What to do while Waiting for your Buttons

Enroll in TheyCanTalk Research

TheyCanTalk Research is a dog (and other animals) language learning study conducted as part of a collaboration between CleverPet (maker of FluentPet) and the University of California, San Diego.

If you've reached this page, you're probably already enrolled. If not, you can enroll now by filling out our comprehensive intake questionnaire, a detailed participant survey designed to provide as complete a picture of your learner (e.g., dog, cat, pig, etc.) as possible.

Note: If you've already filled this out and have received a unique participant ID, you do not have to complete this again.

Target Training

Whether you already have buttons or not, we recommend conducting a few target training sessions with your learner before introducing them to their button(s). For this exercise, you should use non-button objects, such as a Post-it note or yogurt lid, to get your learner into the practice of touching an object to trigger an action.

While we're hesitant to recommend giving learners "food" or "treat" buttons—particularly with food-driven pets, who may either abuse their food/treat buttons or begin to see all buttons as treat-dispensers, which risks derailing their buttons-for-language training—we view treating for successfully targeting non-button objects as appropriate for the goal of the exercise.

Once your learner understands the concept of pressing an object to trigger an action, you can introduce a button for a non-food-related concept (e.g. "outside" or "play") and help them begin to understand that pressing different objects mean different things.

Model Words & Phrases

Another preparatory training exercise we recommend is to model the contextually appropriate usage of the words or phrases you plan to record on buttons as part of your everyday routine.

Using the words and phrases you plan to record on your learner's buttons in consistent and contextually appropriate ways over time helps to reinforce their meanings, increasing the chance that learners will understand in what scenarios to use these buttons once given access to them.

If your learner spends time around multiple different people, it's especially important that each person is on the same page regarding the specific words used for concepts you plan to assign buttons. For example, if you plan to introduce a button for your neighbor's cat Mia, make sure you don't have one person in your household referring to your neighbor's cat as "cat," another as "kitty," and another as "Mia" when talking about her to (or even in front of) your learner.

Christina Hunger's website has a helpful Vocabulary Chart you can use to observe and identify the terminology you use with your learner. We also offer handy guides for how to model various words and phrases that are popular with our research participants.

Set Up a Logging System

Logging your learner's button presses is Step 4 of the Phase 1 participation process, but you do not need buttons to choose and set up your logging system.

While you wait for your buttons to arrive, you can figure out how you want to log your learner's button press activity (based on your own lifestyle and technology comfort level and expertise) in between progress reports, and get set up with Google Forms & Data Studio should you choose to go that route) so that you can hit the ground running when your buttons arrive. 

Submit Progress Reports

Our primary data gathering tools for TheyCanTalk Research are button annotator updates (occasional, and which you can only do once you've received your buttons) and progress reports (every two weeks, which you can do while you wait for your buttons).

To submit your progress report even if you don't have buttons or button-press activity to report:

After completing your intake questionnaire, we sent you your learner's unique participant ID, which you'll need to submit your progress reports.

At the beginning of the survey, after the check-in page, we ask about changes to your soundboard. Checking "No button/soundboard changes this period" will skip all button-related questions and take you to the “Routine and Environment” section (page 3).