entrancedbymyGCC wrote:I'm not going to argue with that, but that's a specific case. We are getting stuck on either logical constructs or semantics... "Good boy!" can be a positive reinforcer, but it is not always a positive reinforcer for every situation. Food is an effective reinforcer more often, and one can take steps to make it more effective (e.g. let the bird get hungry). Neither of those statements really says anything about positive reinforcement as such. I suppose I could imagine a case of a bird so antagonistic that it would actually starve to death rather than be trained, in which case no effective positive reinforcement ocurred, but that's speculative. I think we are in violent agreement but making the statements differently.
I agree with this and I think many parrot owners on this forum can testify that things like "good boy", by themselves, without food, have been used to greatly increase behaviors.
I do think food is probably the best motivator when you average out every animal's reaction to a host of positive reinforcements, but that doesn't mean that it's the only real motivator for parrots or many other social animals. Parrots will go to the end of the earth to get their favorite forms of attention (a "woo-hoo" or in Kiwi's case, and excited trill that I make).
Parrots are attention whores and I don't know if Micheal has ever noticed this, but oftentimes they go to great lengths to get even more of your attention, even if they are sitting right on you! Michael already stated that he trained his Kili to talk instead of scream and he did that entirely through his attention
So I agree that food for a fasted bird is probably the fastest motivator and Michael's way is probably the most effective, BUT I think you could achieve some of the same stuff with either a non-fasted bird and/or with non-food rewards.
Michael, instead of arguing that attention is never a primary motivator, try using it without food, with a full parrot, to teach a simple trick. I bet you can do it