gongx109: April 2012 Archives   Vote 0 Votes  One of my
childhood dreams is to train animals to do tricks, and this
dream has come true. My favorite part in this semester is
shaping, which has been proved to be useful after I trained my
cat successfully. Shaping is a way to shape a specific behavior
by the way of operant conditioning. Basically it gives a signal
or treat when a human or animal dose the specific behavior, and
the treat or signal serves as a reinforcer. A classical example
that shapes behaviors of animals by the way of shaping is to
train a dog by clicker. For example, if you want to train a dog
to stand up, you simply begin from the simplest step, like when
the dog raises his head. When the dog raises his head, you click
the clicker to let the dog know he is doing the right thing, and
the dog will do this more often. Once the dog learns to raise
his left paw, you can move to the next level, and in the end the
dog will learn to stand up when you click the clicker. I tried
the whole process duri