Why We Recommend Using A Clicker — And How To Use It Correctly

Why We Recommend Using A Clicker — And How To Use It Correctly

When my brother and I first got out start in parrot training, we were unaware of what is

now widely known of as “clicker training” but boy has it changed our lives and the lives

of our birds. It is a vital tool in any bird training.

Not using clicker training may be ok for training smaller, cuter tricks like the wave and

fetch. . .but you’ll find that you need a much better method, a method that’s less sloppy

and more precise for training tricks like, how to ride a bike, or riding the roller skates

etc. In order to get your bird to be well trained from the beginning we recommend

clicker training him from the start.

But to understand why this is so important I need to make sure you are well aware of the

ins and outs of what clicker training is, and more specifically the theories behind

positive reinforcement.

Many of my clients are avid readers of my monthly email newsletters, and if you are one

of those who have read everything I’ve ever sent you in an email, then much of this will

be review.

However, I recommend you still read this section as l’ll be discussing some advanced

concepts that I’ve never taught before.

 

 What Is Positive Reinforcement?

Positive reinforcement was first discovered and studied by a Dr. Skinner. Dr. Skinner

was a scientist who experimented with lab rats and made some very revolutionary

discoveries that opened up the world to methods of communicating with animals to get

them to do things, without beating, whipping, shouting or forcing them anymore.

Sadly, many animal trainers still train this way. In fact right now there is a lot of debate

in the dog community between old school ‘man handling’ type of training, and the new

school of thought on positive reinforcement.

This debate is not nearly as violent in the parrot community because of the nature of

parrots. Parrots as ofyet, have not been domesticated, and don’t seem to show the level

of loyalty, regret shame or fear that dogs show.

For example a dog will feel bad for disobeying his owner, while a parrot will not.

For this reason alone, positive reinforcement has been a HUGE breakthrough for parrot

owners, because past attempts at negative reinforcement, where the parrot is punished

for biting, or screaming, have been irrefutably proven to work minimally at best, and

only with a small percentage of parrots.

But let’s get back to Dr. Skinner...

What Dr. Skinner set out to discover, was to see if he could influence a rat to perform a

designated behavior without forcing it upon the rat.

He did that by placing a rat in a container with nothing in the container but a feeding

mechanism. This feeding mechanism was hooked to a remote that allowed Dr. Skinner

to hit a button on his remote, and automatically have a pellet of food dropped into the

rat’s cage from the feeding mechanism.

And to point out another important, but subtle fact... when a pellet dropped, it made a

clicking sound, when it hit the metal food dish after falling from the feeder. I’ll get to

why this is important a little later on.

Dr. Skinners end goal was to take a hungry rat, and see if he could train that rat to press

a lever in the rat’s cage that would automatically trigger the dispensing of a food pellet.

This was a very advanced behavior at the time, and extremely cutting edge. And now is

the basis of all training that you see done at Sea World and hundreds of other animal

shows around the world.

The plan that was so ingenious at the time, was that Dr. Skinner would reward EVERY

and ANY small progress the rat made towards the end result of pressing a food

dispensing lever in it’s cage with it’s paw, until the goal was achieved.

But to do this Skinner had to set goals for the Rat, and set them in reverse order.

He started with writing out an exact description of what he wanted his rat to do, and

then worked backwards from there.

For example, Dr. Skinner probably wrote something along the lines of “The rat will

approach the lever, place one paw on the lever, and then press down on the lever to

release the pellet”.

Then he needed to think of what he would need to train the rat to do immediately before

pressing on the lever. And if you think about it, the task that needs to be done right

before that is you’ve got to get the rat to come stand near the dispenser with his foot

really close to that lever.

And before that you’ve got to get the rat to walk all the way over from the other side of

the cage, to stand by the lever.

And even before that, you’ve got to get the rat to look at the lever, right?

So that’s exactly what Dr. Skinner did.

At first the rats had no concern for the feeder in their cage. And why should they?

They’d never seen it before, and had no idea what it did. So the rat would wander

around the sides of the cage, sniffing in the cracks and doing whatever rats to in a cage

by themselves.

So Dr. Skinner decided that he would reward the rat for any movements made that

helped the rat get closer to the end goal in mind; pressing on that lcvcr. And instead of

punishing the rat for a wrong behavior that led it away from the lever, Dr. Skinner

planned on simply ignoring those behaviors. With the theory that if I just reward the rat

for every small improvement towards pressing that lever, maybe he’ll actually do it.

And he was right!

Then Dr. Skinner sat and waited for the rat to at least look at the feeder. It probably

took several minutes, but when the rat finally did... “click” a food pellet was dropped

from the food dispenser and landed in the rat’s dish.

This got the immediate attention of the rat, which ran over and hungrily munched on the

pellet he’d been longing for. And before long, the hungry rat realized that all he had to

do was look at his feeding dispenser and magically a food pellet would appear.

