Shaping Shirley- Day 2

Goal:

To finish shaping Shirley and to have her pressing the bar on her own more than 60 times during the 30 minute training session.

Procedure: Shirley weighed 205.0 grams which is 3 grams below her goal weight. Today Shirley was placed in the box and reinforced. Each time she would:

1. Enter the quadrant with the lever
2. then as she would approach the lever
3. come down over the lever
4. as she would turn toward the lever

These were the steps we used to train Shirley throughout this process. With these steps she will eventually learn to press the bar on her own by associating the press with a chocolate reward.

Shirley turning toward the lever would receive a reinforcement for following one of the steps

Results and Discussion: 

Today was our second day of shaping Shirley to press the bar for a reward. I was in charge of controlling her rewards with the hand switch today since Carolyn handled it the first day. We decided that it was best to take turns shaping would both get the full experience. Today we placed her in box 4 instead of box 1 because that box was already in use by another group. Shirley was immediately placed in the box and I pressed the hand switch to remind her that she receives rewards in the magazine tray as well as being rewarded for correct behavior. After I released the pellet she sniffed around the box and eventually made her way to the magazine to eat the pellet. She did not seem to be as interested in the chocolate as she was the other day. I assumed that she was just being slower because there had been a day in between our original training session and today. Shirley was very disengaged during the shaping process today and was more interested in sniffing the cage and rearing up around the corners than receiving pellets. It was a struggle to get her to come down over the bar which she had been doing rather frequently the first day. Because she was not as active as the first day Carolyn and I decided it was best to back track on some of the shaping skills from the previous day. I reinforced her moving into the quadrant of the cage with the bar in it, the same as the first day. I eventually got her to rear up over the bar and was able to reinforce her coming down over the bar. However, throughout the entire training session Shirley did not make much progress. She did press the bar when she got in the cage but after the first few times she was no longer pressing the bar, which made me think that her pressing was just by random chance and not actual learning. At first Carolyn and I questioned Shirley's abilities but then decided that the box might be the problem. The session lasted 30 minutes and Shirley reinforced herself only 3 times the entire session and I reinforced her 57 times. Even though Shirley had received 60 reinforcements during this training session we decided it was best that she continue shaping for another day at least because she made such little progress during this session. It seems that she has not yet made the association between pressing the bar down and receiving a reward.