A new post , to get one thinking!
Alex recently attended , ( and presented as part of the faculty) at the latest Clicker Expo . Here is her report on a lecture by DR Epstein, who was Skinner's last graduate. ( The list that she refers to is one of the yahoo groups)
"I've been having some wonderful, head spinning experiences. I'm just back from the Portland Clicker Expo and the Art and Science of Animal Training conferences. I'm still processing all the good things I came away with, and probably will be for months to come. I'm not going to go through each of the presentations I attended at these conferences. That would be a very long post indeed. Instead I'm going to focus on the presentation Robert Epstein gave at the Art and Science conference. There was much in his talk that is of direct value to us and our horses.
First a little background. If you were to visit Dr. Epstein's web site, (drrobertepstein.com), you might find yourself wondering what possible connection there could be to horse training. Looking down the list of topics on his site you'd see Adolescence, Artificial Intelligence, Creativity, Love, Mental Health, and others things of that sort. But you wouldn't see anything about horses or even animal training. Dr. Epstein is a psychologist whose books include "Parsing the Turing Test: Philosophical and Methodological Issues in the Quest for the Thinking Computer". Sounds exciting, doesn't it! Not exactly your typical horse training book, so why am I singling out his work?
Epstein was B.F.Skinner's last graduate student. Out of the work they did together Epstein developed a predictive theory of creative behavior which he has called Generativity Theory. In a nutshell he is saying that the emergence of novel behavior, what we normally would term creative behavior, is both orderly and predictable. Put even more simply, new ideas come from combinations of old ones. The process of generating these new ideas is orderly and the creative process can be stimulated in predictable ways.
So how does this relate to horse training? This goes right to the heart of how shaping works. Skinner, as Epstein pointed out, understood that behavior is fluid. Behavior isn't made up of discreet little responses, little easily-counted packets of behavior. That's how behavior is often presented. How many times did a rat press a lever? How many times did a dog sit. We've been trained to think of behavior in terms of these discreet chunks, but behavior isn't that tidy. It's fluid.
That's the first thing that got me underlining and dog earing sections of my notes. This has always been a sticky points for me, especially when it comes to cues. It relates to a conversation I had with a trainer at one of the conferences. We were talking about the use of pressure and release of pressure in the training of horses. Her question as a non rider, non horse trainer was why use pressure at all? Couldn't you just use verbal cues? My quick answer was no, I can't talk that fast. When we ride, we are most definitely responding to a flow. We aren't asking for discreet packets of behavior: sit, down, stay.
Yes, we may have some things which are easy to attach verbal cues to: "trot" for an up transition; "whoa" for a stop. But once your horse is trotting, you aren't on autopilot. There's a flow of communication that is occurring back and forth between the two of you. You're both responding to cues from one another. The more you ride, the more multi-layered and subtle this communication becomes. You can condense some of these complex signals into discreet cues, but riding well, riding with connection, means that you are using the depth of communication that evolves out of subtle shifts in balance and pressure. And that's not a one way communication flow. You're reading and adjusting to your horse just as much as he's reading and adjusting to you. Riding in harmony means reaching a stage where this two way communication feels fluid and natural, and you no longer depend solely upon macro cues for macro control.
Behavior is fluid and it is also novel. The Olympics are on right now. We're watching elite athletes striving for gold. Think about the figure skaters. Their goal is perfection. They have practiced and honed their craft so they can repeat beautiful jump after beautiful jump, but even with all that skill, each jump is still unique. There will be some little variability that creeps in to make each jump, each spin slightly different from all other jumps and spins they have performed.
It's this variability that we are depending upon in the shaping process. To our untrained eye one triple axel may look very much like any other. What we will see is a skater with a repertoire of known behaviors. She has a triple axel, a double toe loop, etc. I haven't watched figure skating for a while. Last night watching the pairs skaters I saw some interesting new twists on old positions. A slight change of leg position, or angle of a skater's body gave a whole new look to a familiar move. These changes were following Epstein's generative theory. You have a repertoire of known behaviors which can be combined or changed slightly to create new behaviors. If we were to study in detail the evolution of figure skating since Dick Button's two gold medals all those decades ago, I suspect we would see it has been both orderly and predictable.
To illustrate how this works Epstein presented his pigeon-solving-the-banana-and-the-box study. The basic experiment was an extension of Wolfgang Kohler's work with chimpanzees. Kohler suspended bananas out of reach of chimpanzees. The chimps figured out how to pile boxes one on top of another to reach the bananas. They also put two sticks together to make one that was long enough to knock the bananas down. Kohler claimed the chimps were showing insight to come up with the solution to the problem. Epstein wanted to test a more behavioral explanation, one which ultimately gave us more insight into what "insight" really is.
