Measuring The efficiency Of clicker training for service dogs

Open Access
- Author:
- D'onofrio, Jodie Marie
- Graduate Program:
- Special Education
- Degree:
- Master of Science
- Document Type:
- Master Thesis
- Date of Defense:
- December 08, 2015
- Committee Members:
- Richard M Kubina Jr., Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor
David Lee, Thesis Advisor/Co-Advisor - Keywords:
- clicker training
service dogs
positive reinforcement - Abstract:
- Clicker training, a young method of positive reinforcement training, involves an acoustical cue for clear communication to mark the exact moment a correct behavior is performed in addition to a motivating reward. In this study, in October 2015, the efficiency of clicker training was examined by training two dogs two service behaviors, namely picking up a wallet and retrieving a medicine bag, to evaluate the frequency of correct behaviors as well as the amount of time it took to accomplish a complete behavior chain. For this purpose, an alternating treatment design was used with both a daily baseline and an intervention condition in rotating order for two weeks. As a result of clicker training, one dog completed all four steps of his behavior during the intervention and the second dog completing two of the four steps of her behavior during the intervention. Clicker training proved to be an effective positive reinforcement technique in training service behaviors to dogs. Some recommendations for future research would be to include a higher number of dogs in the experiment, and to have the experimenter(s) engage in formal clicker training preparation or guidance of accurate implementation of the training technique from a professional.