Heya all

Christina Hunger has used recordable buzzer buttons to teach the dog Stella to express herself with more than 45 words, and 5 word long sentences. It made the deadlines in 2019, so not so long ago. You can learn more about it at https://www.hungerforwords.com/, and amazon is now selling such recordable buttons not only for kids as those used by Christina, but specific ones to train dogs and cats.



I am wondering if anybody had tried something similar with birds, in particular with parrots, and in particular with parrots who are not as good with talking as others might be. I suppose that one would have to use another type of device?


Take care,
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Jérémy

SO 4 decades ago, I used a tape player with a 1 min phone answering machine tape to teach my Yellow Nape tons of stuff and he was amazing at it. But, he really just said stuff, randomly. Never did it again with any other parrot we've had.

Your monk ( Quaker) parrot has a good chance of talking a bit, there's lots of them that do. I've never really heard of lovies talking, but heck, we got one member here who has a house sparrow that talks, so who knows.

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Watched the video on Stella. Pretty cool stuff, more along of Dr Pepperburg and Alex the Grey lines rather than just talking! High ideals to aim for , for sure.

__________________
See ALL Salty's Parrot trick videos on our CaptNiceGuy Channel:
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AL & Salty - hard at work.

Follow Salty's 127 page lifestory thread:
http://www.parrotforums.com/amazons/...now-salty.html

The Crew:
Salty - Yellow Shoulder Amazon (YSA) - hatched 8/15/15
Tinker - Cairn terrier, 4/15/08
Geri - Blonde haired Queens wife, birthday 4/25/19??

Sorry, I should have been more clear in my original question:



I don't mean to use the recordable buzzer for parrots to learn to speak, but rather for them to (more easily) be able to press buttons to express their needs. And indeed, Irene's work is an inspiration!



There are many examples of communication from parrots (e.g. in my case, they do say "Otra" ("another") when they want a seed, and I guess pretty well that they want to take a bath when they go noisily to the water recipient, etc.) but learning to "talk" via buttons might extend (and formalize) the range of communication, especially for parrots with more limited vocabulary than Alex. The use of "speaking buzzers" could even help some parrots in learning to talk, separating the cognition from the vocalization (and motivating them to learn to vocalize for when they are far from the speaking buzzer).

But the buzzers used by Stella are probably too large for small and medium birds. Given that touch screens used in tablets and phones reacts to the beak of a parrot (I tested it!), I wonder if one could make an app to adapt animals way smaller than dogs to replicate Stella's mode of communication?

I don't know of anyone who has done that with a parrot, but I have no doubt they would be able to understand how they worked and link the buzzer with the consequence.

An issue might be the parrot quite simply destroying the buzzer before they learnt to press it and worked out the response!

If the buzzers used are to big, look at the aids for blind and partially sighted people. There are a number of things that you put on top of food cans or clothes hangers and you can record what they are and pay back at the press of a button. They need a fingertip of pressure rather than a dog's weight, so might work well?

It's really cool. I loved Alex and Me.

I wonder if it encourages speech or discourages it (sort of like baby sign language- which discourages speech in some, but seems to develop language skills in others). The buttons are definitely is a form of communication (via association), but if they have the buttons, then I feel like they would just use those instead of talking...then again, they are like 4-year-olds in some respects, and they definitely have strong opinions/a lot to say... It will be interesting to see if they begin to produce the phrases themselves in the absence of the buttons..That's a tricky connection, but I'm sure that with the proper training/motivation, they could make it the transition.


If your bird does buttons that well, you could probably teach him/her to say certain phrases when he/she is touching certain objects if you associated a reward with the bird simultaneously touching and saying the phrase that he/she already knew...For instance, I know that mine will say hello and hi when I say, say hello (with a treat in my hand). You could target your bird to touch a unique looking shape or something and then prompt him/her to say an easy phrase (that is already known)..Only giving your bird the treat when they say the phrase AND stand on or by the shape. You could try to combine the routines until the bird starts going to that unique shape automatically and saying the phrase because it knows that the spot corresponds to the phrase and subsequent rewards.


Another thing that you could do, is just set up a line of shapes (each with predetermined responses from you--e.g, red one= human making a crazy laugh, green one= human handing a treat etc etc. If they happen to touch one, immediately label the behavior right before you do it-- e.g, "laugh: hahahha", "banana" (hands banana to bird) etc etc. My bird has learned a lot that way--- not with spots or shapes so much as associations between certain objects and speech+reward...Whenever the phone rings, she says, "hello?" *REPEATEDLY LOL---- BUT interestingly enough, she did generalize this from a landline, to 2 cell phones with totally separate rings-- still answers each time ha!

I was more thinking about using a tablet with a touch interface (the beak of the quaker parrots does generate a "touch", I suppose all birds will?). I bought an old one, sturdy, water proof, just for that purpose. I "just" have to make an app with various buttons on the screen. If the parrots can learn to "swipe" (and I can just picture that!), there might even be several pages of buttons to click.

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JyBy

Again, have a look at assistive technologies, unless you are or want to be an app creator of course. I know there are programs that people who can't talk use, which is exactly what you're talking about. I don't know if there would be a cost involved, but they are out there.

Good point ( https://talktablet.com/ seems like a good already existing solution).
My original question was whether anyone ever tried to use one of those (paper based or digital) to improve communication with parrots?

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JyBy

Thats actually really cool, that owner should patent it. For my parrots, I just taught them human, and I learned some parrot so we can generally converse on on a basic level such as the dog was doing in the video. Seepy time, I love you, gimme kissy, gimme, come on, come on right now!, go poop, etc. they all understand.

I've learned some of their vocalizations in "parrot" but I don't know how to type them.

All in all I don't think I need it, never tried it, but....very interesting, thanks for this post.