{"id":5685,"date":"2019-12-03T11:18:21","date_gmt":"2019-12-03T10:18:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/illis.se\/en\/?p=5685"},"modified":"2024-12-30T21:41:10","modified_gmt":"2024-12-30T20:41:10","slug":"how-to-teach-a-cue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/illis.se\/en\/how-to-teach-a-cue\/","title":{"rendered":"How to teach a cue"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Is this familiar?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You’ve been training tricks with your dog, and want to impress some visiting friends with his new skills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You ask him for a high five.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He gives a high five, then he lies down, plays dead, rolls over… all the while throwing expectant looks at you, as if saying “is it this?!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“Is this what you wanted, mommy?”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In other words, you ask for one specific behaviour, and he enthusiastically responds by giving you his entire learned repertoire of tricks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What’s going on?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, in technical terms, he’s not under Stimulus Control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In less technical terms, he hasn’t yet quite learned about cues. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Learning cues is difficult for animals.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

We often underestimate the difficulty involved when animals learn to respond correctly to cues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you’re new to the concept of cued responses, it’s about the animal doing a specific behaviour when asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sitting when you ask him to sit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coming when you call his name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Waving a paw when you say “high five!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is, showing a specific<\/em> response, corresponding to a specific<\/em> signal from the trainer or environment. Part of understanding cues is also not waving a paw<\/em> when you ask him to sit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What’s so difficult about that, you may ask.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, it’s a two-step process:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  • He needs to figure out that a certain behaviour pays off in the current context. For instance, that waving the left paw produces cookies, or that coming up to a person leads to getting a good scratch in just the right spot.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Once that’s accomplished, he needs to figure out what it is about the context that let him know that a particular behaviour pays off right now. That is, it’s when mommy says “high five!” that waving the paw produces cookies – not when she’s silent, or when she says “roll over!”<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    In other words, if guests applaud, or you laugh, give eye contact, a cuddle, or indeed cookies after your dog does his little improvised performance, you’re training him to ignore your cues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    You’re teaching him that “when mommy looks expectantly at me and makes a noise, if I then show off some of my learned trick behaviours, good things will happen”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    And maybe that’s fine. After all, the guests are happy and your dog is happy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    But maybe, for some reason, you need the dog to respond to the cue with the correct behaviour<\/em> – not just any random behaviour, or the whole repertoire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Maybe you need a rock solid recall, even in distracting environments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    Oh yeah, you can teach a cat to do a high five, too.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
    How to teach a cue.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

    Here’s the main outline of teaching the animal a cue (this list is not written in stone but may be changed depending on circumstances):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    • train the response<\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n
    • add the cue<\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n
    • discriminate<\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n
    • probe<\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n
    • generalize<\/strong><\/li>\n\n\n\n
    • trick \/ alternate<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

      I’m sharing a video illustrating this from my online course Getting Behaviour – the Foundations of Animal Training. For reference, we’re in module 5, all about cues, and this is chapter 4.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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