Final Comments

I really enjoyed this training experience. I think that it was a fun and informative way to put what you learn in lecture to practical use. I am a very visual learner and therefore this training experience helped me better grasp the concepts that we were tested on and learning throughout. I think it is always good to see for yourself what you learn about training animals actually occurs. I really do not have anything that I did not like. I thought that the amount of time that this project took was reasonable and having a lab partner made it easier on conflicts if they occurred during your training time. I thoroughly enjoyed being able to work with an animal and found it to be a good experience all around. I think the most surprising thing to learn was how difficult completely extinguishing a behavior is. Shirley was put on minimum VR schedules and her bar pressing was not completely extinct by the time we were through. On the second day of extinction she still pressed the bar a good bit even though it was reduced. I guess I did not realize at the beginning how strong the association is after being placed on a variable ratio schedule. I think the only misconception I had before learning about training was how much time the process actually took. Before this I thought that behaviors took less time to train, and also once the animal was trained they knew it forever. Working with Shirley showed that the process is back and forth and it takes time and dedication to train an animal properly!

Sniffy vs. Shirley

Both magazine training and shaping took different amounts of time for Sniffy and Shirley. For Sniffy magazine training took 10 minutes while Shirley's magazine training took about 10-12 minutes. Shaping Sniffy did not take as long as shaping Shirley, but it was not a dramatic difference in time. Sniffy was shaped to bar press in about an hour where as Shirley took about an hour and a half spread out over 3 days. Magazine training Shirley and shaping Shirley ran concurrently; we were able to complete magazine training and start shaping in the same day whereas magazine training Sniffy was a very distinct process. However, the process and the steps that were taken to have each rat associate the pellets to the sound of the magazine and the light were the same. Both Sniffy and Shirley were magazine trained by releasing a food pellet and waiting for them to come to the magazine to eat it and then immediately releasing another until the association was complete. The shaping process for Shirley and Sniffy was slightly different. Sniffy had to rear up and receive a reinforcement for rearing where as Shirley was only reinforced after she came down over the bar. I personally think that Sniffy had made the association between the bar and the food faster than the program said that he did, and had it been real life he could have moved on to another schedule. The actual behavior of Sniffy and Shirley were not that much different, the only real difference is that Shirley seemed to take more breaks during shaping than Sniffy. A good thing about Sniffy was that there were no malfunctions that could have occurred during shaping like with Shirley. Shirley was slowed down in the shaping process because of the malfunction of a box during one day of training where as Sniffy did not have to face this problem.

I was able to get a clearer picture of what the actual magazine training process looked like through Sniffy. Shirley's went so fast that it would have been hard to have a clear understanding of what was occurring had I not used Sniffy. Shirley, however, showed different behaviors that were interesting to watch that Sniffy did not show. For example Shirley would become more aggressive some days and lazier others where as Sniffy had about the same level of energy and behavior each time. I learned more about extinction through watching Shirley than Sniffy. Shirley had a clear extinction burst and spontaneous recovery and also expressed much more frustration than Sniffy did. I do recommend using both the live and virtual rat in future classes. I think that Sniffy is a good tool to use before you get your live rat. It teaches you the basics that you will see in training and therefore training the live rat is more fun and interesting because you already know what you are looking for but you get more variation. 

Shirley's cumulative record for FR-2

* The cumulative records for Sniffy were turned in during class.

Time for Extinction!

Goal:
To place Shirley on extinction, and have the number of bar presses to decrease over the two days. Pressing the bar should occur no more than it did during training.

Procedure:
Extinction is a process that is defined as a decrease in instrumental responding because the response is no longer followed by a reinforcement. Shirley was placed on extinction on the last two days of training. The extinction process started at 2:30 p.m. and both sessions lasted 30 minutes. We observed her behavior and watched for any signs of extinction burst and spontaneous recover, as well as any strange behavior she was displaying.

