I haven't read that particular book, but have read others by Karen and clicker trained my last three dogs.
It's absolutely transformative, especially if you do "free shaping" where you have a goal in mind and gently nudge the dog towards it. It's remarkable watching the dog think, and figure it out for himself. The dogs all adored it, going nuts whenever the clicker came out.
Dogs taught to growl - play, growl - threat, bark - nice, bark - threat, open door, close door, climb in cardboard box and close lid, watch threat, climb on stool and sit, and on. Some things I'd have had no clue how to train by other, more traditional, means.
You do end up with a smart-arse dog mind you. :)
You also see the same principles at work with people, and parents with their children.
Reading the book (on operant conditioning, with particular emphasis on how it can be used to train dogs) was transformative for me. Operant conditioning is such a major force in shaping our behaviour. I learnt an awful lot of things from this book which should have been taught in school; I see the principles around me in action every day, but they're just not the kind of thing one habitually pays attention to.
The main plot summary is listed in the article, but here's a few of my own personal take. (I should point out that I have never trained an animal and have never had children, so it remains to be seen whether this is any use to me, but it's partly down to this book that I tend towards "identify the incentives" rather than "impose my will" when trying to get something to happen.)
* Ruling through fear makes for a broken and grudgingly-obeying dog. Once I'd grokked this, I realised that the best teachers at school for discipline were not the ones who ruled with an iron fist, but the ones who "went with the flow", guided what was happening rather than enforcing something different.
* Having heard of a particular pair of parents who were having problems with their children's behaviour, I could identify specific things they were doing which were strongly counter to the principles of this book. For example, setting lots and lots of rules about minutiae, without enforcing them consistently and without positively reinforcing the act of obeying those rules, but merely negatively reinforcing failure to follow them; this has a tendency to demotivate the act of rule-following. All kinds of things which are sort of obvious once they're pointed out, but which it seems rather rare for people (including me) to notice independently. When my own parents talk to me about parenting techniques, their techniques match up almost perfectly with these dog-training techniques (with the exception that they didn't use a clicker), and they had two children who - ahem - were uncannily well-behaved.
* Humans and animals like to be trained, if it's done correctly. Cookie Clicker is operant conditioning in action, and people do it to themselves! Regular tiny rewards for pressing this button. Having read the book, I could go back through my memory and identify what it feels like to be trained. The feeling of "good! I've done what was expected of me!" is fairly distinctive for me, but it took until I'd read this book before I really grokked what the feeling was.
I don't think many parenting tips or guides ever speak in terms of training or god forbid compare and contrast with animal training. They should, as in many respects we're not so different.
So many parents end up accidentally training their children into bad habits, whilst trying to be a good parent. A really simple and obvious example is "how to teach your kids to whinge".
Go shopping. Tell kid no chocolate. Kid whinges a bit. Mum keeps telling kid "no choc, now stop whining". "behave nicely". "do you want me to tell dad?" "do you want to go sit in the car?", and on. Eventually mum has had enough "OK here, now be quiet" and hands child the smallest item on the shelf. Well done, you've reinforced that kids need to be really persistent in their whinging for it to work. Cool, they can do that.
I will say it's a lot harder to successfully apply with kids than with animals, especially the alien species known as the teen. But it can, and does, work and was very helpful. The difficulty for me was knowing how to apply the principles to a particular human situation. Simple stuff like flush the toilet after use, easy. Complex inter-sibling stuff, not so much. Probably room for quite a few books and guides there. :)
As for animals, I credit dogs with far more intelligence than is commonly believed. Clicker training really does allow them to demonstrate using their brain. Pausing to think, experimenting with different random actions to see what gets the click, the happiness when they think they've "got it". You can train most dog actions in a single 5-10 minute session each. Reinforce it a few times over the week. Done. I'm amazed any other animal training method still survives, especially as the dogs seem to thrive and become more interactive and less of just a dumb pet. None of the bullshit of showing you're the alpha pack leader, or shock collars, or slowly dominating a dog into compliance.
I completely agree that this topic should be taught to everyone in school, and in parenting classes. It's a fascinating field.
Thanks for the excellent comment and recommendation. I've ordered the book.
> things which are sort of obvious once they're pointed out, but which it seems rather rare for people (including me) to notice independently
Actually I noticed an example of this while glancing at the article you posted: the statement that you can only reinforce an existing behavior, not one that doesn't exist yet. Obvious once pointed out, and yet I never realized it.
It's absolutely transformative, especially if you do "free shaping" where you have a goal in mind and gently nudge the dog towards it. It's remarkable watching the dog think, and figure it out for himself. The dogs all adored it, going nuts whenever the clicker came out.
Dogs taught to growl - play, growl - threat, bark - nice, bark - threat, open door, close door, climb in cardboard box and close lid, watch threat, climb on stool and sit, and on. Some things I'd have had no clue how to train by other, more traditional, means.
You do end up with a smart-arse dog mind you. :)
You also see the same principles at work with people, and parents with their children.
Have to include a link to the driving dogs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRN_L3nTlLQ