FR2
At the start of training day 5, Lil Sebastian started pressing the lever right away. At the beginning, there were long pauses between lever press 1 and lever press 2. Lil Sebastian would press the lever, check the hopper for a pellet, then not finding a pellet would sniff around eventually going back to the lever and pressed it again, finally revealing a pellet. This persisted for a little while, but slowly these long pauses diminished. Lil Sebastian seemed to get frustrated because instead of just pressing the lever twice to receive a pellet, she would press the lever 3 to 5 times in succession, then check check the hopper for her reward. This clearly made it difficult to distinguish when exactly the pellets were distributed. Eventually after 16 minutes, Lil Sebastian started to only press the lever twice in succession for her reward, which must of meant she recognized that only 2 presses were necessary to receive a pellet. At the end of the 30 minute session, Lil Sebastian had pressed the lever 320 times, being reinforced 160 times. Below if the cumulative record for training day 5 (FR2).
(Cumulative record for FR2)
Below is a video of Lil Sebastian on the FR2 Schedule
FR3
The goal for training day 6 was to establish FR3 since FR2 was mastered the previous day. At the beginning of the session, Lil Sebastian was easily distracted from the lever. She would focus an amount of time on the lever, then would get distracted and walk away from the lever to clean or sniff around for a while. This type of behavior occurred for 15 minutes until finally she focused more on the lever and started to press it in succession, recognizing the number of lever presses mattered to receive food because she did not check the hopper often between lever presses. Unfortunately this did not persist for very long and around 20 minutes, Lil Sebastian was distracted from the lever again and showed even less interest in the lever. Lever presses were far and few between in the next few minutes, so I decided to end the session at 24 minutes. At the end of the session Lil Sebastian had pressed the lever 237 times, and was reinforced 79 times, which was significantly less than the day before. Below is the cumulative record for this day.
Training day 7 was to solidify FR3 since the previous day was not as successful as desired. For the first 5 minutes of the session, Lil Sebastian's distracting behavior continued from the previous day. She spent a lot of time pawing the lever and not pressing it, then leaving it to clean or sniff around. After this unpromising start, Lil Sebastian started pressing the lever a lot more, with few pauses between presses. She would use her head to press the lever often, and it seemed like she was trying to smell what was outside through the small crack once the lever was pressed. Because of this, Lil Sebastian would very often press the lever very quickly in succession without letting off the lever. Towards the end of the session, Lil Sebastian would get distracted for about a minute at a time after pressing the lever for multiple reinforcements. We ended the session after 28 minutes and 56 seconds and Lil Sebastian pressed the lever 286 times and was reinforced 95 times. Since the distractions were less prevalent this day, we determined FR3 was solidified. Unfortunately we have lost the cumulative record for this day, or it just didn't properly save to the thumb drive. I do have a video of Lil Sebastian lever pressing on a FR3 schedule below though!
(Cumulative record for FR3 [Day 1])
FR5
The goal of training day 8 was to complete FR5. At the start of the session, Lil Sebastian immediately went to the lever and started pressing it, checking hopper after each press. After about a minute, she started pressing lever in succession. Lil Sebastian still bar pressed with her head often, and would still paw the lever without pressing it sometimes. She would have periods of continuous bar pressing for reinforcements, followed by periods of climbing up the wall more often than before. None the less, this session was much more successful than the past two days because Lil Sebastian was more focused on the lever and her periods of distraction were shorter resulting in a very productive day. The prior day we fed her less after training and this may have caused more motivation for this day. At the end of the 30 minute session, Lil Sebastian had pressed the lever 535 times, thus being reinforced 107 times. Below is the cumulative record for this day.
(Cumulative record of FR5)
FR7
The goal of training day 9 was to establish FR7. At the beginning of the session, Lil Sebastian went straight to the lever but did not press it. She spent a lot of time at the beginning of the session exploring and cleaning. After 2 minutes, Lil Sebastian finally pressed the lever 3 times, then checked hopper, then continued pressing lever. She would still press the lever with her head like the previous days. After about 7 minutes, she no longer checked the hopper for the pellet between lever presses, and would only approach it after a pellet was presented. This leads us to assume Lil Sebastian had finally formed an association between the secondary reinforcers (light going off, hopper light turning on, clinking noise of pellet) and the presentation of food. This was a very good sign that training was going well, but despite this, Lil Sebastian slowly was showing less interest in the lever as time past, and her sensitivity towards these secondary reinforcers was diminishing. My partner and I determined that she must be satiating because we did have our training session a hour and a half early today. After 20 minutes, we ended the session with the intention of solidifying FR7 the next day. Lil Sebastian had pressed the lever 350 times and was reinforced 50 times. Below is the cumulative record for this day.
(Cumulative record for FR7 [Day1])
The second training day of FR7 showed much more improvement than the previous day. From the beginning of the session, Lil Sebastian had more motivation because she immediately focused on the lever and pressing it. Her sensitivity to the secondary reinforcers were maintained from the previous session, and she would only check hopper when there was a pellet in it. She would still press the lever with her head instead of her paws sometimes, and she jumped up on the clear wall with all four paws twice towards the end of the session. Was much more active today. At the end of this successful 30 minute session, Lil Sebastian had lever pressed 579 times, and was reinforced 82 times. Below is the cumulative record for this day.
(Cumulative record for FR7 [Day 2])
FR10
The goal of training day 11 was to establish FR10. Lil Sebastian's behavior was similar to the past few training days. She was still pressing the lever with her head sometimes, she was responding to the secondary reinforcers, and she would sometimes have periods of exploring or cleaning between multiple reinforcements. At the end of the 30 minute training session Lil Sebastian had pressed the lever 530 times and was reinforced 53 times.
(Cumulative record for FR10)
Below is a video of Lil Sebastian performing on a FR10 schedule. In the video is a visual of her pressing the bar with her head, and her only approaching the hopper after responding to the secondary reinforcers.
FR12
The goal of training day 12 was to complete FR12. This is the last day of training Lil Sebastian. She immediately went to the lever and started pressing until was reinforced. As the session went on, she slowly started to not respond to the secondary reinforcers like she has been in the past few days. She would check hopper before pellet was presented and was distracted more than usual between lever presses. Another weird event was she was much more interested in the front left corner of the box, like in the beginning of the shaping process. Below is a picture of this behavior.
We had started this training session about an hour and half earlier than our normal time and we concluded that this unusual behavior was due to the earlier start time. Lil Sebastian still pressed the lever 496 times, and was reinforced 39 times after the last 30 minute session. Below is the cumulative record for this day.
(Cumulative record for FR12)
Final Thoughts
At the end of the FR schedule process, I would say the biggest change of behavior throughout the different schedules was that Lil Sebastian started responding more consistently to the secondary reinforcers towards the later training days. During the first few variable schedules, she would check the hopper for food regardless if the secondary reinforcers were presented or not. Besides this change, a lot of her variability in behavior throughout the process seemed to be due to my partner and I struggling to stick to the same training time every day. I'm sure Lil Sebastian's motivation each day would of been much more consistent if we could of been on a more consistent time schedule each day. Also, Lil Sebastian's target weight was difficult to maintain, and we ended up never really maintaining it very close. Luckily, I do not believe this has affected our training in a negative way, considering Lil Sebastian still was able to perform satisfactorily the majority of the days.
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