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.