Results and Discussion:
Shirley did not respond to extinction very well. Once placed in the box she went straight to the bar and started pressing. She had been on a VR-5 training schedule before extinction, so it took her a few minutes to figure out that she was not receiving any reinforcements for her behavior. When Shirley realized that she was no longer reinforced she became very aggressive toward the bar and started biting down on it and chewing it at certain points. There was an extinction burst (an immediate increase in behavior on extinction) on the first day with in the first 10 minutes of training Shirley had pressed the bar 246 times and at 30 min she had pressed the bar 475 times which is more than she had pressed the bar during any training session. Shirley was trying everything she possibly could to get a reinforcement, she would bite the bar, push the bar up instead of down, and hold the bar down and gnaw on it. As the session reached the end Shirley did interact with the bar less but I would not say that she was fully extinct.
On the second day of extinction when Shirley was placed in the box she started pressing the bar again. Because a small amount of time had passed since her last training session this could be an example of spontaneous recovery. At the beginning of the session, after pressing the bar down Shirley would still check the food hopper for pellets. However, overall the behavior occurred much less today, the total number of presses after 30 minutes was 247. She was still showing signs of aggression today by biting the lever and rolling in front of the food hopper when trying to get the pellets out, however, she is much less aggressive than yesterday. I also assume that she probably would not have pressed as many times or continued pressing for so long had she not been placed on the variable ratio schedules.

Shirley trying to dig the food pellets out, this is right before she rolled over in front of the hopper.

This is Shirley trying to push the bar down while also biting it 

Number of bar presses every five minutes on extinction day 1 

Number of bar Presses every 5 minutes on extinction day 2 

Average number of Presses and Weight chart

The chart above is the average number of presses per 30 min. The graph does not look like we expected it to but it makes sense when looking at it. The average number of presses increased from shaping to FR-3 when it hit a peak. There was a decrease in the average number of presses on the FR-5 schedule and after that there was a steady increase in the average number of presses. There was a dramatic increase after Shirley was placed on a variable schedule of reinforcement. 

The chart above is the progression of Shirley's weight throughout the period of training. At the beginning of training Shirley was under her goal weight of 208 grams. However, as training continued it was hard to keep Shirley at her goal weight. Her increase in weight did not seem to have an effect on her performance.

There was one little problem!

The only challenge that Carolyn and I faced during training was on the second day when we had to move boxes. We moved from box 1 to box 4 because there was another group using our box that day. Shirley's behavior regressed that day and shaping did not get very far. Shirley only pressed the bar 3 times where as the previous day she pressed it 21 times. Looking back, we know that box 4 is the box that had been clogging and not rewarding the rats like it was supposed to. Therefore the problem was probably not that we had to switch boxes but that this specific box was malfunctioning. We overcame this problem by making sure that we were always training in box one in case the new environment had that much of an effect on Shirley. We did not want to be set back any more and the best way to make sure of that was to always have the same box. I am not sure that we could have done anything differently that would have fixed this problem. We did not know at the time that the magazine was getting clogged, it sounded like the rewards were being delivered and that everything was functioning correctly. I think training could have been improved by training at the same time every single day. A few days there were conflicts in mine and Carolyn's schedule and we would be forced to train at a different time than 2:30. On these days Shirley would sometimes perform the behavior less or display some strange behaviors. However, I do not think that this had an overall negative effect on training  as Shirley still progressed very quickly and worked very hard throughout the entire process.

Schedules VR-3 and VR-5

Goal 1: The goal today is to place Shirley on a Variable Ratio schedule with the average number of presses to receive a reward being 3 presses.
Goal 2: The goal today is to place Shirley on a Variable Ratio schedule with the average number of presses to receive a reward being 5 presses.

Procedure:
A Variable Ratio schedule of reinforcement is also known as a VR schedule. This is defined as a schedule on which every nth performance of a behavior is reinforced. The first VR schedule is the VR-3. The session started at 2:25 p.m. and Shirley weighed 221.8 grams which is 13.8 grams above her goal weight. On the VR-3 schedule Shirley will not be able to predict how many responses it will take before she is rewarded, on average though it will be after 3 responses. This should result in a more steady pattern of extinction. There should also be less predictable pauses in this training session.
The second VR schedule is the VR-5; on this day the session started at 2:24 p.m. and Shirley weighed 220.2 grams which is 12.2 grams above her goal weight. On the VR-5 schedule Shirley will still not be able to predict how many responses it will take before she is rewarded, on average though it will be after 5 responses. This should also result in a more steady pattern of extinction. There should also be less predictable pauses in this training session.

Results and Discussion:
The VR-3 schedule seems to capture Shirley's attention more than the fixed ratio schedules. Shirley has been very active today and hardly leaves the bar. Carolyn and I discussed and chose to put Shirley on a VR schedule of reinforcement because we thought we would have more interesting results during extinction. Even on the VR schedule Shirley takes breaks in the front left corner that she always goes to during the training sessions. Shirley has so much energy today and darts from one side of the cage to the bar and presses down on it as many times as she possibly can. She is also biting the bar more and trying to push herself further into the magazine to get as many pellets as possible. I think that her biting the bar is a frustration response and being on this schedule causes her to press down on the bar and bite more, thinking she can be rewarded more by doing this. She pressed the bar a total of 503 times during this session.

