Final Reflection

I enjoyed the training experience more than I thought I would. I was surprised by how quickly I became attached to Nicky and how much I wanted her to succeed, as if she was my child and I was an overbearing parent. I enjoyed seeing how Nicky progressed from one training schedule to the next and I liked how Nicky’s behavior was so moldable by our reward system. The only think I wish was different about the project was that we had a little more time to try and shape Nicky’s behavior so that we could have tried some more complex reward schedules. The most surprising part of the project was how quickly Nicky’s behavior could change. We went from taking three days to learn shaping to learning FR-1, FR-2, and FR-3 in the same amount of time. I did not realize that Nicky could struggle so much to learn to press the bar, but then learn different reinforcement schedules quickly. One misconception that I overcame during the project was my feelings towards rats. Most people think rats are dirty animals, but our rats were clean and Nicky even began to form a relationship with Olivia and I. Overall, I enjoyed the experience and I am looking forward to our next project where I hope to train Breesy, my black lab. 

Snickerpuss v. Sniffy

While training Sniffy was similar to training Snickerpuss, there were differences in the two training methods.  One of the biggest differences was the time it took to complete training with Sniffy compared to Snickerpuss. Magazine training for Sniffy and Nicky took only 20 minutes, but training Nicky was definitely harder because her behavior was more erratic than Sniffy’s. While Sniffy tended to stay near the lever, Nicky explored her cage and spent time self-grooming. The process of shaping is where I saw the biggest difference between Sniffy and Nicky. It took me about 50 minutes to shape Sniffy due to human error with the training process – I missed two opportunities to reward Sniffy and eventually had to start over because she was not engaging any behavior that would lead to lever pressing. Shaping Nicky took three 30 minute sessions. Again, some of our struggle was due to human error in the reinforcement process, but with a live rat, we did not have the option to restart the process when reinforcement opportunities had been missed.

Cumulative Record for Fixed Ratio 7 (one of our most successful days)

While the Sniffy program was frustrating because of the amount of time it took to complete, it was definitely beneficial to do it before live rat training because it gave me an idea of what behavior I should reinforce when live training Nicky. Without the Sniffy program, live rat training would have been much more difficult. However, I think I learned more from live rat training because it was unpredictable and often times Nicky just did not do what we wanted her to. When training with the virtual rat, I knew the behavior would eventually start, but with live training, behavior would not develop if we did not reinforce the proper behavior. I learned how to adapt to unpredictable situations and plan ahead. In the future, it would be beneficial to use both programs as we did. The virtual rat gives an idea of what to expect when live training, but the live rat gives tangible experience for how unpredictable training can be. 

Pulling Hair for Lever Pressing

Our biggest problem during Snickerpuss’ training was the initial process of shaping her to lever press. It took three days of training to successfully finish shaping according to our goal, which was to have Nicky press the lever more times than we manually rewarded her during the training session. Nicky was quickly putting both of her front paws on top of the lever, but she would not press down on it – she seemed content to just sit on it and wait for a reward to come. The number of times in which Nicky stood on top of the lever without pressing it was frustrating, and it seemed like we were pulling our hair out trying to get her to just press down on the lever. This problem was likely a result of trainer behavior rather than trainee behavior and definitely not a problem with the operant box. We had to ask Dr. Trench what was the best way to fix this behavior because we could not seem to get Nicky to press the lever on her own. Going forward, we were only going to reinforce Nicky 5 times for each behavior that was necessary for lever pressing, but was not itself lever pressing. An example of this behavior would be rearing up or placing her front paws on the lever without pressing. Initially, Nicky became frustrated that she wasn’t being rewarded for behavior that had previously resulted in rewards, but she soon learned that she had to do more each time to be rewarded. Thankfully, this technique worked and on the third day of shaping Nicky successfully completed the goal we had set for her of pressing the lever more times than we manually rewarded her. To avoid this behavior before it became a problem we could have rewarded Nicky less at the beginning of training for behavior that was not lever pressing. These mistakes were likely a result of inexperience on Olivia and I’s part, as they were quickly resolved when we got advice from an experienced trainer. Our training may have been improved if we had been able to shape Nicky quicker, which would have allowed us two extra training days where we could have attempted alternate schedules of reinforcement, such as a fixed interval schedule or a variable ratio schedule. Overall, our training experience was successful, as Nicky learned how to respond to all schedules of reinforcement she was faced with.

