Episode 230: Dr Claire St Peter Pt 3: The Role of Extinction in Shaping

This is Part 3 of our conversation with Dr. Claire St Peter. In addition to being a horse person, Claire is a behavior analyst. She teaches at West Virginia University. Her research focuses on improving outcomes for children who struggle in school. One of her areas of interest is extinction and in particular the generative effects of extinction.

Extinction is our general topic. In Part 1 Claire got us started by defining extinction. She thought that would take just a couple of minutes, but of course it didn’t. That seems as though that should take just a couple of minutes. Of course it didn’t. In Part 2 we began with macro extinction, the generative effects of extinction, and extinction bursts. Claire offered an interesting connection between loopy training and extinction bursts.

Part 3 explores the role that extinction plays in shaping. This includes a description of the 300 peck pigeon exercise that I created for Robin when he was a very young horse.