Stimulus Reversals - Daiseikou!

That means "big success," for those of you who aren't into Japanese. ^_^

Going into today's workshop session, I had very little hope of accomplishing both my stimulus reversal projects. As of this morning, I had one chicken who had been evaluated for color discrimination (in which the chicken pecks only at a certain target -- in this case, blue -- every time, and WILL NOT peck another target, even when the "hot" target is removed and the chicken is prompted to peck red or yellow), and one chicken who was still working on shape discrimination (same idea, only the chicken is pecking at a specific shape, and there are more targets to choose from). In order to complete all the tasks of the discrimination training, a trainer needs to graduate both birds from their respective discrimination tasks, and then, in only one training session, use pure shaping (no prompting, target manipulation, luring or baiting -- just clicking/feeding) to reverse the discrimination so that the bird will choose another target instead of the old hot target, no matter in what order the targets are presented.

Since only one of my birds (the cooperative one) had graduated to being ready for stimulus reversal, I had only four training sessions in which to complete my shape discrimination with my schizophrenic chicken, have that bird evaluated, and then perform stimulus reversals with both birds. My table partner was in the same boat, which meant that we actually had only half the training time, since we both needed to do our SRs.

[At left: Shaping the chicken to peck only yellow, after four days of being reinforced only for pecking blue.]

However, things moved a little faster than I expected, and I ended up getting the shape bird evaluated during the first session, performing the color stimulus reversal during the second session (in a little under 17 minutes), and performing the shape stimulus reversal in the third session (at around 19 minutes).

I know we aren't supposed to anthropomorphize and attribute human emotions to animal subjects, so I can't call this "frustration" or "vengeance," but during the stimulus reversal my partner's chicken went for a particularly long period without being clicked. After a minute without reinforcement, she came over to my side of the table and went after my watch (shiny object is more interesting than paper targets, apparently!). Her pecking actually chipped the edge of the crystal. Annoying, since the watch is an antique that belonged to my grandmother... but it makes a good story, I guess: "Oh, you're bragging about your scar? Well, this watch still bears the mark of a dangerous chicken attack...!"

Since my partner ended up completing only one of her stimulus reversals, I actually ended up with a few minutes of extra training time, so I got to play with shaping my color-discriminating chicken to stretch a giant rubber band... though in the three minutes of shaping I did, I ended up with something closer to a kill-shake. (That'll teach me to halfheartedly shape indiscreet behavior when I'm tired and can't focus on criteria...) ^_^

[At right: Bob, me, Terry.]

After trainer graduation (during which Bob played an interminable loop of "Pomp & Circumstance"), I had Bob autograph my Legacy T-shirt and then spent a few minutes talking to Terry Ryan. This is Bob's last year of chicken workshops, but Terry will be running a similar set of workshops next March. They will cover much of the same material, but have more of a focus on applying the concepts to canine behavior and dog sports. I really want to come back for the next three sessions... Maybe I can work it into my schedule somehow.

After bidding everyone at the workshop farewell, I came back to the motel and uploaded a bunch of photos to my online gallery (for the purpose of sending them to everyone who attended the workshop), and then crashed for a two-hour nap. It takes a lot of brainpower to shape all those stimulus reversals...

Mark and I ate leftover Chinese for dinner. We leave early tomorrow morning for Seattle, where we will spend the next five days. VACATION, at last! (For something called "AVA's Vacation Blog," there hasn't been much vacation stuff lately.) Uwajimaya, here I come... ^_^