Magazine Training

The goal of our first training session was to magazine train Lil' Sebastian.  Magazine training is conditioning the rat to form an association between the sound or light of the hopper with the presentation of food.  This teaches Lil' Sebastian to eat a sugar pellet when the button is pressed to reward her behavior. In order to do this, Madeline taught Chloe and I how to boot up the reinforcement program, and we loaded the "manual" setting so every time we pressed the button, a pellet was presented to the hopper.

In order to do this, Lil' Sebastian was first allowed to explore the operant box for a few minutes, then Chloe presented a pellet in the hopper for her to eat.  Another pellet was not presented until she ate the previous one and then turned away. Lil' Sebastian was very disinterested in the sugar pellets at first and there would be moderately long periods of time between eating each pellet.  She spent a lot of her time biting the the floor of the cage, and was particularly interested in the front left corner.  It looked like she would attempt to dig in that area a lot.  At first we thought the chips needed to be replaced, but this behavior eventually dwindled out.

Eventually LIl' Sebastian started to become more interested in the food.  After about 10 minutes, she started eating more frequently, still presenting food after she ate the previous pellet and turned away from the hopper.  Finally, after 20 minutes Lil' Sebastian had fully associated the sugar pellets with the sound of the hopper.  We knew magazine training was complete when Lil' Sebastian approached the hopper consistently, when food was presented in the hopper, regardless of where she was in the operant box.  Lil' Sebastian had been reinforced 51 times in total, and had accidentally pressed the lever once and was rewarded for it anyway. This magazine training session was similar to what we discussed in class and how the book described it mainly because she started off very uninterested in the food and hopper, and ended up becoming very familiar with it.

Here's another picture of Lil' Sebastian in her operant box #2!

Below is the cumulative record for the magazine training:

Magazine Training, Shaping, and Extinction with Sniffy

Sniffy is a virtual rat program were the behavior of a live rat is simulated on your computer to prepare for actual experiments and training on a actual rat.  What Sniffy looks like is shown below:

(Image of Sniffy, and the virtual operant box)

In order to shape sniffy to bar press, we needed to magazine train first.  The magazine training creates a secondary reinforcer, which was the sound of the hopper when food was presented. This was first done by releasing a pellet of food every time Sniffy was near the hopper.  Once this became a consistent association, I begun the shaping process with only rewarding Sniffy for rearing up on the back wall of the operant box. Gradually Sniffy was only reinforced for rearing up near the bar to encourage pressing the bar. Eventually Sniffy was only reinforced for pressing the bar when the association with the bar pressing and presentation of food was strong enough. Sniffy would press the bar in succession 6 to 10 times, consistently every minute.  At that time is when Sniffy was shaped to press the bar.  The magazine training took roughly 20 minutes, and shaping took roughly 30 minutes.

(Cumulative record of magazine training, and each dot represents when Sniffy was rewarded)

(Cumulative Record of shaping Sniffy to bar press FR 1)

Sniffy was put on one more schedule of reinforcement before extinction from bar pressing, and this was VR 5.  This means that Sniffy would only be fed after pressing the bar 5 times in succession. As the cumulative record shows below, Sniffy did not have a distinct pattern of pressing the bar 5 times in succession to receive food.  Eventually Sniffy recognized the pattern of behavior necessary to be rewarded, which was 5 bar presses in succession.

(Cumulative record of VR 5 reinforcement schedule)

The last step of the shaping process Sniffy needed to complete was extinction.  This is when the learned behavior of bar pressing is terminated and forgotten.  This happens simply by not reinforcing any behavior at all, until the learned behavior is not being performed any longer.  The cumulative record of extinction is shown below.

(Cumulative record of extinction)

Eventually Sniffy's associations between the sound of the hopper and food disappeared and the bar pressing Sniffy learned vanished from the lack of reinforcement.  This disappearance of behavior is less likely to happen with a live rat (Lil Sebastian) because it will still be a underlying learned behavior, which will be very easy to bring back if need be.

This program did help me feel more prepared about shaping Lil Sebastian, but I am not expecting it to be exactly the same.  There were some differences between the live rat and Sniffy.  This exercise definitely made me more excited about shaping Lil Sebastian.

More to come soon!

Meeting Lil Sebastian

I have been very excited about taking Learning because of the Rat Lab. Before I took Learning, I had a typical impression of rats. I initially thought about rats as dirty and disease spreading rodents.  Considering I have been interested in Psychology since high school I have known about lab rats before, so I didn't necessarily have a bad impression about these specific types of rats.  I would definitely say after meeting and holding my rat, Lil Sebastian, that my general impression of rats has changed.  Lil Sebastian got her name from the mini horse from one of my favorite television shows, Parks and Recreation!  Now when I think about rats generally, I think of Lil Sebastian and how clean she is.  They didn't necessarily seem harmful to me before Learning, but now they simply seem innocent and curious. I do not know what my partner, Chloe, and I will try to shape Lil Sebastian to do yet, but I am definitely looking forward to the experience.  Here's a picture of me holding Lil Sebastian!