking "this might be the one!" They did get reinforced much more than not. Once you click though, you should always reward. I would not vary the rate of reinforcement until the animal knows the behavior. When first learning the parts of a behavior the reinforcement should be very high and only withheld to move to the next level (in tiny increments). Cherie No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG. Version: 7.5.519 / Virus Database: 269.21.8 - Release Date: 3/20/2008 12:00 AM