Proving that any behavior continually rewarded with positive behavior would be

reinforced, and continued to be performed by the animal. And any other behavior

ignored, i.e. not looking at the feeder, would be slowly discontinued in a given set of

circumstances. In this case, if the rat was hungry, he stopped searching around the

corners of his cage, because that NEVER produced a food pellet; the rat realized it was a

futile effort and discontinued that behavior.

Thus positive reinforcement for animals was born!

But how does positive reinforcement work? That’s a question that may seem obvious,

but needs to be explored deeper to really fully comprehend.

Sure, it’s easy to understand why an animal would do something that it kept getting

rewarded for. But how can we apply these same principles to more intricate and

advanced behaviors.

To figure this out, I want to remind you of what happened the second the rat in Dr.

Skinner’s cage did a correct behavior that brought it closer to its goals. What happened

when the rat performed correctly?

If you said, he got a pellet, you’re only half right, and misses the most important part

about Dr. Skir1ner’s findings. The very first thing that happened, is a pellet was released

from the feeding mechanism and made a “click” sound by clanking against the food dish

in the rat’s cage.

This noise was the first signal to the rat that it had done a behavior correctly, and had

earned a reward. This clicking sound is vital to understand. So I want you to think

about what would be going through the rat’s head if the pellet didn’t make a clicking

sound, and let’s say instead, Dr. Skinner silently dropped a food pellet into the cage with

ever good behavior.

The rat, upon performing like Dr. Skinner would wish, would then see a hand come out

of the sky, and place the food pellet into the cage, and then move the hand away. Then,

after the rat was sure the hand wasn’t going to come after him would run over to the

pellet and feast on it.

But did that teach the rat anything? In order for the rat to know what behavior he did

correctly, it needs to be sharply identified, and if it’s not sharply identified, the rat will

only think of the last behavior it performed as earning it the reward.

In the ease of this example, it was probably running away from Dr. Skinners hand when

it came into the cage, out of fear. So if Dr. Skinner would have chosen to perform his

experiments this way, he would have been training the rat to run from his hand, instead

of training the rat to touch the feeding lever! This is crucial you understand.

That’s why the “clicking” sound of the food pellet hitting the rat’s food bowl is so

impoitant. Because it happens at almost the exact instant the rat performs a correct

behavior. Giving the rat ‘instant’ notification that it’s just done somethin g correctly.

This is known in the training world as a “Bridge”. The Definition of a “Bridge” is a

sound, noise, or signal of any form that notifies the animal that it’s done a behavior

correctly, and then bridges the gap, between that instant, and the time it takes to

distribute the reward, usually food, to the animal.

It is almost like the reward itself, but more distinctly, it is a notification to the animal

that a reward is guaranteed.

In the next section we’ll talk about how to best use these same principles to

communicate with your parrot while training, as well as discuss some of the VERY

common mistakes I see people make all the time, that cause them to unknowingly

sabotage themselves and their progress before they even begin.

How To Use The Training Clicker To Train Your Parrot

Now that you understand the importance that a bridge signal plays in animal training

let’s talk about how we’ll be using it on your parrot.

There are only 2 basic fundamentals we need to talk about, when it comes to actually

using the clicker, and l’ve listed them here for you:

1. How to hold the clicker — Not knowing this will have you feeling like you need 6

hands to be a parrot trainer. You’ll find that from time to time you’ll have to

hold a prop, treats, lure your bird, hold your parrot, and move a part of his body

all at the same time. So knowing how to hold the clicker is important.

2. The appropriate time to click — messing this part up can really confuse your

parrot.

First let’s dive into how to hold the clicker. Maybe you think this sounds silly, and

obvious, but trust me it’s not. Your hands can get very fiill, especially when dealing

with props. Sometimes both of your feet need to be holding a pair of roller skates, and

you still have to find a way to click the clicker while still holding the roller skates; it can

be a hard task.

So l’ve included a picture for you that should help show you how to hold the clicker. I

spent about an hour trying to first write out a description that I thought would help you

grasp these clicker holding techniques, but gave up once I realized you could grasp in 2

seconds by looking at a picture, what I was trying to spend an hour describing in words.

When To Click

Timing is critical for your parrot. You need to realize that your parrot doesn’t

understand what you want him to do. lt may sound obvious, but he doesn’t.

If you want your bird to wiggle his left toe when he waves, instead of his right toe, then

you need to make sure you practice and develop a consistent clicking style.

By this I mean that you need to try to click the very instant your parrot has made enough

progress towards the goal you want him to reach. You can’t get sloppy and click too

late, or too early and you must always think of clicking from your bird’s perspective.

Remember, we will be training your parrot to recognize the clicking sound of the clicker

as the signal you give him at the exact moment he’s done something correctly.