Epstein used pigeons for his experiment. The birds were first taught to peck a plastic banana in order to get grain. The pigeon was then placed in an experimental chamber with a plastic banana hung out of reach of its pecking. Off to the side was a small box. If you go to -
- you'll see a video clip showing just how fast the pigeon solved the puzzle. It's worth taking a look at the video. It's a wonderful bit of puzzle solving on the part of the bird.
But it turns out, it's not that simple. In order for the bird to be successful, certain component behaviors had to be in place. In previous trials where the banana was not present, the successful birds had all been reinforced for jumping up on the box and for pushing the box with their beak. If either one of these component behaviors was missing, the birds failed to solve the puzzle.
Creativity, puzzle solving, making connections, having "ah ha" moments, these are not random events. The connections we make emerge out of our behavioral repertoire, out of the building-block components we have in place.
Again, I found myself dog earing this section of my notes. This is so relevant to horse training. I thought of our senior horse, Magnat, and how I taught him piaffe. I taught him the component behaviors, but it was Magnat who put them together and popped out his first steps of piaffe. My job was simply to recognize what those steps could turn into and to pounce on them with a high rate of reinforcement. They very quickly coalesced into the recognizable, repeatable movement we call piaffe. What Epstein was presenting was the explanation for this approach to training. The work I've been teaching via the books and DVDs is really so simple - teach the component parts. Teach them really well, and the next layer in your training will pop out. You don't have to master hard complex moves. Instead you're teaching simple things well, and then waiting for the horse to make the connections. And just as Epstein indicated in his talk, this is an orderly, predictable process. This becomes especially clear once you get past the emotional baggage stage where things get glummed up.
So one of the questions this raises is what component behaviors do you need for the tasks you want your animal to perform? The six foundation lessons are a great starting place. So many things pop out of them. The more you explore those six simple behaviors, the more good things you see evolving. What connections have you found? Do you see the orderliness of the process? If you've taken more than one horse through the beginning steps, it becomes more obvious. Are there other core behaviors that you need for your specialty? If you are working with a jumper, or a reining horse, what core behaviors do you need? If you have a trail horse, what core behaviors help him solve the puzzles the real world presents? If I think about Panda, the mini I trained to be a guide, there were certainly component behaviors that helped her know how to handle different types of obstacles.
This ties in beautifully with the recent thread on training with positive reinforcement that Katie has been managing so beautifully. If you're at all familiar with my work, you know I use a variety of shaping techniques, including pressure and release of pressure. But I have made the statement many times that for every complex behavior you teach, some element of it should be free shaped using only positive reinforcement. A simple example might be teaching a horse to stand on a mat. I could of course free shape my horse to stand on the mat, but for a variety of reasons I might choose not to do so. Instead I might use a target or pressure and release of pressure to get the horse to stand on the mat. Once my horse is solidly standing on the mat, I might free shape head position and ears forward. So within this larger complex behavior, I will have elements that are free shaped with positive reinforcement.
So when we are looking at our overall training plan we have a number of questions we can be asking:
What are the component behaviors that I need to successfully shape my goal behavior?
How best should I shape those component behaviors? Do I want to: free shape them; use targeting; pressure and release of pressure; food lures, etc.?
To my eye the horses that are the most interesting to watch are horses that have been exposed to a variety of shaping techniques. I remember watching a video clip of a horse that had learned to follow a target. This horse understood that he was to keep his nose oriented to the target no matter where his handler moved it. He followed this target all over the arena, and in the process his feet moved in some interesting patterns. He went forward and back, even sideways, but it wasn't particularly interesting to watch. This was a one-trick pony. Follow the target. That's all he knew. Yes, his body was moving in some interesting motor patterns and there's value in that, but for me the horses look so much more engaged in the training when there has been more complexity used in the shaping process. They become partners in the problem solving process, not simply followers.
So as a companion thread to the current discussion, I would ask what are some of the component behaviors you need in your horse and can you think of at least four different ways to teach them?
Now some of you may find yourself shrinking away from this last task. You might be able to think of one or two ways to teach head lowering, for example, but four! No, you just aren't that creative.
This brings me to the other focus of Epstein's talk: creativity. You may not think of yourself as particularly creative, but Epstein says we can all learn to be more creative. He has identified four core competencies that form the basic skill set for creativity. Each one of these core competencies is easily accessed and will greatly increase your creativity. Epstein says that creative people have mastered at least one of these areas. People who have mastered more than one of competencies will express even more creativity.
Ready to become more creative? Your horses will certainly benefit. Let's see what's involved.
Creativity Core Competencies
1.) Capturing: Epstein considers this to be the most important of the four competences. Improvements in this one area will have a huge ripple effect. That's good news because it is so easily implemented.
