FR3 (days 1 and 2)

Today was Rosie's second day on FR3 - we originally started FR3 on Friday, but we felt that Rosie was not yet ready to move on after that session (she pushed the bar 114 times and the training session ran for 30 minutes). However, in this session earlier today, she pressed the bar 220 times and the session ran for 30 minutes! We feel that based on this improvement, she is ready to progress to FR5 tomorrow. Here are some notes on the session today:

Below is pictured Rosie's cumulative record:

As we can see from the record, Rosie took no significant breaks between bar-pressing and appeared to press rather steadily throughout the session.

One note, however: Rosie seemed quite excited today, even more than usual. She was literally jumping straight up in the cage, attempting to climb the walls, and almost running around the cage at times. This could be due to the fact that I wiped the cage down with a wet paper towel (first with a little soap on it, then just with water) in order to get the smell out of the rat that had just been in the cage before Rosie. However, we've never wiped her cage down before, so perhaps the unusual smell was even more excitable than the smell of the other rat.

Also, Rosie for the majority of bar presses seemed to press it twice, check for reinforcement, then press the bar for the third time and receive her reinforcement. She did not appear to purposefully/confidently press the bar 3 times in immediate succession and then check for reinforcement. This behavior can be seen in the video below:

Even so, with the number of bar presses that she executed today, we feel confident in moving her forward to FR5 tomorrow.

FR2

We put Rosie on FR2 today for the first time, and she did great! Our goal was to observe her grasping the fact that an extra bar press was now necessary to receive a food pellet. We wanted to see her pressing the bar at least 60 times today. By the end of the session today, Rosie pressed the bar 136 times (so she received 68 pellets). Her session lasted 27 and a half minutes.
The cumulative record from today's session is posted below:

One odd (or maybe not so odd) thing that we observed today was that around for 5 minutes in the middle of training (from the 13 minute mark to the 18 minute mark, as pictured in the cumulative record), Rosie did not press the bar at all. She explored the cage, reared up, sniffed, tried to climb up the walls of the cage (literally - we think that all of this sugar from the pellets has her pretty wound up), groomed herself, but did not approach the bar at all. She eventually made her way back over to the bar and began pressing like normal, but it was odd for that stretch of time.

Otherwise, Rosie pressed the bar quite successfully and often; she seemed to grasp what was necessary in order to receive reinforcers for this new schedule (as we can see in the video below).

Tomorrow Brian and I will put her on FR3 and see how she does with that. We're moving right along!

Shaping day 3 (FR1)

Rosie did very well today! Our goal was to continue shaping her association between pressing the bar and receiving reinforcements. We felt that her association yesterday was not strong enough to proceed to FR2. We believe that it is now! The run time today was 25 minutes and 20 seconds, she pressed the bar 108 times, and I did not give any manual reinforcements. Below is the cumulative record for today:

And below is a video of Rosie, a video which shows her repeatedly pressing the bar and then proceeding straight to the food hopper to receive her food.

Because of these results, we feel confident that Rosie is ready for FR2 tomorrow!

Shaping day 2

Yesterday, Brian and I continued the shaping process with Rosie. Our goal was for Rosie to develop a strong association between pressing the bar, the sound of the bar when pressed, and the delivery of reinforcements.

She was kept on FR1 (continuous reinforcement) for the day, and she did well - there was a noticeable improvement in her performance compared to Monday's. Rosie pressed the bar on her own 66 times, and I had to deliver manual reinforcements (when she wandered away from the bar, became disinterested, or approached the bar yet failed to press it) only 10 times. After 22 minutes and 21 seconds, Rosie seemed to lose interest, and Brian and I decided to end the session. Her improvement can be seen in the cumulative record for Tuesday's session, pictured below:

Although this cumulative record marks a steady increase in bar-pressing behavior in only one day, Brian and I still feel that we should continue with FR1 for today: Rosie was not as confident in her bar-pressing as we would like. Though the vast majority of the time, she pressed it for herself, she still seemed surprised at times when the food would appear after her pressing the bar, or she would still merely approach/touch the bar without pressing down on it.

For the next training session, our goal is to establish a very firm association between bar-pressing and the delivery of reinforcements for Rosie. We will keep her on FR1, and then proceed with FR2 for the next training session after today's.

