Modern Principles of Shaping - 9. Stay ahead of your learner!

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.


9.       Stay ahead of your learner. Be prepared to “skip ahead” in your shaping plan if your learner makes a sudden leap.

1. Stay ahead both when progressing on the shaping, but also when reading your learner and knowing when to move in and out of the shaping process.  Both need to be calculated so you can end on a positive note.   
2. Skipping ahead is good, but I'm not confident that I can identify it when it is happening.  You can gauge the learners grasp of something by attempting to solicit a behavior 5 times, and if the learner meets your criteria 4 of the 5 times, you can move on.  But if the learner exhibits something much farther down the path perfectly, be prepared to capture it.  
3. Don't just be prepared for a leap in what you're shaping, but also for things that are not being shaped right now, but will need to be in the future.  At least this is what I'm doing now, and don't know otherwise.  I need to do a little more reading on it. 
4. This will build confidence that you know what you're doing.  This is more important for a human learner, I think, but any animal can lose confidence that you are reliable, and give up the attempt.