teaching verbal cue discrimination
As trainers, we need to be able to depend on our dogs’ ability to respond to the correct verbal cue and not to other stimuli. Verbal cue discrimination training is an important skill; it ensures that your dog responds only to the correct verbal cue and not to other words. It is particularly useful in dog sports, such as canine freestyle, where many verbal cues are given and the dog must differentiate between them.
In this video by KPA CTP Kim Lyddon, Rio is learning to discriminate between cue words and non-cue words. To begin, Kim keeps her body still as she cues the behavior. She then begins to incorporate non-relevant words (Kim is using the names of fruit) along with the cue word. Notice that she not only rewards Rio for responding to the cue word, but she also offers reinforcement when Rio does not respond to the non-relevant word. As Rio becomes more fluent, Kim changes her posture to solidify Rio’s understanding that it is the specific word that matters, not her body position.
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Happy Training!