Sudden spike of biting from Stitch.

[cml]

Thanks for the replies everyone.

We went back to basics, and started step up training, and not taking it for granted.
Every stepup was either rewarded with a treat, or with something fun like talking silly, dancing, playing with a toy etc, to make it worth his while to do a proper step up.

No bites since yesterday, but we will keep on positively reinforcing step up for a while, then will slowly phase the reward out (step up should be a bridge to something fun, and be second nature imo).

[Michael]

Biting instead of stepping up is evident because the bird has been punished for stepping up in the past while biting has been negatively reinforced. By switching to training and continuous reinforcement, you are turning punishment into reinforcement and regaining trust. Great job.

[cml]

Biting instead of stepping up is evident because the bird has been punished for stepping up in the past while biting has been negatively reinforced. By switching to training and continuous reinforcement, you are turning punishment into reinforcement and regaining trust. Great job.

No, I wouldnt say punished? I can stretch so far as to not making it worth his while and taking the step up for granted, like you with Truman, but we have definetely not punished him for stepping up !

Biting in itself hasnt been negatively reinforced this time afaik, but is likely a by product of the mistakes we made over a year ago (see the original post), which we long since corrected. This time around we havnt done any reinforcing of the bites, which probably also is why it has been easily corrected. No reaction what so ever to bites has been policy for well over a year.

I agree with the continuous positive reinforcement, and again retraining the behaviour. A training and reinforcement approach is the way to go with taming parrots .

Cheers !

[Michael]

No no. Not making it worth his while would be like he stands there blankly looking at you, wont pick up his foot to step but yet doesn't bite. Punishment is the reduction and/or avoidance of behavior. You punished your parrot for stepping up and now he doesn't want to!

[cml]

Didnt want to .

Ill agree to disagree regarding what punishment means, to me that would be to actually doing something to punish the bird, like a time out or something similiar. I would never do such a thing.

I think he avoided stepping up because he could, and it wasnt interesting enough.

[Michael]

Im not saying that you did anything malicious or even intentionally wrong. You just unintentioanlly punished the bird for being cooperative

[CSLFiero]

I always have a LOL when someone uses the BF Skinner lexicon of punishment/reinforcement negative/positive to someone who uses the common english lexicon.

And then when you start talking about extinction burst, returns to baseline, and variable and intermittent ratio, i find most people's eyes sorta glaze over. They say the 21st century woman loves a man with brains. Curious then how quickly I can kill a date with discussions about psychology. Got a GF mike?