Shaping day 1

Today was Rosie's first official day of shaping! Our goal today was to begin the shaping process, begin forming the association between the bar and food, and attempt to have Rosie pressing the bar confidently (operationally defined as more times than we delivered reinforcements manually). Although we had not been able to train Rosie since last Wednesday (due to our operant box malfunctioning), she appeared to feel more comfortable in the box since her last (which was also her first) time in the box: She confidently explored her surroundings, sniffing and rearing up around the box. She did not appear as skittish or nervous as last time, and she also appeared to remember her magazine training: After a brief period of exploring, Rosie began spending the majority of her time near (or with her head in) the food hopper.

This first video (below) shows Rosie's behavior at the beginning of training today: She spends some time in other parts of the cage, but begins to spend more and more time near the hopper. At this point, she has not grasped the connection between pressing the bar and receiving food.

Brian was manually reinforcing today, so we began with a review of magazine training, reinforcing Rosie when she neared the hopper or expressed interest in the hopper. This step did not seem very necessary looking back because she appeared to remember the significance of the hopper, as evidenced by her almost immediate attentiveness to it. Next, Brian began shaping her movements and attention toward the bar. He initially reinforced Rosie touching the bar.

Toward the end of training, Rosie had begun not only to associate the bar with food, but pressing the bar with food. However, as seen in the video below, she does not consistently press down on the bar; she still waits sometimes for manual reinforcement/does not press down on the bar. Like the Sniffy program, Brain manually reinforced whenever Rosie approached the bar two or more times without pressing down on it.

The picture below is the cumulative record for today, showing a stead increase in number of reinforcements delivered throughout the training session. This session lasted 28 minutes. Rosie pressed the bar 32 times, and Brian manually reinforced 39 times, equaling 71 reinforcements for this session.

Rosie weighs 171.2 grams, and we fed her 9.1 grams after training. For next time, we plan to continue shaping Rosie and continue strengthening the relationship between bar pressing and food.

Magazine training Rosie

Today, Brian and I started training Rosie with the help of Dr. Trench. We were magazine training today, and I got to control the reinforcements during this training session.

Rosie was very timid for much of the session, especially at the beginning. She wandered around the box, sniffing, rearing up, grooming herself, and exploring her surroundings for a good 10 minutes, all without eating any sugar pellets. I had delivered two sugar pellets into the hopper when she first entered the box, and then another three as she wandered around the box/came near the hopper. Interestingly, Rosie stuck her head into the hopper multiple times during those first 10 minutes without eating any of the pellets. Though she had eaten the pellets the two days previous to training, perhaps she was unsure of them in this new place. Rosie also burrowed her nose between the bars of the floor many times, perhaps in response to the smell of the rat that was trained in that box before her.

Finally, Rosie began to eat the pellets. After that, I began reinforcing whenever she neared the hopper, which she seemed to do quite often after her initial tasting of the pellets. She seemed to learn quickly that the hopper was where food came from: Though it took her a while to approach the hopper again after she had wandered away from it, she eagerly ate the food presented in the hopper immediately after she had finished eating the previous pellet. Once she grasped the concept more and more, she started sticking her head farther into the hopper, biting the area around the opening, and twisting her body/head in an attempt to get to where she thought the source of the food was (up at the top of the hopper).

The entire magazine training session today lasted 20 minutes. Rosie received food by pressing the bar herself 3 times, and I manually reinforced Rosie for approaching the hopper 32 times. Dr. Trench told Brian and me that the number was a little low (we're aiming for 40-60 times per session), so I shouldn't have been as strict with my criteria for determining reinforceable behavior. One thing that threw me off during training was how quickly we seemed to move from magazine training to shaping. Probably near the 15 minute mark, Dr. Trench told me to start reinforcing anytime she turned to the left, which I didn't understand at first; eventually I realized that she wanted me to reinforce anytime Rosie looked toward/approached the bar. I wasn't expecting to move from magazine training to shaping in the same day. I guess since shaping is a process, it's beneficial to weave it into the first lesson, but I hope that Rosie has properly learned that food comes from the hopper and has associated its sound with food! Perhaps because we moved what I thought was relatively fast through magazine training, it seemed to take less time than I had expected it to and less time than the book led me to believe it would.

Sniffy Training

I just installed the Sniffy program and began to work with Sniffy for the first time. Honestly, it was a bit frustrating at first - instead of stopping after magazine training, I kept confusedly kept going for an extra thirty minutes. I did get Sniffy to push the bar, but not as the program had intended. Since that extra time and those extra attempts showed on my cumulative record, I had to start the entire process over. After I understood what I was supposed to do, I spent approximately 21 minutes magazine training and 44 minutes shaping.

