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.