Capturing means very much what it sounds like. Do you have a way to record ideas that pop into your head. Katie has been asking us for ideas of shaping plans using positive reinforcement. If you're at the barn, cleaning your stalls, letting your mind wander, and two or three wonderful ideas pop into your mind, do you have a way to record them? Or do you convince yourself that you don't need to bother? You'll remember them, right? But will you? If you don't write things down now, later when you try to recall them, how successful are you?
I learned this lesson years ago. I've had that experience where the perfect way to say something has been flowing through my head. Maybe I'm at the barn, or I'm just waking up with the next chapter of one of the books running through my head. It seems so perfect, how could I possibly forget those key points and how to describe them? But, of course, later when I'm at the computer, the flow isn't there. The words I type in just don't seem as perfect as the ones that were flowing so easily earlier. So I've learned. There's a pad of paper at the barn. If I find a post writing itself while I'm cleaning stalls, I stop what I'm doing and I write it down. I may end up with a wad of papers shoved into my vest pocket, but that's better than an empty head.
Epstein cited a couple of simple experiments to illustrate the importance of capturing. In one people were divided into two groups. One group was given recording devices. The other group was not. Their task was to come up with at least three new ways to, we'll use a horsey example, get a horse on a trailer.
Within each group people discussed their ideas, then they reported to the larger group.
The group that had no recording device would typically recount five, maybe six new ideas. The group with recording devices would have two or three times that, at least. They wrote everything down. The idea was to capture now, evaluate later. With a recording device, they could capture a larger pool of ideas. The larger the pool of ideas, the more they had to select from later.
Again, Katie's thread on positive reinforcement gives us all a great opportunity to practice this skill. Next time you're at the barn, pop a small notebook and pen into your pocket. As you're doing your chores pick a couple of component behaviors you'd like your horse to have and think about lots of different ways you could teach them. Jot down your ideas as they come to you. Don't judge them. Evaluating comes later. This is the capturing stage. It would be wonderful if people shared their lists. What ideas came to you? This sharing process helps the creativity process. It broadens out the pool of ideas for all of us and helps us make connections that lead to new ideas.
Core Competency #2: Challenging This one may sound scary at first until you understand how it works to increase creativity. Challenging means exposing yourself to failure. It means putting yourself in tough situations where what has worked for you in the past won't work now. See what I mean about sounding scary?
Why do we want to embrace failure? Why is it a core competency of creativity? Failure causes behaviors to compete. In this kind of situation old behaviors will resurface which then creates the possibility for new interconnections. Now instead of just having behaviors C, D, and E on the table, suddenly A and B reappear. As Epstein said, nothing is ever unlearned or forgotten. So with A and B in the mix, you now have more possible connections to work with, which in turn can lead to the next puzzle-solving innovation.
This is so relevant to our horses. If you've done any training at all, you know it's not all smooth sailing. You're going to make mistakes. You're going to encounter problems. How do you react to that? Do you get frustrated and quit? Or does that failure generate six new ideas for dealing with the problem? How well do you manage stress? Do you view training glitches as a learning process, or as, well - a failure.
And for your horse - how does he handle the inevitable frustration that comes from dealing with humans? If he doesn't get reinforced when he was expecting, does he fall apart? Does he quit or become aggressive? Or does he just try something new? How well does he handle stress?
This is part of the art of training. When I'm shaping, I want my horse to be successful, but how easy do I make the puzzle? How tightly do I control environment? I can set things up so that my horse essentially never makes a mistake. The training flows seamlessly from click to click. That sounds like a good thing, but what happens when life happens? Will my horse be able to cope with life's stresses? There are times when I want to make the puzzle just a little harder for my horse to solve. I want him to have to stretch a bit to come up with the answer - not so much that he becomes discouraged, but enough so that later if I make a mistake or something unexpected happens in our environment, he can handle it.
Think about how puzzle books are constructed. A well designed puzzle book starts out easy. You learn how to solve a particular class of puzzle and then that type of puzzle gets a little harder. If the puzzles started out too hard, you might get frustrated and quit. You'll toss the book aside and you won't buy any others. But if the puzzles stay too easy, you'll get bored and quit as well. A good puzzle writer knows how to build the level of difficulty so the puzzle solver is continually challenged just enough but not too much.
When we work with horses, we're setting puzzles both for ourselves and for our horses. We want to set up challenges. Part of training success means developing good stress management skills. So here's another area to explore. What does this mean for us? How do we safely embrace the challenges horses present? How do we learn to welcome the training glitches? And how do we build good coping skills for our horses?
(Here's a lovely aside from another presentation, this one from Ken Ramirez, the director of training at the Shedd Aquarium. At the Shedd Ken encourages his trainers to come up with new things for the whales and dolphins to interact with. As he put it, if a tornado were to rip the roof off the pool area, he would want the whales to look up at the open sky and think "Oh look at what the trainers are doing today!" Now that's great coping skills!)
