To click or not to click, the how to train question

So if we can just show dogs what we want, why continue to train them any other way? We may have never given it much thought or be the most comfortable doing something the way we’ve always done it, the way everyone else is doing it or the way the latest celebrity trainer says we should be doing it. Again, science will tell us, the most effective methods are force free. Punishment can produce immediate results it will also destroy trust, give rise to displacement behaviors and need to be increased to prevent habituation. As to comparing associative learning methods, recent studies have shown no difference between clicker training, using a verbal marker or training with food alone and even better results with social learning methods. They have also raised significant questions about how we use verbal markers to communicate and how the lack of a relationship with an often unknown dog trainer used in research can impact study results. These questions beg us to consider taking mainstream dog training out of the perhaps antiquated world of operant conditioning and learning by association and relying more on the way dogs and people are already learning more effectively -socially. So, why is it taking us so long to get with the program? Why are there more people going to conventions on the latest in something like clicker training and zero conventions on social learning?

When asked what the benefits of clicker training are, hundreds of respondent’s familiar with the method completed an online survey listing their belief that it was an added incentive for dogs being trained along with enhancing performance. They also referred to the clicker as a form of communication. The survey results, published in 2018, by researchers at La Trobe University showed 586 surveys were completed with 92.3% of the respondents being female and 6.3 % being male. This demographic speaks volumes as to gender preferences for training styles positive dog training clearly resounds with women as opposed to men. Participants defined clicker training more as a method rather than an attachment to a mechanism agreeing: “clicker training refers to training that uses a mechanical clicker, but many also included training that uses a verbal marker” with ‘“verbal “yes”, verbal “good”, whistle, mouth click, finger snap, as being equally effective.”’ Even with the consensus that markers can range in acoustics from the spoken to the click, there remains no small disagreement amongst trainers or scientists about which is better or why. Including the hundreds of trainers in the survey study, markers are thought to be more than just a signal for an event by offering feedback to the dog.

To test whether words, sounds or no marker would make a difference, a 2016 study by Chiandetti and Avella compared training by unfamiliar dog trainers with, a clicker and a treat, a spoken “Bravo” and a treat and a treat only. Dogs were trained to open a bread box and to generalize the task to an object that had the same function but appeared different. The researchers found no significant differences in any of the treatments. They noted ‘learning seems to be independent from the type of sound anticipating the food reward, and even more strikingly, it seems to be equivalent either with or without the clicker sound or the word “Bravo.” In this study, experimenters held to saying the word “Bravo” in a flat and uniform tone, but how might these results be different if the experimenters spoke with the sort of inflection and emotion that we use in everyday training life? The scientists concluded:

“The fact that dogs pay high attention to other human cues besides the rewarding ones, as for instance those communicative signals shown with ostensive communication, makes social forms of learning more effective than learning based on clicker training, as recently demonstrated by Fugazza and Miklósi. In this sense,we can expect that an enthusiastic regulation of the trainer’s tone of voice might modulate the efficacy of the learning. Indeed, dogs (and horses) respond congruently to verbal commands as human infants do. In our experiment, the word “Bravo” was pronounced in a neutral and consistent way across trials, thus resembling more the automatic click-clack of the clicker than an enthusiastic trainer. A further investigation should consider the possibility that the melodic contour of the trainer’s voice could improve the dogs’ learning.“

Clicker trainers claim that dogs that are clicker trained are trained faster and acquire complex behaviors more efficiently. Those who eschew clickers maintain that clicker trained dogs are more excitable and impulsive. Another study, done later in 2018, by Feng, Hodgens, Woodhead, et al., compared dog owners training their own dogs using either clicker training (clicker plus food) or food only training and found no specific advantages or drawbacks with either method in terms of dog owner relationship or impacts on the dog’s impulsivity or problem training skills. Owners were followed over a six week training course and while owners did report difficulty with the clicker method initially they also reported that it had a benefit when teaching a behavior at a where the dog was not in eye contact with the owner (nose touching a cone). The authors concluded that the “study provides the first evidence that clicker training may make certain tricks less challenging to train, but also that it may not produce benefits as greatly as previously reported.”

Clicker training may not be a superior training method but again, this does not mean that aspects of its use do not have advantages for training in certain environments or with certain species. Clickers signal the imminent arrival of a food reward which can keep an animal performing a behavior even when the reward does not follow. Studies find animals continue to offer cued behaviors for a period of time without being rewarded. These tests to determine how long before a behavior is “extinguished” are surely stressful and frustrating for the animal subject to them. Conversely, when the signal predicting the reinforcer is faithfully followed by a reward, the animal can experience a sense of control in the pattern. Captive and domestic animals deprived of choice and control are routinely stressed by changes in schedule and routine and shelter animals even more so. Cats are extremely territorial and most comfortable in their own home territory they not do well in with new or changed environments and less so in shelters.

Cats in shelters have been found to exhibit signs of extreme stress in reluctance to eat and interact socially and in increased hiding behaviors. Deprived of familiar environments and slow to acclimate to new situations and people, cats, may in fact, take comfort in the neutral aspect of a device signaling a reward as opposed to an unknown and untrusted human. A 2017 study by Kogan, Kolus, et al. looked at how training shelter cats with clickers (verbal markers were included in the definition of “clicker training) might reduce stress and increase welfare along with adoptability. The cats were successfully clicker trained to offer a variety of behaviors such as target, spin, sit and high five. Such favorable results prompted the authors to remark “this type of training allows for predictable interactions thereby increasing an animal’s sense of control and the predictability of it’s environment, and as a result, their well being and welfare.”