This is a picture of my cumulative record for magazine training:

These are pictures of my cumulative record for shaping (the CR would not fit in one frame):

Looking back, my mistake led me have a greater appreciation for the amount of patience required for the training process. Sure, I got frustrated, and by hour two I may have restored to verbally encouraging or admonishing Sniffy for his successful or unsuccessful bar-pressing behaviors, respectively...but I was certainly better at magazine training the second time around. I felt like I had a better grasp on the program and on Sniffy's behaviors. I think the same will hold true for training Rosie: I bet I'll get frustrated with her (and I'm sure she'll get frustrated with me if I fail to observe one of Pryor's laws of shaping), but now I know that these things just take time and persistence.

____________

Today, I finished the Sniffy program assignment. Knowing the program better this time around definitely helped, as did the option to "Isolate Sniffy" or put him on accelerated time! Thanks to the accelerated time option, this half of Sniffy work went much by much more quickly and smoothly. First, I put him on a FI-50 reinforcement schedule. I noticed that it took a while for Sniffy to acclimate to this new reinforcement schedule - about 10 cumulative record windows worth of time! I noticed that at the beginning, Sniffy pressed the lever many times within the 50 second interval, perhaps indicative of how a real rat would be confused or frustrated and press the lever more at the beginning. However, within approximately 40 minutes (judging from the cumulative record), Sniffy began to press the lever only right before the time interval had expired.

Here are pictures of my cumulative record for the reinforcement schedule (since I had 10 frames, I picked out the ones where the changes can really be seen - CRs 1, 2, 3, and 10):

After a successful fixed interval schedule of reinforcement, I put Sniffy on extinction. I definitely saw evidence on the cumulative record of the extinction burst - Sniffy pressed the lever many many times in the first 5 minutes. After that, however, the rates of lever pressing fell pretty dramatically and then evened out to less than 2 presses per 5 minute interval around the 15 minute mark. Of course, I have to keep in mind that training and going through this whole process with Rosie will not be as neat or timely, but I do feel more comfortable and ready to begin training her after completing the Sniffy program.

Here are pictures of my cumulative record for extinction:

Pictured below is Sniffy after extinction was complete.

Liz, Brian, and Rosie: Getting to know each other

Well, Brian and I have known our rat, Rosie, for seven days now! We've been in to hold her for about twenty minutes per day for five days.

Our relationship was rocky at first - Rosie and I definitely had to get used to each other. Before the first lab last Wednesday, I was a bit nervous about getting a rat. Growing up, I had never had hamsters, gerbils, or any rodent as pets. I had a cat for a short time...and that's it. Having no experience with rats whatsoever, I was (understandably) anxious to learn how to interact with this animal. Attempting to hold Rosie for the first time was a memorable experience: I was nervous about how to grab her out of her cage (was my grip too firm or too loose? Was she going to escape? Was I going to hurt her?). Dr. Trench had to lift her out for me. She then placed Rosie on my arm and I held her for a couple of seconds before she started to squirm and attempt to escape my grasp. At that point, I awkwardly handed her off to Brian, who seemed to be a natural with her! I felt like a bit of a failure after that first encounter with Rosie. I knew that learning to handle her was going to be a challenge, a challenge that I looked forward to facing throughout the semester.

After that initial experience, Brian and I went back the next day to start getting to know Rosie and getting her used to us. That Thursday, Brian encouraged me to be the one to lift Rosie out of her cage and hold her first. After much hesitation, I did it! I held Rosie for almost ten minutes that day, and it has gotten easier to pick her up and hold her without hesitation ever since then.

Today, Rosie was quite fidgety, more so than usual. Brian and I think it could be due to the rats' feeding restrictions in preparation for our training tomorrow. In general, Rosie squirms, sniffs, and tries to escape our grasp when we hold her, actions that I would think are pretty normal for a rat. She grooms herself quite frequently and likes to burrow herself under our fingers when we hold her. She doesn't seem to like when we pet her (it seems to startle or rile her up), so I've started just holding her securely in my hands without attempting to pet. I'm attempting to observe Rosie more and understand her habits; though this is because I'd like to get to know my rat better, it also has selfish reasons - Rosie has pooped on me two of the seven times that I have held her :). I think once I better am able to recognize the signs precluding her actions, we can avoid this!

The name Rosie just popped into my head the day after Brian and I met her. She seems to like it, and we think it fitting :). Rosie definitely seems to be quite curious about her environment, so we think that she will be an excellent learner and we look forward to working with her!