Mona wrote:advantages to a verbal bridge (like GOOD) are:
1) Your hands are free
2) It's easier to be spontaneous because you don't have to look for a clicker if you want to bridge a behavior
3) If my bird is going to mimic a sound (and they will definitely mimic a bridge sound) I would prefer to hear "good" or "very good" rather than click, click, click.
4) For different species of birds, clicks can actually mean something. I am sure that for Senegals, a click is a friendly gesture..similar to a dog wagging a tail; however, I was just reading an article in Parrots Magazine this month (November 2009 I think) by Greg Glendall. He posited that a click can be an aggressive sound to a grey. I do not know if this is true but I do know that greys certainly have a better verbal aptitude than many other species of parrots
I will mostly disagree with you about these. I would say my hands are pretty free with a clicker. I keep mine tucked inside my hand and it has almost never hindered me from using both hands for a trick. I wrote an article about holding a target stick, clicker, and treat in one hand in order to teach targeting your bird onto your hand:
http://www.birdtricks.com/blog/single-h ... your-bird/Which brings me to a good point that clicker goes much better with target training because you can click the exact moment the beak makes contact with the stick rather than the aftermath of the bird biting the stick aggressively. The click may distract the bird just enough and make it realize the behavior is complete that it will not continue chewing the stick and learn to bite hard.
Now for #2. I don't see clicker training holding you back from being "spontaneous." First off, I have several clickers lying around and could grab it and use it quite quickly. But the biggest thing is that even if you normally clicker train your bird, there is NOTHING stopping you from not using a clicker during a really spontaneous moment. If you could get a treat into the bird's beak quicker than saying good or clicking, then you're all set. Otherwise you can still use good or make a click sound with your mouth as a bridge to be spontaneous. I click and say good to Kili. Usually my sequence is: trick, click, treat, good. I praise her while she is eating her reward and developing the praise as a secondary reinforcer.
#3. I think this is a very good argument for your side. With my Senegal it's not an issue because she doesn't imitate the clicker but I could see it get annoying to listen to that all the time. To offer one counter argument to you though. I've watched videos of talking african greys that are praising themselves all the time and it is kind of silly and would hurt a serious training session. They will sit and be like "Say peanut. Peanut. Good bird, that's a good bird, very good." This ends up ruining the "trick" of just saying peanut. Of course it just shows how smart they are and that they could learn much more.
#4 Actually Kili clicks her beak rapidly when she gets excited and if I tap my teeth back she gets excited and clicks her beak so perhaps in senegals this works great. I would be interested why greys may find this aggressive??
I like clickers because they are consistent, reproducible, easy, saves my voice, rewarding to parrot. And believe me, I've been straining my voice calling Kili to fly to me across 60ft many times in a training session so any less talking ends up making it easier. Clickers make training more reproducible where other members of household can do it. If one person says good and another says great, that is completely different to the bird. And because the praise is merely a secondary reinforcer, results are sketchy.
The clicker is also just that, a secondary reinforcer. For me it is. Because I don't give treats absolutely every time there is a click but rather on a variable frequency of reinforcement schedule. But every time the correct behavior is completed I click.
Here's another great example to support clicker training. Watch this video from 0:25-0:34
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-cdanh5XzwI have Kili do 5 tricks straight for a single treat. If I stopped after every trick to say even "good," it would interrupt my vocal cues and it would drastically slow down my run through those tricks. On the other hand, omitting any sort of bridge may confuse the bird and it would be wondering if it was doing the trick correctly or not. Sometimes Kili will keep retrying a trick until she gets at least bridged if not rewarded. For play dead, the click clearly marks the termination of the dead behavior and releases the parrot to get up.
My philosophy on the clicker is the same as with eating utensils. I believe that Americans are the most rational people when it comes to using proper eating techniques for food. Asians eat everything with chopsticks, even if it is really difficult to eat in such. Middle Eastern folks eat everything with their hands. Europeans eat absolutely everything with knife and fork (even a hamburger). Americans on the other hand use a bit of everything where appropriate like knife/fork for greasy foods that need to be cut or scooped, their hands for quick foods like hambugers, and chopsticks for sushi and asian take out. So I think clickers definitely have their place as a tool for training but it doesn't stop me from using other methods when necessary. The clicker is simply the easiest tool for training most tricks and trainer convenience is a lousy excuse to forgo it. Being the more highly intelligent being, it is up to us to do everything right on our part to make the learning as simple and effective as possible to our feathered friends. I think it is quicker for us to learn to use the clicker and to apply such training techniques than to teach the bird with more wishy washy methods.