When I train, I work with verbal markers and offer a range of rewards depending on the individual animal, it seems to me that offering a robotic signal in response to something the animal is not sure of to begin with, is not fair or kind. Especially when that animal is cooperating on a supposedly mutual process. I also find clickers an awkward accessory for training. Marking behavior and the timing of reward delivery are crucial and need to happen in less than mere seconds (studies show that more than 3 seconds are a missed opportunity). In practice, it soon becomes apparent that being able to successfully time marking the requested behavior at the moment it happens is a skill that requires experience, attention and practice. Once that skill is achieved, for myself and for most of the trainers I have observed, it is way more precise when marked verbally where vision and voice can be simultaneous compared to the extra time needed to manipulate a device or clicker. Theoretical differences aside, surely we know that it is nearly impossible with the range of communication in body language and emotion to ever be neutral around an animal much less uninformative – clever Hans anyone?

Recently, I attended a course on theory and training skills where a good number of the dog trainers were clicker only devotees and passionate about it. Some coaches during training exercises remonstrated those who inflected any emotion in the use of a verbal marker. This schism of to click or not to click and how, can be a not so positive divide in the world of positive dog training. We can all appreciate that training, good welfare based training, is relationship based and relationship building but we are divided on how to use a verbal marker or accepting that these markers are multipurpose in marking an event, informing and communicating.

Clicker confusion for the animals can be a concern as well. In most group dog training classes training is often done without sufficient spacing to make each click distinctive for each animal but the dogs are vigilant in watching every move we make before handing over a treat - where's the actual marker then? If we add in imprecise timing to the mix, an animal is more likely to associate the most recent click in time no matter who it’s coming from. (Studies on clicker training routinely examine one individual animal with one trainer.) The course I took, paired 12 trainers paired with 12 assistants clicking at 12 mini donkeys within a few feet from each other. Working in tandem, the clicks were meant to signal to the assistant as well as the donkey. With clicks coming so close in time from trainers spaced so closely together, I could not tell, without looking, which trainer was clicking for which donkey- and with those ears, the donkeys could not have missed a single click, no matter where it came from. Because clicks were followed by treats offered directly under the donkey’s muzzle, there was thankfully no mistaking who got which reward.

Clicker training’s popularity begins and ends with the people using it. As popular as it may be, it is not what is teaching our dogs. Dogs are excellent learners whether we use a clicker or a verbal marker, food alone or show them what we would like them to do. Dogs learn from us all the time, whether we spell the words out or not. There is a story told in dog training circles of a trainer demonstration on how to teach a dog not to pull on leash. The trainer demonstrates a “red light, green light” technique in which the moment the dog begins to pull the trainer stops moving and the very second the dog stops pulling the trainer moves forward. This exercise is one the most challenging to perform for people because the timing has to be exquisitely coordinated in order to effectively teach by association. Precisely stopping with moving forward when the leash is being pulled creates an association of pulling and not moving ahead, while instantaneously moving forward when the pulling stops creates an association of loose leash and forward motion. Remember, there are one or two seconds to teach this. Applying timing and executing a response to the red lights or green lights are hardest for the people doing the exercise and not the dog. Try it. The story goes that the trainer demonstrating the technique worked with a leash with a number of knots in its length, he liked how they gave him a better hold on the leash and for no other reason. After explaining how timing, skill and response worked to teach a dog not to pull the trainer was asked only one question by his audience: “Where could they buy that special leash to stop the pulling?’ It’s not the leash or the clicker but how we say the words we use, the training, teaching and communicating that stops the pulling.

References:

Chiandetti, C., Avella, S., Fongaro, E., Cerri, F., (2016) Can clicker training facilitate conditioning in dogs? Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 184, 109-116.

Feng, L.C., Howell, T.J., Bennett, P.C., (2018) Practices and perceptions of clicker use in dog training: A survey-based investigation of dog owners and industry professionals. Journal of Veterinary Behavior, 23, 1-9.

Feng, L.C., Hodgens, N. H., Woodhead, J.K., Howell, T.K., Bennett, P.C., (2018) Is clicker training (clicker + food) better than food-only training for novice companion dogs and their owners? Applied Animal Behaviour Science, 204, 81-93.

Fugazza, C., Miklosi, A., (2015) Social learning in dog training: the effectiveness of the Do as I do method compared to shaping/clicker training. Applied Animal Behaviour Science. 171, 146-151.

Fugazza, C., Moesta, A., Pogany, A., Miklosi, A., (2018) Social learning from conspecifics and humans in dog puppies. Scientific Reports, 8, 9257

Jamesion, T.J., Baxter, G.S., Murray, P.J., (2018) You Are Not My Handler! Impact of Changing Handlers on Dogs' Behaviours and Detection Performance. Animals. 98(10).

Kogan, L., Kolus, C., Schoenfeld-Tacher, R. (2017) Assessment of Clicker Training for Shelter Cats. Animals, 7, 73.

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