So for example, let’s say your parrot is learning the Roller Skating routine later in this

course, and he’s just started to move one of the skates forward for his first full glide.

But instead of clicking the second he completes the glide, you wait an extra half second,

and during that half second the bird accidentally twists the skate to the side.

What have you communicated to your bird? You’ve sig11aled to him that the correct

behavior is to take a full glide on the roller skates, and twist the skate at the end of the

movement! So now you’ll have to retrain that behavior through extinction techniques

we’ll talk about later in this course, before you can get your bird back to where he’d

progressed to.

Lazy, imprecise clicking, will force you to focus much of your efforts on re-training

your parrot.

To help you sharpen your clicking skills, I highly recommend this activity that can be

done with a partner. (A human partner.)

How To Sharpen Your Clicking Skills

In this exercise you’re going to work with a friend of yours to hone your clicking skills.

lt’s a lot of fun, and if you feel stupid about doing it, grab a young kid and have them

play along, they’ll love it, and you’ll get to practice without looking silly.

lt’s important that you grab a person that has never played this exercise and ONLY tell

them this one rule.

Tell them... “The goal of this game is to work for clicks.”

That’s it! Don’t tell them anything else. lt’s likely that the person will ask you for more

details. But always respond by saying, “all I can tell you is that the goal of the game is

to work for chcks.”

The reason this can be the only thing you tell the person playing the game with you, is

because my goal from teaching you this game is to teach you what it’s like to train an

animal more effectively.

And when you first start training your parrot, he won’t know the rules of the game

either. In fact, your parrot doesn’t even know as much as the person you’re playing this

game with. Because your parrot doesn’t know that the name of the game is to earn

clicks. We still have to teach him that. But more on that later.

The point that I’m trying to teach you is how to train a living being to do something in a

completely different way than you are used to. This game takes away all of the ways

you can cheat, and only gives you one way to communicate; with a clicker.

You can’t give little hints, you can’t point to things, and you probably shouldn’t use

facial expressions either. Only use the clicker!

What do you use the clicker for? Good question. Here’s how the game works.

Start in a room with the partner you’ve chosen to play this game with. And in your head

think of something you’d like to get your partner to do. It could be anything. Maybe

you want to get them to walk over to the TV and turn it on. Or maybe you want them to

walk over to the refrigerator, grab a gallon of milk, pour you a glass and bring it to you.

Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter. It just has to be something that is within the physical

limitations of your partner.

But here’s the catch. Your only means of telling you partner what task you want them to

do, is by clicking the clicker.

This forces you to think like Dr. Skinner and the rat he wanted to train to touch the lever

on its food bowl. You need to think of small progressive movements you’d like your

partner to perform, gradually reward him, and tell him that he’s moving in the right

direction by clicking every time he makes progress toward the end goal.

For example, if you’re wanting to try the getting you a glass of milk task, which I highly

recommend, you’ll need to first click your partner for any movement made towards a

glass in the cupboard.

Keep in mind that your partner has no idea of the task he’s supposed to do, and you’ll be

forced to be very clear, and precise with your ‘clicking’ to make sure he doesn’t get

confused.

Remember, ‘click’ every time he moves towards your goal, and completely ignore any

actions not moving towards the goal. Soon he’ll realize that you’re shaping his path

towards a desired action or goal. But be patient, because it could take him a few

minutes to understand what’s earning him the clicks. Just like your bird won’t

understand what the clicks mean in the beginning either.

You’ll also notice that the game gets a lot harder when you have someone do more

specific tasks. For example once you’ve got your friend to grab the milk out of the

fridge, you’ll have to think of ways to click and reward your friend for tipping the milk

jug, into the corresponding glass.

So remember to click for small movements. Just like you’ll be forced to reward your

bird for small movements, your friend will need the same. Even a slight tipping of the

milk jug towards a tipping over motion, even if its just an inch, is progress towards the

end goal, so remember to ‘click’ him for it and all other progress, until the game is

complete and the task has been accomplished.

 Half Of My Students Don’t Do This Exercise, And Their Training Skills Suck! S0 Don’t Skip It!

As you can probably tell by this last little headline... I don’t write to please, I write to

help people train their parrots better, and sometimes that means telling it like it is. And

the truth of the matter is —- clicking takes practice. Those that don’t practice will

struggle.

l know this because about a month ago I ran a contest. I decided to reward people by

entering their name into a drawing for some cool prizes, if they’d send me a video of

them training their parrot.

And although this was a fun contest to run and I received lots of great videos, I also

found that people were not following my training instructions clearly. They were

clicking the clicker at the completely wrong time. Sometimes they’d wait 10 seconds

before clicking, or they’d click after they’d rewarded the bird with a treat for doing a

behavior.

