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.