Equiosity

In the recent Dressage Camp one of the standouts for me during the introductions were how many of the participants were working with older horses. It was so good to hear how many people were choosing to rescue older and often unsound horses. They wanted to know how they could help their horses, so clearly this was a great topic for the podcast. I invited one of the Dressage Camp participants, Christa Culbert, to spend the afternoon with us in conversation.

Christa is an artist, a horse trainer, and an educator. She is pursing a career in the horse world, and dreams of starting a classical dressage clicker training horse rescue someday. Christa has been participating in my on-line clinics so I’ve been watching her progress with her two older horses. Both came from a horse rescue.

In this episode we talk about Christa’s background both in the horse world and her search for a way of working with horses that feels morally right. That search brought her to clicker training. In so many of the podcasts we talk about what we can learn from the science of behavior analysis. In this conversation Christa shares how her training as an artist has informed her horse training.

This is part two of an afternoon’s conversation in which Dominique used posts from my on-line clinics to select topics for us to discuss.

Last week our conversation about the connection that emerges with our horses led to a discussion about colic, and then to lighten things up, we talked about treats vests and pouches. Our next topic is video. A post from a course participation gave Dominique some ideas about how she could use the video from her training sessions to help spot clean loops.

From there we moved on to several other topics, including the use of chains to develop back and forth communication between the handler and the horse, and a creative way to use the training game. So first I describe the original version of the training game and then I look at a variation that can create beautifully seamless training.

I was worried about putting colic in the title of this episode. I thought that might scare some people off. It can be such a sad subject. So many of us have either lost horses to colic or known friends who have. Colic can come on so fast and it is so very painful. It isn’t like a long illness where there is time to prepare and time to say good-bye. When a horse survives a bout of colic, there is always a fear that there will be another one. So this is a heavy topic.

We didn’t start off wanting to talk about colic. Originally Dominique and I thought we needed to shift gears a bit after so many podcasts that drew on academic research to talk about lighter subjects. The best laid plans and all that.

Dominique had a list of topics that she wanted to talk about that came from discussions in my new on-line clinics.

We began by talking about the connections that emerge with our horses through this training. They don’t want to leave us. They stay engaged with us in the training game. That’s where we began and suddenly we were talking about colic. It was one of those conversations where I had to stop and think - how did we get here? There is a connection with connection.

So we are talking about colic in this episode, and then to lighten things up, we talk about an essential piece of our clicker training equipment - treat pouches and vests.

This is Part 2 of our conversation with Dr Sarah Memmi on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Sarah brings a great perspective to this question. She’s an assistant professor of Marketing at the College of Business at the University of Louisville. She’s also a lifelong horse person which makes her a perfect fit for also teaching in the University of Lousiville’s equine business program.

Last week Sarah made the following distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation occurs when the reinforcer is bundled with the action such that it’s not easily separable from the action. The reward is in the doing.

Extrinsic motivation occurs when the reinforcement is separable from the action itself.

An activity can acquire intrinsic reinforcement value through the pairing of the activity with reinforcement. There are four qualities that are important to this process. We covered two of them in Part 1: The first was there’s a unique link between the behavior and the extrinsic reinforcer. The second is repeated pairing between the behavior and a desired outcome. This is something that is very familiar to all of us who clicker train.

Part 1 ended just as Sarah was getting to the third factor so that’s where we pick up as we resume the conversation.

We’re reached another podcasting milestone. This is episode number 200! Pretty staggering, especially when I think about the number both of listening hours and editing hours that represents.

In many of those episodes we’ve talked about constructional training. This concept draws on the work of Dr. Israel Goldiamond. Goldiamond poses four questions which form a very useful framework for structuring your training.

The first question asks what do you want? What are your goals? And the recommendation is to dream big.

The second question gives you your baseline. Where are you now? What skills are in repertoire? What component skills are missing?

The third question takes you to your training steps. How are you going to get from where you are now to where you want to be.

The fourth question asks what will keep you going? What will keep you motivated.

It’s this fourth question that we want to focus on in this conversation. Our guest is Dr Sarah Memmi.

Sarah joined us a year ago for a fabulous conversation about choice, control and goal setting, so in a way we were looking at the first question in that conversation. And now we’re going to jump to the fourth.

Sarah brings a great perspective to this question. She’s an assistant professor of Marketing at the College of Business at the University of Louisville. She’s also a lifelong horse person which makes her a perfect fit for also teaching in the University of Lousiville’s equine business program.