I could tell the birds were completely confused, and it was nothing short of an act of

God that they were ever able to teach their birds anything. It’s sort of like the

frustrating people who send back my videos telling me that my methods don’t work...

but after examining the package they returned, I notice that the clicker was never even

taken out of the plastic wrap!  I wonder how well they could have possibly

followed my instructions without even trying to use the clicker.

So from then on I’ve decided to change up my writing style to dive straight to the point,

and not pull any punches. l’ve discovered that if you don’t tell people exactly what they

need to do, why they need to do it, and what will go wrong if they don’t follow my

instructions, they’ll get a wild hair up their “you know what” and make up the rules as

they go.

That’s why this game is important. Because you need to realize that if the bird isn’t

doing what you want it to do, it is NOT the bird’s fault. Just like it isn’t your friends

fault for not knowing that he’s supposed to poor you a glass of milk out of the

refrigerator.

It’s your fault. And the only way to fix it is to be more precise. Pay attention to

clicking at the right times, and make as few mistakes as possible. Because the clicker is

your only form of communication, you should treat it with respect, it’s the only way to

see training success.

Some Common Mistakes I See With The Clicker

I’ve already mentioned a few of the mistakes people make with the clicker, but think it’s

important to cover several more, so you don’t accidentally make these same mistakes.

First Common Mistake — Clicking At The Wrong Time.

A click’s only purpose is to immediately identify to the parrot when it’s done a correct

behavior. The click marks the action, and signifies that a reward is in order for what it

has done at that specific instant, and nothing else. So don’t click too early, or too late!

Second Most Common Mistake — Clicking Too Often

I used to make this mistake too, so I’m to blame for this as well. But you don’t need to

click more than once. You’re bird heard the click the first time. More isn’t always

better.

Third Most Common Mistake — Clicking and not rewarding

Don’t do this. Don’t ever click and not reward your parrot. Even if you sound the

clicker on accident, your bird needs to still get a reward. Here’s why: Once you’re bird

understands that a treat is coming every time he hears that clicker, you don’t want to

confuse your parrot by only rewarding some of the time he hears the clicker, because

you’ll ruin your credibility with your bird.

It would be like telling your kid that if he cleans his room, you’ll take him out for ice

cream. At first the kid cleans his room faster than you’ve ever seen him before. But if

you promise your kid ice cream and never actually get him the ice cream, or only give it

some of the time, your kid’s going to wonder if he’s really going to get rewarded for

cleaning his room. And since he’s not sure he’ll get rewarded, he’s also not sure how

fast, and how thoroughly, he’ll clean his room.

Your parrot is the same. He’ll stop working as hard for you, if you click him, and don’t

reward. And for this reason, you’ll also want to make sure that you don’t make the 4"‘

most common mistake.

Fourth Most Common Mistake — Letting Your Kids Get A hold of the Clicker

The second your kids get a hold of the clicker they’ll sound it off every chance they get,

and your parrot will expect a reward for every one of those clicks. Eventually ruining

the credibility of the click. Clicks are gold for your parrot. Don’t let your kids ruin that.

 

Convincing Your Parrot To Work For ‘Clicks’

Now that you understand why we use thc clicker, and how to sharpen your clicking

skills, you need to condition your parrot to develop a respect and understanding of what

the clicker is trying to communicate to him. This process is called clicker conditioning.

To condition an animal to understand what the clicker is trying to say, we need to pair

the sound of the clicker with a pleasurable experience.

This can be many things, but is usually a treat, and is made even more rewarding if it is

a treat given before meal time to a slightly hungry bird.

When you start this process, your bird will have no idea what’s going on, and it will be a

couple days before he does, so don’t worry.

First just get your parrot and place him on a T stand or perch of some sort where it will

be easy to give him treats. Make sure you have plenty of his treats handy, and that they

can be easily reached. You don’t want to be fiddling with the lid on the peanut jar when

your bird is anxiously awaiting his treat.

Then simply take the clicker, and ‘click’ it. Your bird will perk up, and you then give

him a treat. Repeat this many times for several days. Many people find it helpful to

cairy a small pouch full of treats with them all over the house, along with their clicker.

And every time they think of it, ‘click’, walk over to their bird’s cage and give him

another treat.

The sole purpose of this conditioning phase is to get the bird to realize and expect that

every time he hears that clicker a treat should be on its way soon. This should

eventually get to the point, where it becomes obvious that your bird gets enthusiastic

when you sound the clicker. It is at this point you’ve conditioned him perfectly and

you’re ready to move onto the training.

And just to give you another example, there was a scientist by the name of Dr. Pavlov,

who used these same principles to train a dog to be conditioned to the sound of a dinner

bell. Dr. Pavlov would ring the bell, and then proceed to feed the dog, for many days in

a row. And it did not take long before the dog would start to salivate every time it heard

the bell, because it could visualize in it’s mind the food that it was about to receive.

Again... this is a vital step in the process of trick training and should not be skipped.