Final Reflections

     Overall, I really enjoyed this experience. I thought that training sessions were always interesting and challenging, which really kept my attention. One of my favorite things about training was the excitement I got when Ms. Jingles was able to accomplish something new. There were several times when Hillary and I were high-fiving and fist-bumping because we were so excited and proud of Ms. Jingles.
   
     I can't think of anything that I really disliked about this experience. Ms. Jingles was an awesome rat to work with and my lab partner was excellent to work with.

    One misconception I had going into this experience was Ms. Jingles's intelligence. I thought it would be much more difficult to magazine train and shape her than it actually was. She did an awesome job pretty much every day of doing whatever we wanted her to do.

Ms. Jingles vs. Sniffy

     While training a virtual rat and training a live rat are different, there were some similarities. For instance, the time it took to shape each of them was pretty close. Sniffy took about 60 minutes to shape, and it took us about 60 total minutes of training to shape Ms. Jingles.

     I think magazine training and shaping the virtual rat and lab rat were really similar. In order to get each of the rats to learn the behavior, a similar set up steps had to be followed.

     I learned a lot about training from each of the rats. Working with Sniffy taught me how to properly shape a live rat, and working with Ms. Jingles taught me about observing her behaviors carefully and making appropriate changes when necessary.

     I would highly recommend using both live and virtual rats in future classes. Training a virtual rat was a great introduction to working with and shaping live rats. However, there's no substitute for working with a live animal, because so many factors can have an impact on their performance.

     Hillary and I could not get a cumulative record to print out, however we did take specific notes on Ms. Jingles's number of responses for each training session. For example this is the breakdown of her second day on FR-12:

1 minutes: 12 presses
2 minutes: 36 presses
3 minutes: 61 presses
4 minutes: 86 presses
5 minutes: 110 presses
6 minutes: 146 presses
7 minutes: 158 presses
8 minutes: 182 presses
9 minutes: 218 presses
10 minutes: 230 presses
11 minutes: 254 presses
12 minutes: 290 presses
13 minutes: 314 presses
14 minutes: 338 presses
15 minutes: 374 presses
16 minutes: 398 presses
17 minutes: 434 presses
18 minutes: 446 presses
19 minutes: 458 presses
20 minutes: 482 presses
21 minutes: 482 presses

Extinction

     The goal of extinction was to extinguish Ms. Jingles's behavior of pressing the bar. Extinction took us two days. During the first five minutes of extinction on the first day, Ms. Jingles was noticeably frustrated and displayed an extinction burst, pressing the bar 129 times in this short period. The number of presses per five minute period decreased during the first day of extinction, but during the first five minutes of the second day we noticed she had some spontaneous recovery, pressing the bar 76 times.

This is a table showing a breakdown of the number of presses for extinction.

Tuesday
Time (in Minutes)	Running Total of Presses	Number of Presses in 5 Minute Interval
5	129	129
10	196	77
15	270	84
20	291	21
Wednesday
5	76	76
10	92	16
15	110	18
20	113	3
25	134	21

This is a video taken during extinction

Overcoming Adversity

     To be honest, we did not encounter many problems during the 14 days of training. The only one that comes to mind is her second day of FR-7. During the first two minutes of the session, she did not press the bar at all. She showed absolutely no interest in pressing it whatsoever. She spent the entire first two minutes in the front left corner of the box. It was not until two minutes and thirty seconds into the session that she had her first bar press. Around the start of the third minute she pressed it again, but that was all. For the next five minutes she did not press the bar again. So, in order to overcome this problem, we put her back on FR-2 for the rest of the session. While on FR-2 she was much more active, pressing the bar 105 times, 14 times in the first two minutes, for 52 reinforcements by the end of the session.

     I think the cause of the problem was that there were people in the lab during our training session who had not been there during any previous training sessions. I think the unfamiliar people and background noise made her nervous and put her on edge, which greatly impacted her performance. However, she recovered very well once she was put on a lower FR schedule. Another reason for the setback could be that we stretched the ratio too far.

     One thing Hillary and I learned from this problem is that we should pay closer attention to Ms. Jingles's behavior and make sure not to move her to a higher FR schedule too fast.

Ms. Jingles and Fixed Ratio Reinforcement

     After Ms. Jingles was shaped to press the bar on her own, we put on her an FR (Fixed Ratio) schedule of reinforcement. We started with FR-2, which meant she would have to press the bar twice to get the reinforcement (the food pellet). The highest schedule Ms. Jingles was able to attain was FR-12. I'm still very impressed that she was able to learn to press the bar 12 times in order to get a single reinforcement. During the FR-12 training session she pressed the bar a total of 482 times in 21 minutes for 41 reinforcements. It was apparent she was learning to press the bar 12 times because after a series of presses, she was check the hopper. If there were no food pellets in the hopper, she would return to the bar and continue to press it until she heard the sound of the food magazine. There were also several instances where she pressed the bar 12 times in a row without stopping to check the hopper.

     One major change I noticed in Ms. Jingles behavior while moving from lower FR schedules to higher FR schedules was her focus on the bar. When she only had to press the bar two or three times to get a reward, she would spend a large portion of the training session moving about the cage rather than pressing the bar. However, with higher FR schedules, such as FR-12, Ms. Jingles stayed around the bar much more than with lower FR schedules.

