Modern Principles of Shaping - 7. Go back to kindergarten!

I'm writing a 10 part blog post where I discuss the Modern Principles of Shaping by Karen Pryor, to help solidify them in my mind.


7. Go back to kindergarten, if necessary. If a behavior deteriorates, quickly revisit the last successful approximation or two so that the animal can easily earn reinforcers.

1.  First, this suggests that you don't need to continually re-teach something.  You should teach it and maintain it by occasionally rewarding, so the behavior keeps occuring.  
2. Behavior can deteriorate because the behavior isn't being rewarded over a long period of time, the learner is finally understanding what the teacher wants and has forgotten what they're doing or the behavior has become sloppy over time.  
3. The trip to kindergarden is usually very quick, maybe 1-3 reinforcers per approximation.  Also, the approximations can skip over levels if the learner is understanding what you're doing.  
4. The more reinforcers you can give to the learner, the less likely they are to become frustrated.  Keeping the request within the normal boundaries of variation means they are doing it sometimes, and you can ratchet the request down further.