Equiosity

This is the fifth and final part of our conversation with Dr Claire St Peter. Claire is a behavior analyst. She teachers At West Virginia University where she has recently taken on a new role. She is now Chair of the department of behavior analysis.

We have been down in the weeds considering the definitions of words both trainers and behavior analysts use on a regular basis. We started in episode 248 by asking what is shaping. Last week we asked: what is behavior? And now we are asking how do you define environment. The answer begins with a surprise.

This is part 4 of a five part conversation with Dr Claire St Peter. Claire is a behavior analyst. She teachers At West Virginia University where she has recently taken on a new role. She is now Chair of the Department of Behavior Analysis.

This week we are down in the weeds considering the definitions of words both trainers and behavior analysts use on a regular basis. We started in episode 248 by asking what is shaping? In this episode we ask what is behavior? The nuances form the basis for a great conversation that takes us in some surprising directions beginning with do plants behave? What do you think? Find out what we think as we try to find an answer to the question: what is behavior? The answers we consider have useful implications for working with our horses.

Language matters. I know what I mean by the words I use. But do my meanings match your understanding of the same words? And what nuances are there in the definition that I may never have considered? I may be okay when I am speaking to someone in my own community who understand the terms I use in much the same way that I do, but what happens when we move outside of our community? What happens when animal trainers talk to behavior analysts? Do we understand one another? Or do we sow confusion every time we try to converse. This sits at the heart of today’s episode. We begin by considering what criterion means.

And because we’ve been talking about behavior analysis, in the second half of the episode I ask Claire what behavior analysts do. What types of careers does a degree in behavior analysis prepare you for? The answer was a long and very useful.

Last week we reached the milestone of our 250th episode. To celebrate that event we invited three of the regular attendees from the coaching sessions for my on-line clinics to join us for an afternoon’s conversation. We’re talking with Svenja Sawinksi and Sonya Bode, both from Germany and Lucy Butler. You may remember the podcasts we did with Lucy where we talked about using a constructional training approach with her high school students.

Lucy got our conversation going with a question that arose during the last coaching session that boiled down to what is the difference between the science and the art of training? When we focus on how our horses use their bodies so we can help them to be better balanced, we often bring in references to the Feldenkrais training for people.

How to we translate that to working with our horses.

We ended last week with a great summary from Svenja and a wonderful closing statement from Sonja.

This week we continue on with a discussion of how training lets us help horses who may have long standing heath issues that effect their mobility and general comfort. Our guests describe what the process of going micro means for their training. They share how they use the feedback their horses provide to structure training plans that meet their individual needs.

We’ve reached an astounding milestone, our 250th episode. We celebrated this event by inviting three of the regular attendees of the coaching sessions for my on-line clinics to join us in a panel discussion. You’ve met them before when we did our first panel discussion with the coaching session attendees. We’re talking with Svenja Sawinksi and Sonya Bode, both from Germany, and Lucy Butler. You may remember the podcasts we did with Lucy where we talked about using a constructional training approach with her high school students.

Lucy gets our conversation going with a question that arose during the last coaching session. We were looking at leg flexions. In the coaching session I had suggested to Lucy that she think of the responses her horses were giving her more in terms of a Feldenkrais lesson rather than strict stimulus control. So on the one hand there is the art of training and on the other the science of training. What does that mean? That’s what we explore in this conversation with three talented trainers.

Episode 149 Dr Claire St Peter Pt 2 Requirements and Schedules of Reinforcement

This is part 2 of a five part series with Dr. Claire St Peter. Claire is the chair of the department of Behavior Analysis at West Virginia University. And she is also a horse owner so I always enjoy our conversations. We’re able to go deep into the weeds of both behavior analysis and horse training.

In this episode we begin by exploring the difference between requirements and schedules. When we ask a horse for three steps of backing before we click, is three steps the unit of behavior and that’s the criterion that must be met? Or is the unit one step which is repeated three times to meet the requirement of the schedule? What are the implications in terms of real world training? That took us to a discussion of concurrent schedules and to an important question you want to be asking yourself as you set up your training environment. Learners of all kinds are gonna allocate their behavior to the richest source of reinforcement in their environment at the moment. So are you a rich source of reinforcement for your horses?

We end this episode with a discussion of degrees of freedom, but this time we’re looking at degrees of freedom in terms of how many options are available to the handler.

This is episode number 248. You would think after so many episodes we would know what shaping is. In this episode we’re going to see if that is indeed the case.

Language matters and it can definitely trip us up. Does shaping mean the same thing to me as it does to you? In this conversation we are joined by Dr Claire St Peter. Claire has been a frequent guest on this podcast. She is a behavior analysts who teaches at West Virginia University. Our recent conversation with Dr Joe Layng on schedules of reinforcement generated many questions. Good conversations will do that. So we invited Claire to join us so we could continue our exploration of schedules. Our beginning point was this question: what is shaping? And how does our definition of shaping help us understand schedules of reinforcement?

I have a fun announcement to make. I'll let you listen to the podcast to find out what it is.

Dominique and I took turns this week with the topics we wanted to discuss. Dominique began with a fun surprise. She wanted to talk about the body awareness explorations that are part of my teaching. Dominique has never liked these awareness explorations. They just didn’t resonate with her. So she started out as a “no, this isn’t for me.” In clinics she was always polite and went along with the session even though she wanted to be doing something else.

In this episode she has shared how over time she has shifted from a “no” to a maybe, and then to: actually this is starting to make sense to me. She talks about what created that shift. And I share how I view these awareness explorations,I talk about some of the many reasons I value them, and why they have such a prominent role in the way I teach.

In the second half of the episode we talk about a multiple mat lesson and bend. What is bend? And what happens when a horse is over bent?

We end with a tease of a surprise that will be coming next week.

Dominique and I spent an afternoon catching up and going through topics she’s been collecting from my new book, Modern Horse Training, and the on-line clinics. In Part 1 the focus was on working both sides of your horse.

In part two we shifted topics to talk about piaffe, managing energy, cues, and base behaviors. What we're looking for in this work is we want a deep, deep feeling of all is well within the horse. You can ask for added energy and then immediately go back to calm because the horse is feeling deeply safe in his being. Base behaviors give you a middle ground to return to as you ask for different behaviors. Base behaviors give you the calm center.

This discussion brought us to the metaphor of tap root behaviors and different strategies for teaching and using base behaviors. Base behaviors help you slow everything down. They give you time to think so you can remain organized. Base behaviors help you develop for your horse the kind of consistent, reliable good manners you would be proud to share with others.