Our subject is going to be intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. In this podcast we have talked mainly to behavior analysts. As a behavioral scientist Sarah is drawing on a different body of research, so I was very interested to hear her perspective on this subject. Sarah was trying not to overwhelm us with research references related to how humans behave, and instead in this conversation she is extracting what she thinks is most relevant to those of us who are interested in training.

We are continuing our conversation with Dr. Claire St Peter. Claire is a Professor of Psychology at West Virginia University. She is the Director of Graduate Training, and the Coordinator of the Behavior Analysis program area at the University - and she is also a horse person.

We’re celebrating the publication of an article we wrote together for the Journal of Experimental Analysis of Behavior on Loopy Training. This was in response to a call for papers that the Journal put out last fall that asking for articles that explored the connections between the applied animal behavior community and the broader behavior analytic community.

In part 2 we ended in the middle of a discussion on the consistency of handling. Whether we refer to handlers working with animals or teachers working with people, how much of an impact does the consistency of the handler matter? We continue this discussion by looking at microshaping, and a training exercise called “the line of trash” which is intended to encourage the trainer’s creativity.

Last week we began a conversation with Dr. Claire St Peter. Claire is a Professor of Psychology at West Virginia University. She is the Director of Graduate Training, and the Coordinator of the Behavior Analysis program area at the University - and she is also a horse person.

We’re celebrating the publication of an article we wrote together for the Journal of Experimental Analysis of Behavior on Loopy Training. This was in response to a call for papers that the Journal put out last fall that asking for articles that explored the connections between the applied animal behavior community and the broader behavior analytic community.

Claire asked if I would like to write a paper with her. The result is our article entitled “Connecting Animal Trainers and Behavior Analysts Through Loopy Training.” We celebrated the on-line publication of the article by recording this podcast. Towards the end of Part 1, we talked about what is was like to write an article together, then we started down rabbit holes. In this episode we focus in on the effect that consistency - or the lack of consistency - in the handler has on the learner. We look at chains, stimulus control and procedural integrity.

Here's the link to the Loopy training article:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/author/HEMGM6YMDQF7UNJEYTCZ?target=10.1002/jeab.779

We are beginning a conversation with Dr. Claire St Peter. Claire is currently a Professor of Psychology, the Director of Graduate Training, and the Coordinator of the Behavior Analysis program area at West Virginia University. We’re celebrating the publication of an article we wrote together for the Journal of Experimental Analysis of Behavior on Loopy Training.

In this podcast we talk about what it was like to write the article and what is involved in getting an article published in a peer reviewed journal. Then we take you down some of the many rabbit holes we explored as we developed the article. Some of them made it into the final version and some were just fun to explore.

Here's the link to the Loopy training article:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/author/HEMGM6YMDQF7UNJEYTCZ?target=10.1002/jeab.779

This is part 3 of our conversation with Lucy Butler. Lucy is a special ed teacher who at the start of the 2021-2022 school year was given the assignment of working with all the students in her high school who had failed ninth grade the previous year. Last week Lucy talked about empowering her students by giving them more choice. She taught them how to write SMART goals for themselves. It was inevitable that the subject of gun violence in schools came up during our conversation.

“How insane it is,” Lucy says, “that part of my job as a teacher is thinking about how to protect my students against a gunman.”

But then Lucy found a way to transform the discussion into a hopeful message.

“What I’m doing is the very best strategy,” she said, “is helping people to feel successful, to feel that they have choice and to feel that they belong. I’m inoculating these kids against violence. I’m giving them the support of belonging and of feeling success. We’re inoculating them against a dysfunctional future. They are developing the skills to create their own success.”

We do bring the conversation around to horses. The links are important. No matter who your learners are, Lucy is sharing a hopeful message.

If you have friends with school-age children, I hope you’ll share this conversation.

Lucy Butler is a special ed teacher who at the start of the 2021-2022 school year was given the assignment of working with all the students in her high school who had failed ninth grade the previous year. Lucy had been attending my on-line clinics through the summer and over Labor Day weekend she attended our Science Camp, so she was very excited to apply the concepts of constructional training to her classroom students. With the help of Dr Claire St Peter and two of Claire’s former graduate students, Lucy began the process of changing the lives of her students.

In Part 1 Lucy reviewed some of the major lessons from the first half of the year. In Part Two we move into the second half of the year with a discussion of SMART goals. The students were learning that felt good to improve, so now they were further empowered by being asked to develop their own goals. What did they want to improve? Learn about SMART goals and how to use a Ruleg matrix to teach complex concepts.