Category: Advanced Stuff ¤
  Author: Karen Pryor ¤
   Title: When To Click With No Treat ¤

Guess I'll chip in on the clicks-and-no-treats question, because it
bothers people so much. Like anything else, it's only a problem if you
make it one. Treating without clicking will get you in trouble by
turning your dog into a food seeker instead of a click-attender, if you
do it all the time; but we've all done it by accident, or for
convenience, once in a while. Clicking without treating, if you do it a
LOT and try to make the click something that works "instead" of food,
will also get you in trouble eventually, because the click will lose its
reinforcing ability. And yet, we're probably all going to do it from
time to time, for convenience, or to help an animal along while still
extending the requirements (two behaviors, say, instead of one.) And, as
was pointed out by Helix I think, you can follow your click with a cue,
instead of a treat, and that will be just as reinforcing, once the dog
gets used to it. 
   Being somewhat of a purist, I suppose, I like to establish the
concept of an intermittent schedule, by going from a 1 behavior, 1
click, 1 treat, to tossing in some episodes of 2 behaviors, 1 click, 1
treat. But a very inexperienced or resistant animal may not be ready
even for this mild an escalation. On "Clicker Magic" you can see me
trying to raise criteria with that yellow Lab, Gusto, by going from 1:1
to 2:1, and losing him at once; so I backed up and gave him clicks
without treats alternately with clicks with treats, a few times. It was
just enough to reassure him; and then we suddenly began getting two,
three, four touches or follows of the target stick in a row, with the
click and treat only for the last one. At that point I could now raise
criteria easily and move right along. In that case, Gusto needed help
across this bridge; Corally's horse might have also welcomed the
"explanation" aspect of a treatless click. 

So, it's not do you or don't you; it's if. For me, if I decide to use
extra clicks in a transition, as with Gusto, I want to get rid of the
extra clicks ASAP so I can be clearer about which operant topography I
am actually marking, and which I am no longer interested in. So I need
to be able to get the animal working through unclicked responses, with
confidence, in order to use my clicker effectively to communicate where
we're going next.  

Does that help? KP