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.