Extinction of Learned Behavior

Extinction Day 1:

Date: 10/7/13

Start Time: 1:54

End Time: 2:24

Session Duration: 30:00

Number of Bar Presses: 129

Number of Rewards: 0

Snickerpuss’ Weight: 211

Extinction Day 2:

Date: 10/8/13

Start Time: 1:59

End Time: 2:09

Session Duration: 30:00

Number of Bar Presses: 40

Number of Rewards: 0

Snickerpuss’ Weight: 211

Goal:

Our goal was to extinct the behavior of bar pressing that we had previously taught Snickerpuss. During extinction no rewards were given for lever presses. We would consider Nicky to have successfully extinct the behavior of bar pressing when she pressed the bar less than 50 times during a 30 minute training session.

Procedure:

Extinction Day 1:

Nicky weighed 211 grams, which is two grams above her target weight, on the day of training. For the thirteenth day of training, we put Nicky on extinction, which would not reward Nicky for any lever presses.

Extinction Day 2:

Nicky weighed 211 grams, which is two grams above her target weight, on the day of training. For the fourteenth day of training, we again put Nicky on extinction again, which would not reward her for any lever presses

Results:

Extinction Day 1:

Nicky pressed the lever 129 times during our 30 minute training session, resulting in 0 rewards. We did not consider Nicky’s behavior to be extinct because she responded at a rate much higher than we set for our goal for the 30 minute session. Therefore we decided to repeat extinction again to see if a second day of training would increase response rate.

Number of responses per 5 minute increments for Extinction Day 1          

Time	Bar Presses
0-5	13
6-10	14
11-15	26
16-20	12
21-25	40
26-30	24

Extinction Day 2:

Nicky pressed the lever 40 times during our 30 minute training session, resulting in 0 rewards. Nicky pressed the lever 89 times less than during yesterday’s extinction session, indicating that the process of extinction was working. Since Nicky pressed the lever less than 50 times during the 30 minute session, we considered extinction to be successful.

Number of responses per 5 minute increments for Extinction Day 2

Time	Bar Presses
0-5	0
6-10	4
11-15	25
16-20	9
21-25	2
26-30	0

Discussion:

            Exctincting Snickerpuss’ learned behavior of bar pressing was a rather easy task for us. Nicky has a history of giving up on lever pressing when she was not rewarded quickly enough, as seen in her FR-10 training. On day 1 of extinction Nicky displayed a lot of frustrated behavior (self-grooming and rearing up), however, on the second day she showed less of this type of behavior. Day 1 had a fluctuating rate of responding for each 5 minute period, with a small extinction burst occurring between the 21^st and 25^th minutes. Day 2 of extinction saw a rather constant low rate of responding with 0 responses in the first and last 5 minute increments and a small extinction burst between the 11^th and 15^th minutes. We considered extinction to be successful because Nicky responded only 40 times on the second day of training. We were especially happy to see 0 responses during the last 5 minutes of extinction. Nicky’s lack of responding likely indicates that she has learned no matter the number of bar presses, no rewards are coming, which was exactly the goal of today’s session.

A video of Nicky during Extinction Day 1. Here she shows frustrated behavior such as biting the food hopper and repeatedly checking for food.

A video of Nicky during Extinction Day 2. Here she shows less frustrated behavior.

Cumulative Record for Extinction Day 1

Cumulative Record for Extinction Day 2

Snickerpuss by the Numbers

Snickerpuss III Weight Chart

Target Weight: 209g

Date	Weight (g)	Food (g)
9/11	232	3.0
9/12	219	8.7
9/12	217	4.7
9/14	214	4.7
9/15	211	5.1
9/16	206	10.3
9/17	206	11.4
9/18	207	11.0
9/19	214	6.9
9/20	210	10.2
9/21	208	10.5
9/22	210	10.3
9/23	213	7.0
9/24	209	11.2
9/25	214	5.8
9/26	209	7.2
9/27	208	9.3
9/28	206	10.2
9/29	216	7.1
9/30	211	7.0
10/1	209	7.4
10/2	209	7.8
10/3	209	7.4
10/4	211	7.8
10/5	206	9.8
10/6	207	11.2
10/7	211	12.5
10/8	211	Free Feed

This table displays the daily weight of Snickerpuss III and amount of food fed to her (both measured in grams) for each day of our time together.