Shirley on a VR-3 schedule

On the VR-5 schedule Shirley is even more aggressive toward the bar and she is even more energetic than she was yesterday on the VR-3 schedule. She is pressing much more than she has ever done in the past, but is displaying strange behaviors in-between pressing the bar and receiving a reward. At one point Shirley was trying to use the light in the cage to climb, so she was hanging from it at one point. She is also throwing herself at the walls of the cage. If she is displaying this much aggression today I can not even imagine what she will try to do during extinction when she does not receive any rewards. Shirley has become increasingly more frustrated and shown more aggressive behavior as the schedules have changed, but this is by far the worst she has been.  She has spent less time taking a break in the front left corner and stayed very engaged with the bar the entire session. She pressed the bar a total of 779 times today, which is by far the most presses of any training day. 

Schedules FR-7 and FR-10

Goal 1: Shirley's goal for this training session is to press the bar down seven consecutive times before receiving a reward.
Goal 2: Shirley's goal for this training session is to press the bar down ten consecutive times before receiving a reward.

Procedure:
An FR schedule is also known as a Fixed Ratio schedule. This means that after a certain number of responses (in this case 7 and 10) the behavior will be reinforced. Todays FR- 7 session started at 4:45 p.m. and lasted 30 minutes. Shirley weighed 218.7 grams and which is 10.7 grams above her goal weight. Shirley was to press the bar down seven consecutive times in order to receive her reinforcement. The total training session resulted in 57 food presentations (405 bar presses). The second day of FR-7 Shirley weighed 210.2 grams which is only 2.2 grams above her goal weight. This session  resulted in 43 food presentations (302 bar presses).

The FR-10 training session was only one day long and started at 2:30 p.m. as well, and lasted 30 minutes. Shirley weighed 217.8 grams and which is 9.8 grams above her goal weight. Shirley was to press the bar down ten consecutive times in order to receive her reinforcement. The total training session resulted in 48 food presentations (481 bar presses).

Results and Discussion: 

The first day of FR-7 training started at 4:45 which is unusual because our training normally begins at 2:30. Both Carolyn and I had conflicts at our normal training time and found the closest time slot with no one training in our box. When Shirley was first placed in the box she pressed the bar down a few times and then went to the magazine and tried to dig in it for food. She does this for a few minutes and then goes back to the bar, and finally presses down enough times to get reinforced. It seems to me that sometimes it takes Shirley a few minutes to realize that she is on a new level of reinforcement. Usually after she realizes the change she stays very engaged with the bar, today however she seems to be uninterested. For example, she pressed the bar six times and then took a break in the front left corner of the cage. She is extremely inattentive today and it seems that every outside noise is distracting to her. However, like in a previous reinforcement schedule she is having sporadic bursts of energy where she will run to the bar and press it as many times as she can until she is reinforced. Shirley was also very aggressive toward the bar today. It seems that as the schedules of reinforcement increase and she has to work harder to be reinforced she becomes more and more agressive. She is biting the bar more today and digging around in the magazine. Shirley took a long break in the middle of the training session but in the last few minutes she went back to the bar and continued pressing the bar as much as she could until the very end of the session. She seems to be doing this more often as the schedule of reinforcement is increasing. Because Shirley was not very responsive and did not have as many food presentations as normal Carolyn and I decided it was best to try her on this schedule again at the normal training time. The second day Shirley was acting much more like herself and was very engaged in the bar. After the second day on this schedule we thought she would be able to move up to the next schedule and be more successful!

Shirley on FR-7 Schedule

FR- 10 was the next reinforcement schedule we put Shirley on. This was also the highest FR schedule she was on. After FR-10 we decided to place Shirley on a VR schedule instead. Therefore, this was the last day that Shirley was on a fixed ratio schedule. On this schedule Shirley presses the bar consecutively ten times in a row before checking the food hopper. She is becoming more aggressive toward the bar, biting it and pressing down harder, which may be a sign of frustration. She still takes a break in the middle of the training session and does not press the bar for several minutes, but around twenty-seven minutes she returned to the bar and pressed as much as she could until the end. Shirley's behavior became increasingly more aggressive and she displayed more signs of frustration (like biting, running around, pressing harder) as the schedules of reinforcement increased.