So I watched a scary movie, and while the soundtrack swelled and the people around me screamed and jumped in their seats and my heart pounded, I was thinking about behavior. There’s a good chance I need professional help. (But in the meantime, I have blog posts.)
Yes, a room full of people watching a horror film can be a great example of an important behavioral concept. Let’s talk about the third of the Four F’s.
Remember a little film called Jurassic Park? It was recently re-released in 3D. I had forgotten that it first came out 20 years ago; it’s fun to re-watch it with my older, behavior-savvy eyes.
I went to the theater with Alena (also blogging regularly here), and as it was a late-night showing and we were the only patrons in the theater, we could indulge in a little chat as we watched.
Last time I shared examples of an extremely aversive experience poisoning what had once been a pleasant, rewarding behavior. So when something outside of your control goes wrong, how likely is it to destroy the behavior you’ve trained?
Last post I wrote about a classical association between a song and a happy experience. Today I’ll share the flip side – a song that makes my skin crawl, through no fault of its own.
Have you ever heard a particular piece of music, or smelled a certain scent, and had a powerful emotional response that you couldn’t quite explain? Well, it happens to everyone – even your pets – and it’s how your brain is hard-wired.
Okay, I was a bit slow to adopt TAGteach when I first encountered it in the early 2000s, but I’ve caught on, and I’ve been applying it more and more in my life. Sometimes I use TAGteach principles without the actual tagger (clicker), simply because that’s what I have to work with, but even without a key tool the principles still work. A marker can be many things, not just a clicker, and even with no marker (or instructor) at all, the concepts can be turned to Focus Points instead of TAGpoints and used the same way.
I’ve used clicker-less TAGteach backstage at a major performance event and with kids on the verge of losing it. And last weekend I had a reminder of how very useful TAGteach can be for myself.
The clicker training world contains clickerly people. This is awesome.
Following the amazing-as-always ClickerExpo, I headed southeast to join friends and family for a Caribbean vacation. It was delightful; home was 4 degrees Fahrenheit when I left for San Francisco, where the rainy 60s felt lovely, and 80 degrees on a sandy beach felt positively euphoric.
And I learned to surf.
In the spirit of the holiday, I’d like to present you, Dear Reader, with a trick, a tag, and a treat.
What, you’re not familiar with the middle part of that phrase? It’s a new Halloween tradition. Trust me on this.
Want to know what that undead-Michael Jackson has to do with all this? Read on. (Hint: he’s part of the tag bit.)
I’ve been working really, really hard on a writing project. Dedicated. I do most of this work late at night, and to be honest, there were nights when I’d probably have enjoyed snuggling with the Dobermans and watching a movie rather than yanking out my hair and wondering how to shave a few thousand more words.
I was thinking of writing a blog post on OC and staying on task with this project — an acceptable form of procrastination, perhaps? — when I stumbled upon another blog post and realized I didn’t have to write it. It was already there for me.