I'm saving things here so we don't have to tell the same stories again. These aren't easy concepts to consider, but sometimes we need to try to see what we ARE doing to limit others' freedom and whether it's a good thing or not.

On Aug 8, 2006, at 6:55 AM, Sandra Dodd wrote:

Lori Odhner came to a conference here once to show us a really interesting thing. I've thought of trying to reproduce it, but it was so perfectly a Lori thing I fear to screw it up. But she got her workshop participants, 20 people or so, in a classroom. One person would leave. Lori would say "Let's get her to sit in that desk right there" or something and then we'd try it with another person, and participants were adding suggestions of things to do. Then when time was nearly up, we got Lori to sit on the floor under the chalk board and twirl her hair (playing with her hair was the goal). It was done without speaking a single word or making a single gesture. It was done by people making noises with their mouths closed. We made approving noises, like people make to babies (very hard to describe here), and could go "uh huh" (but with mouths closed) and "eh" and "huh-uh" or other kinds of little musical noises that indicated approval or disapproval. The subjects moved away from things and toward things, sat or stood, touched or didn't touch, as the other moms made their approval or disapproval known in absolutely non- verbal ways. They got me to go to a bookshelf, pull down a certain red binder and open it.

This is how trainers "shape" a behavior, although with animals, a clicker is used to tell the critter it has done the correct thing and a food reward will follow. (Usually, there is no "wrong" indication from the trainer, only clicks to mark the correct behavior, but with humans the "wrong" marker speeds up learning, like playing "hot and cold".) Sea World "trains" a human volunteer during their educational demonstration; they get the human to flap his arms or jump up and down for clicks and M&M's.

There's a book called "Don't Shoot the Dog," by Karen Pryor, which, though it is "about" clicker training/positive reinforcement of animals, applies to training the people you live with by subtly rewarding behaviors you like.

Nancy