Most training techniques use food treats as motivation to encourage specific behaviors from parrots. This is effective and useful in a lot of situations. With regard to our apps and games specifically, users may find that it is helpful to use food rewards (treats) to encourage interaction with the software initially, but we expect that people may not need to use any reward system on an ongoing basis. We are developing apps and games that parrots will be motivated to interact with intrinsically, not in order to get a food reward. This is not in conflict with training techniques. We are not building training tools; we are building software for enrichment (entertainment, mental stimulation, enjoyment, etc.).

The Yes or No app is an example of a functional piece of software that has a specific communication purpose. Its function is its own reward, and involving treats in that would confuse the message. You don't want your parrot to select "no" to something in order to get a treat; you want your parrot to communicate "no" to something because they do not want that thing. Effective communication should always be its own reward for social creatures like parrots and humans.

Touch Gallery and the find-it apps are intended to be enjoyable experiences for parrots that do not need any additional rewards or motivation. We want them to engage with these digital experiences because they want to, not because they are trying to trigger some other reward from their companion human.

Our vocabulary apps are more of a grey area with regard to treats since they can be used like a learning tool for vocabulary. If you ask a parrot to "touch the walnut" they will be rewarded by hearing the word "walnut" and seeing the change in the picture if they click the walnut, but additional reinforcement for a correct answer might be appropriate. There is an experimental element to the Nutcracker! app also. We already know that parrots can identify an object from a photograph of that object, and from the spoken word for that object, but what we do not know is whether a parrot will expect their selection of an object to lead to a human giving them that object in reality. If a parrot selects the image of an almond reliably and does not get an almond, how does the parrot react? We expect that there are going to be a range of reactions among different individual parrots and different species. Our expectation is that it will work really well for getting larger parrots to learn to explore and generate capacitive response from a phone or tablet if they are not already comfortable with those behaviors. If in a few sessions they select "almond" and don't get an almond and respond by grabbing and tossing the device across the room you may not want to continue to use that app with that bird. If you have the motivation and patience to work through the behavior it could be valuable, but not all software is going to work with every bird.

We do not want to discourage you from using treats as motivation if that works well in your situation, but we encourage you to experiment without treats and see how that works for you and your parrot.