On the first shaping day, the original plan was to only reinforce Lil' Sebastian when she was near the lever and props up on the lever wall. This happened less than expected and Lil' Sebastian was not being fed frequently enough. Thus, when food was presented in the hopper, Lil' Sebastian did not approach the hopper immediately, and when she did go to the hopper the reward was not correlated with the appropriate behavior. She would chew the floor for a moderate amount of time, clean herself, and "explore" while there was food in the hopper from appropriate behavior in the past. This resulted in Lil' Sebastian being confused about what behavior was needed to receive a sugar pellet. So in order to refresh Lil' Sebastian's responsiveness to the food in the hopper, I started presenting food more often and basically started over with magazining again. After 20 minutes, she became much more active and would move around the box quicker and would check the hopper more than before. After she ate her sugar pellets, she would keep her head in the hopper and sometimes would "dig," as if more food would appear. At the end of the 30 minutes, I was able to restore her responsiveness to the hopper in order to get her to bar press the next day. Was reinforced 64 times and never lever pressed.
The second shaping day I initially made sure Lil' Sebastian was responsive to food in the hopper. Fortunately this was true so the goal was to get her to lever press. I started only reinforcing her when she was near the lever. Thankfully she still seemed to be highly active from the first shaping day, so getting her to stay near the lever was not too difficult. She continued to be overly interested in the hopper after she received her pellet, and her preoccupation with the empty hopper interrupted progress for the first 15 minutes. Luckily, this behavior lessened and she began to prop herself on the lever. I of course reinforced her for any touching with the lever, then only for putting her paws on it, which became very associated with the presentation of food. At the end of the 30 minutes, she had pressed the bar once so the goal was completed and I was confident FR1 could be established the next day.
Below is a picture of Lil' Sebastian propped on the lever:
This shaping experience highlighted the importance of timing of reinforcement as we discussed in class and as the book notes. Lil Sebastian had a hard time learning to associate the lever with the food because the timing of when she was receiving the food was much later than when she performed the appropriate behavior (rearing up on lever wall, touching the lever, etc.). A lot of the struggle with Lil Sebastian's shaping experience had to do with my own timing errors. So due to my own errors, Lil Sebastian did not learn lever pressing very easily.
Below is the cumulative record of the shaping process for day 1 and day 2:
(Cumulative Record for Shaping Day 1)
(Cumulative Record for Shaping Day 2)
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