Shaping Shirley- Day 3

Goal:
Today's goal is to finish shaping, meaning that Shirley will have made the association between the bar and the food.

Procedure:
Shirley weighed 210.4 grams which is 2.4 grams above her goal weight. We followed the same procedure as the previous days. 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.

Results and Discussion:
Today we continued shaping Shirley. We were able to move back into our original box today (box 1), and that seems to have really made a difference. Carolyn is the trainer today since I was the trainer yesterday. As soon as we put Shirley in the box Carolyn pressed the hand switch and gave Shirley a few "freebie" pellets to remind her of her reward. As soon as she got the freebie pellets Shirley pressed down on the bar 1 time. She is was far more responsive today and very engaged in the shaping process. Carolyn rewarded Shirley for coming down over the bar and very soon into the session Shirley was pressing the bar down and rewarding herself consistently. After five minutes into the session Carolyn was no longer having to reinforce Shirley, she was completely reinforcing herself. At first Shirley would press down on the bar and hold it down for a few seconds, eventually however, she would press down on the bar quickly and immediately turn toward the hopper for food. We were confident that Shirley was shaped and ready to move onto the next schedule of reinforcement after she reinforced herself over 60 times 17 minutes into the session. It seems today that Shirley's lack of interest in training was due to being in a different box. Today Shirley was much more active and displayed behaviors that were similar to the first day of training. I think Shirley is a fast learner and picked up on the shaping procedures easily. Shirley was trained to press the bar by being reinforced for certain behaviors including, being in the same quadrant as the bar, then being close to the bar, then turning toward the bar when leaving the food hopper, coming down over the bar after rearing, and lastly touching the bar. After reinforcing her for these particular behaviors she associated pressing down on the bar to giving her chocolate. I believe that Shirley would have been shaped in less than three days had we not switched boxes on the second day. Overall, this was a similar process to what was discussed in class. We were going to have to follow certain "baby" steps and reinforce each one of them to get . We reinforced approximations of the desired behavior (pressing) which was then repeated by Shirley in order to receive the reinforcement. We were able to mold Shirley's behavior and have her do something that would not have been found in nature.

Shirley pressing the lever on her own!