| Training journal |
[Nov. 7th, 2009|02:25 pm] |
Subject: Icarus
Behavior: Spin
Big breakthrough today! I did a bunch of lured spin practice, then decided we'd done enough of that, and that it was time to try to get Icarus to give me the behavior on his own. I planned to do this by shaping, starting with small head turns and working up to the full spin. I was hoping he'd put together our practice with lured spins with the new shaping regimen and eventually (probably after several training sessions) offer spins on his own.
To my complete surprise, after a few clicks for head-turns, he offered a complete spin on his own! Even more surprising, it was in the opposite direction of the spins we'd been practicing (which were left, or counter-clockwise, turns). Color me flabbergasted! I jackpotted that, of course. After that, he offered at least 30 spins in both directions on his own, although he did offer more left turns than right. I clicked and treated them all. What a session! :D
Lured spins: 16
No spin: 1
Shaped spins (including initial shaping clicks): 51
Session length: approx 8 minutes
Subject: Daedalus
Behavior: Tic tac toe
Still working on accuracy of placement of pieces on the board. Daedalus started off with a fairly low rate of correct behaviors (leans or fully in-square placements, aka "ins"), perhaps 40%, but quickly increased until she was offering many more leans and ins than "betweens."
Final totals:
In square: 26 (29.89%)
Leans: 37 (42.53%)
Outs: 24 (27.59%)
Total correct: 72.42%
Subject: Icarus and Daedalus
Behavior: Cued right and left waves
I decided to switch the cue for right and left waves to something more subtle. New cues are: Right wave: curling motion with my right pinky finger; Left wave: curling motion with my right index finger. This was an easy transition, since I've been doing one-finger waves as their cue already (since I'm often holding a treat hidden in the other fingers) and because I initially taught them the right wave as a modification of the "shake hands" behavior, so the cue was originally a curled pinky finger (they shake a person's pinky finger).
Both birds picked up the new cues very quickly, and quickly started to distinguish between the two. I helped them along by utilizing some of the old cue (my hand/finger waving on their right or left sides), but quickly faded that.
Didn't calculate rates of correct/incorrect behaviors (hard with 2 birds!), but I am guessing it was at least 60%. |
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| havent posted in ages.... |
[Nov. 6th, 2009|10:41 pm] |
so at the last moment I got talked into doing something for my birthday tomorrow.... its been crazy lately and I was thinking I would just let it slide by but my darling newly married bride convinced me I should do something fun as lately all I do is work, school, and take care of mom. so.....
want to celebrate my birthday tommorrow? NOV 7 email me at g mail or my love Helene or call me after noon tomorrow (before noon i will be in an exam). we are going to dinner in the east village at about 5 likely at http://www.menupages.com/restaurants/pala/ then going to the movies
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| Want to know the sign for 'nerd' in ASL? |
[Nov. 5th, 2009|04:43 pm] |
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) transversely and I don't have ASL class next week because of Veterans' Day. We also have no class the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Being nerds, we are horribly disappointed by this. Fortunately, we've found a sign club at the local college where we can go to practice.
Because class starts at 6:15, we don't have time to go home after work, so we grab a burrito downtown each week. We use it as a time to practice our ASL and get our heads into 'ASL mode' before class. Yesterday we literally spent all of the walk to dinner, then dinner itself, then the walk back up to the car without speaking aloud, and had a great conversation in ASL! It is really cool to realize how much we've progressed. Sometimes when I'm learning new languages I get frustrated by how little I can say; it's nice to remember how much I can say.
Our big final project for the semester is to watch two stories on our course DVD "textbook," pick one, practice it, and then videotape ourselves telling the story and turn it in. I am very excited about this! I've been watching ASL poems and interpretations of songs online to get psyched up for it and get ideas on good and bad storytelling.
Stay tuned for my video in a few weeks. ;)
Oh, and the sign for nerd is: put your index and middle fingers together and run the tips of them from the point of your nose up to the bridge, like you're pushing your glasses up. :) |
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| Training journal |
[Oct. 27th, 2009|09:46 pm] |
Daedalus: worked on tic tac toe a bit. Same behavior as yesterday. She's definitely improving at getting the shape into the hole. Icarus was distracting her today, so our session was pretty short, approximately 5 minutes.
Icarus: Worked on "spin." This was our first session, and he did marvelously. I am luring the behavior with a target stick (actually, a pen, because I couldn't find my real target stick... Icarus didn't care). I am verrrrrrrry slowly fading the lure; by the end of the session he really understood the desired behavior, so I could make the cue fairly fast (not waiting for him to follow it around, just getting him started) and raise it up a smidge. Training time: about 3 minutes.
Milton: Worked on his "under/through" behavior using a kitchen chair. We used to practice this with a wicker tunnel, but the rabbit chewed it to pieces. Ah well, it was her toy, after all. The chair requires more focus because there's more than one way to go under it, so I did a bit of leading him around to the correct starting place. By the end of the session he had clearly grasped the desired behavior and I was able to fade the lure (target... pen) quite a bit. I still occasionally had to target him around to the correct place and then target him under, but thus is the nature of cats: they are easily distractible. All in all, good session. Training time: about 3 minutes. |
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| Training journal |
[Oct. 26th, 2009|09:13 pm] |
Worked with Daedalus on tic tac toe this afternoon. This session I increased my criterion to "put the piece all the way (or very close to all the way) into any one of the squares on the board. (The board has a raised grid around the squares so that it's easy to get the pieces into the correct places.)
We did about 10 minutes of work, and her rate of getting the piece solidly into the square increased dramatically. (Again, no record keeping. Bad trainer! I have to make up some record-keeping sheets.) At first she would place it on the board at random, sometimes mostly in a square and sometimes right on the raised border between the squares. By the end she was putting it into a square more often than not.
Again, as soon as I started clicking, Milton (cat) came running over, sat nicely at my feet, and purred very, very loudly during the entire training session. It took me months to teach that cat patience, but it's a lesson he's clearly learned well! |
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