Fixed Ratio 3

Date: 10/1/13

Start Time: 1:55

End Time: 2:25

Session Duration: 30:00

Number of Bar Presses: 206

Number of Rewards: 68

Snickerpuss’ Weight: 209

Goal:

Our goal was to train Snickerpuss to respond on a Fixed Ratio 3 schedule. On the FR-3 schedule Nicky would be rewarded for every three times she pressed the lever. We would consider Nicky to have successfully learned this reinforcement schedule if she achieved 60 rewards presses (one per 30 seconds of training).

Procedure:

Nicky weighed 209 grams, exactly her target weight, on the day of training.

For the eighth day of training, we put Nicky on an FR-3 schedule, which would reward her for every three lever presses. Since lever pressing was an automatic reinforcer, we were able to observe Nicky’s behavior while she was inside the operant box.

Results:

Nicky pressed the lever 206 times during our 30 minute training session, resulting in 68 rewards. Continuing with her recent trend, Nicky pressed the lever more today than in her previous training session, showing that she is still learning to associate the pressing of the lever with a reward. We considered Nicky to have learned the FR-3 schedule of reinforcement because she responded at a rate that resulted in more than 60 rewards for the 30 minute session.

Discussion:

            Nicky again showed that she has learned from her previous training by increasing the number of lever presses from the last training session. Initially, she was hesitant to press the bar, and we feared she had reverted back to her difficult ways of shaping. She went almost two minutes between bar presses at the beginning of our training session. We think Nicky’s discouragement may have been a result of the increase in lever presses required to get a reward. She has previously shown that she would lose interest easily if not rewarded on the schedule she was expecting, but she turned her behavior around the first two minutes and continued with a fairly steady rate of lever pressing. After the initial few minutes of training, frustration behavior was relatively rare as she learned to listen for the food dispenser rather than check for a reward after each bar press. Since Nicky was again successful in achieving her goal for the day, we will move up to an FR-5 schedule of reinforcement for our next training session.

Cumulative Record of Fixed Ratio 3