Clicker Training

The Origins of Clicker Training By Stephen G King 2005©

The origins of clicker training were based on a science and a technology developed by of one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century, B.F. Skinner.

Skinner’s entire system is based on something called operant conditioning. To explain the mechanics of operant conditioning, imagine a rat in a cage. A special cage (called, in fact, a “Skinner box”) that has a bar or pedal on one wall that, when pressed, causes a little mechanism to release a foot pellet into the cage. The rat is bouncing around the cage, doing whatever it is rats do, when he accidentally presses the bar and -- hey, presto! -- a food pellet falls into the cage! The operant is the behaviour just prior to the food pellet falling into the rat’s possession. This is called ‘the reinforcer’. In no time at all, the rat is furiously peddling away at the bar, hoarding his pile of pellets in the corner of the cage.

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