Much like “force free” is part of the philosophy and mindset I embrace as a trainer, Errorless Learning is as well. It’s part of my overall approach to training and is always my AIM, much as force free is my AIM as well.
Catchphrases are great, but often don’t explain or operationalise what that means and looks like in real life to people starting out. A good example is simply wearing your food pouch on the opposite side of your horse when training and switching it over when you switch sides. This is less important for an experienced horse, but when starting out, it’s essential to “setting your horse up for success”. We do this to prevent unwanted behaviour and avoid tempting the horse by having the food pouch close by or right under their nose, which makes it so much more tempting to try to help themselves, if we are a bit slow.
For me, similar to my post about an attitude of generosity with the food “click them for being a horse”, I want to set my horses up to not only enjoy the training, but to feel successful and avoid frustration.
Traditional aversive training methods use trial and error learning and there’s science that shows that repeating and practicing errors means we do more of them.
I love that yet again R+ training is the opposite, in that we use our skill as trainers and shapers, to arrange the environment, the antecedents, etc to make it as clear as we can to the horse, what the first approximation towards the goal behaviour may be.
Some good questions to ask yourself before and during a training session are:-
“Are my expectations of my horse too high?”
“Does my horse really know what to do?”
“Can I use some non aversive prompts to make the next approximation clearer?”
“Is the environmental arrangement helping my horse?”
“Does my horse feel comfortable, safe and “confident”?”
I have some great quotes about Shaping and Errorless Learning, that may help explain the overall concept, attitude and most importantly, that there is science behind this approach. An Errorless Learning mindset makes training more successful and effective.
“In [Skinner’s] system, errors are not necessary for learning to occur. Errors are not a function of learning or vice-versa nor are they blamed on the learner. Errors are a function of poor analysis of behavior, a poorly designed shaping program, moving too fast from step to step in the program, and the lack of the prerequisite behavior necessary for success in the program.” (Rosales-Ruiz)
“We also know that what makes possible the exclusive use of positive reinforcement is the program. Every time that we find ourselves correcting or waiting too long for the response it is time to reconsider the shaping program.” (Rosales-Ruiz)