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<em>By
Jason Pratte, Lead Keeper, Zoo Atlanta
AAZK Behavioral Husbandry Committee Member</em>

<em>The AAZK Animal Training Committee strives to support the mission of AAZK, Inc. by
providing information and learning opportunities for animal care professionals to
facilitate the use of operant conditioning and other training techniques, to achieve
behavioral management goals and excellence in animal care.</em>

This submission is a continuation of our ‘Training Tips' series, as a way for trainers to review basic training terminology and methods to further sharpen their training skills.  This month, we will be looking at choosing and establishing a cue, some of the common problems trainers may have experienced and how to resolve some of those issues.

Think back on training sessions you have participated in or observed. Did you ever notice times when the animal just wasn't "getting" what it was the trainer was trying to teach them? Or that it takes 20 repeats of the cue to elicit the desired behavior? Or that your well-trained animal is asked for one behavior, but then often offers a different one? These might be issues related to the cue.

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A cue, or conditioned stimulus, is the signal that a trainer chooses to indicate that they want the subject to perform a particular behavior. It can be anything that the subject you are working with can perceive. The most commonly used cues are verbal commands (auditory) and hand signals (visual), but trainers have used light, odors, touch, music, vibration, tool, etc. The list of possible cues is limited only by the trainer's imagination, but based on physiology, animals may respond better to some cue stimuli than others. When establishing which cue is going to be associated with a desired behaviour, stop and think: is the cue distinct? Is it recognizable by the animal, from other cues being used by trainers, and from stimuli the animal is exposed to every day? For example, let's say you want to train an okapi to come in from the exhibit when you ring a bell. You want the bell to be the cue that means "come into the barn," but your okapi spend their day out on exhibit listening to the zoo train chug past, with the engineer ringing a bell randomly. The bell is likely going to lose effectiveness as a cue (if it ever works in this situation). The okapi would likely respond to sounds associated with the trainers themselves: doors opening, calling her along with the bell, etc. Be sure the cue is something unique, distinguishable from the environment and easily associated with the behavior you want to teach.

Likewise, ensure that the different cues you use remain distinct from one another. When I first began working with the pandas at Zoo Atlanta several years ago, I began training them an "open mouth" behavior. I used the verbal cue "open" paired with my thumb and fingers being spread apart in front of their face. The training went well, though slower than I expected. I turned the behavior over to another keeper to help maintain it, and then we both began experiencing problems. We would  ask for "open" and often get a paw placed on the mesh instead. We would get frustrated, and the pandas even more so. It was a new, inexperienced keeper, unfamiliar with the training program, who caught what was happening. She asked one day if I meant for the end of the "open" cue (fingers spread apart from thumb) to look like the cue for "paw" (the trainer's hand presented in front of the panda as if we were telling them to "halt").  I stopped and looked at the cue from the bear's perspective, and lo, she was right. To the bear, they looked almost identical, with the trainer presenting essentially an open hand to them. We changed the "open" cue to just the thumb and forefinger spreading apart, and within a few weeks the behaviors were being presented as asked.

If you are having obvious confusion or frustration demonstrated from your training subject, take a step back and examine your cues.  Ask another keeper to watch your session to observe, specifically your cues and actions. Are you using two whistle blasts to signal something different from one blast? And what if the animal only hears one because of ambient noise? Or is not sure if it heard two or three? Keep the cue simple, within the animal's perception, and distinct.

Now a bit about stimulus control. Stimulus control is when a stimulus (cue) increases the probability of a behavior occurring (conditioned response) because that behavior was historically strongly reinforced in the presence of the cue (AAZK/AZA, 2003: Stimulus Control – A behavior is said to be under stimulus control if it meets 3 conditions: 1) It is immediately offered following the S<sup>D</sup>; 2) It is offered only when preceded by the correct S<sup>D</sup>; 3) It is not offered in the presence of another S<sup>D</sup>. [S<sup>D</sup> = cue]). There are a lot of factors involved in stimulus control, but since they are well described by Karen Pryor in her book "Don't Shoot the Dog" we'll touch on just the most basic aspects here...