by entrancedbymyGCC » Tue Nov 02, 2010 4:21 pm
I'll have to give this a try, when I have some time to spare. Scooter came to us towel-phobic and I started desensitizing him to it by wearing a towel around, draped over my head or shoulder, but he was reluctant even to deal with that. However, he's considerably more settled now and it may be time to give it a go.
One question... how do you time the reward with the withdrawal of the towel? It seems to me there might be some danger of having the reward associated with the towel being "chased away" rather than with tolerating the towel.
One thing I've been unsure of, that you may have a good answer to, is what the maximum time gap is over which a parrot will associate two actions. In other words, how long can I wait to bridge and reward or reward the bird and have the bird connect the reward to the action I want to be reinforcing? I'm sure there is a technical term for this, but it is eluding me at the moment. With a horse it is said to be 3 seconds. I think it is longer with a parrot, but I'm not sure how long.
Scooter
Death Valley Scotty