Home » Library » Enjoy » Karen's Letters

Karen's Letters

Playtime

By Karen Pryor on 09/01/2004

Ah, summer! For weeks I haven't been able to get anyone on the phone, businesses don't answer their e-mail, professors are unreachable, my family is camping on the beach, and trainers I need to talk to are tracking down their ancestors in Iceland or bird watching in Belize or going fishing.

Everyone is playing. Play is a highly important part of life. I think it's also a highly important part of clicker training. No, I don't mean as a reward—following the click with a game of tug, say, rather than a treat. That's okay in its place; but that's not what I mean.

On My Mind: The Perils of Praise

By Karen Pryor on 08/01/2004

Earlier this summer I visited Honey Loring's "Camp Gone to the Dogs," in Vermont. Classes were held all day long for various kinds of dog sports and activities. The throngs of vacationers were showing off their pets and having fun experimenting with new activities. All the instructors were positively inclined. Many people carried treats, but clickers were not much in evidence. I saw lot of leash guidance, food luring, and praise.

Association for Behavior Analysis

By Karen Pryor on 07/01/2004

The Association for Behavior Analysis (ABA), the organization for the "parent" science of clicker training, held its annual meeting this year in Boston, where I live. There were over 3,000 attendees, a 200-page program, and hundreds of papers, speeches, panels, symposia, and gatherings. This year was the 100th anniversary of B.F. Skinner's birth, and many special events were held to honor the occasion.

ClickerExpo is Back!

By Karen Pryor on 06/01/2004

Many people last year were surprised to find that there is much more to clicker training than they had supposed. This year we are taking it to a new level. We listened to your comments and requests, and I think you'll be thrilled with the new program, with four simultaneous tracks instead of three. Here's your chance to catch what you missed the first time around, and a lot of new programs as well.

Making the Connection: Behavior Chains

By Karen Pryor on 05/01/2004

During the first season of ClickerExpo, it seemed to me that a lot of people had questions about behavior chains and back-chaining. I'd like to shed a little light on the subject. A behavior chain is an event in which units of behavior occur in sequences and are linked together by learned cues. Back-chaining, which means teaching those units in reverse order and reinforcing each unit with the cue for the next, is a training technique. We use this technique to take advantage of the intrinsic nature of the event.