Conditioning
Two days ago, the evening before I left, my mother showed me how she had trained her cat Fritz to perform tricks.
She would hold a piece of food in front of him and wait for him to tap her hand with his paw before giving it to him.
I was underwhelmed – this was still very natural behavior that any cat would do to try and grab the food.
So I asked her if he could do any other tricks and she told me that he could also do a 360.
Curiously I watched as she took another piece of food and moved it in a circle around Fritz while he followed every movement of her hand, also performing a full circle.
I was even more underwhelmed. This was not a trick performed in anticipation for food, this was him simply following the food.
So I asked her if she ever tried to tap into his natural creativity to come up with a new move that she could then reinforce with a reward and link to a trigger. She hadn't thought about it but I tried to imagine what surprising things he might be able to do for food.
When she tapped his leg to excite him to do something, he suddenly jumped straight up from his sitting position, almost a meter.
They were both so surprised that they completely forgot about the food. I reminded my mother that this would be a funny behavior to reward and she gave him a whole hand full of food.
It's interesting how little use we can make out of the simple concept of reward and conditioning and how it can counteract creativity and spontaneous expression.