This is a short video of Ms. Jingles during the FR-12 training session.

Continuing Shaping

     The second day of shaping for Ms. Jingles was not as good as we hoped it would be. I was the trainer on this day, and our main goal was to get her to consistently press the bar on her own. While she stayed around the bar and in the area around the bar, she seemed to have issues with pressing it on her own. She would put her nose on the bar, raise her paws over the bar, and even set her paws on top of the bar without pressing it. While this was very frustrating for us as trainers, I still felt like the focus and attention she put on the bar was an improvement from the previous day. 

     The session lasted 22 minutes. During the session I manually reinforced her 66 times, and during the last minute and a half of training she was able to press the bar herself 3 times. This was very exciting and gave us hope that she would do much better during the next training session.

     Overall, it took 3 days to shape Ms. Jingles. During the third training session it looked like she was beginning to build the association between pressing the bar and food coming out of the hopper. We could tell because anytime she touched or rested her paws on the lever, she would immediately go check the hopper for food. She also appeared to be attempting to press the bar, but just was not pressing hard enough. Eventually she realized that food only came out when she pressed the bar down far enough.

     I felt like our shaping experience was very similar to what we learned about in class. She had to learn a progression of behaviors in order to get to actually pressing the bar, which was something that was mentioned in class. 

Weight Chart & Graph of Responses per FR Schedule

This is a weight chart showing how much Ms. Jingles weighed each day and how much food she was given.

DATE	WEIGHT CHART (g)	AMOUNT OF FOOD (g)
11-Sept	210	3.2
12-Sept	203.5	4.9
13-Sept	202	3
14-Sept	189.9	7.7
15-Sept	190	6.8
16-Sept	188	12.5
17-Sept	187.5	15.4
18-Sept	192	10.5
19-Sept	197.7	7.7
20-Sept	192.2	10.1
21-Sept	198	6.6
22-Sept	195.1	6.9
23-Sept	194.3	7.4
24-Sept	191.1	10.5
25-Sept	195.4	8.9
26-Sept	194.6	10.9
27-Sept	196.9	9.2
28-Sept	193.3	9.2
29-Sept	195.3	10.1
30-Sept	197.3	8.2
1-Oct	196.5	9.6
2-Oct	196.6	9.8
3-Oct	196.5	8
4-Oct	196	8.7
5-Oct	194.7	8.3
6-Oct	193	10.2
7-Oct	195.8	9.3
8-Oct	192.8	12.5
9-Oct	196.2	FREE FEED

This is a graph showing Ms. Jingles's change in weight from September 11 to October 9.

     This is a graph showing the average number of responses per FR schedule per 30 minutes

Magazine Training & Beginning of Shaping

     To prepare Ms. Jingles for magazine training, we put her on a food deprivation diet to make her more motivated for food reinforcements. Her original weight was 210 g, but by the first training day she was down to her target weight of 192 g. Hillary was the trainer for the first day, magazine training. The goal of magazine training is for Ms. Jingles to learn to associate the sound of the food dispenser with having food in the hopper.

     Ms. Jingles could get a food pellet (the reinforcement) two different ways: 1) Hillary giving her a pellet by using the hand switch, or 2) pressing the bar herself. Hillary began by giving Ms. Jingles a pellet with the hand switch so she would know where to look for the food. She began to associate the sound of the food magazine with having food in the hopper quickly. We could tell this because she began to move to the hopper more quickly after she heard the sound of the food magazine.

     Because Ms. Jingles picked up the association quickly, we began to shape her during the same training session. In order to begin shaping, Hillary would give Ms. Jingles a food pellet when she moved to the left of the hopper and was in front of the bar. She was also given a food pellet for being directly in front of the bar and having her nose above or touching the bar.

     The training session lasted 22 minutes. Hillary gave her a total of 42 food pellets, and Ms. Jingles pressed the bar and got 7 food pellets on her own. By the end of training Ms. Jingles seemed to start understanding that moving towards the bar would be rewarded with a food pellet. She did this behavior more frequently as the training session went on. This gave us high hopes for the next day of training.

Sniffy Training

     In preparation for training our rats, we were assigned to work with Sniffy, a virtual lab rat. In the program I magazine trained him, shaped him, put him on a VR5 schedule of reinforcement, and put finally put him on extinction.

     The first step in training Sniffy was magazine training. During magazine training, Sniffy learns to associate the sound of the magazine with having food in the hopper. To get Sniffy to develop this association, I delivered a food pellet whenever he came close to the food hopper. Magazine training Sniffy did not take very long at all. After about 15 minutes Sniffy learned to associate the magazine sound with food being available in the hopper. 

This is Sniffy's cumulative record for magazine training.

     After Sniffy was magazine trained, I shaped him to press start pressing the bar. To begin this, I rewarded Sniffy every time he raised up while facing the back of the cage. I eventually became more strict, only rewarding him when he raised up near the bar. Sniffy then began to occasionally press the bar on his own. After about an hour of shaping, Sniffy appeared to be shaped.

This is the majority of Sniffy's cumulative record for shaping

     After shaping, I put Sniffy on a VR5 reinforcement schedule. So, he now had to press the bar on average 5 times, instead of just once, to get a food pellet. Right away Sniffy begin to press the bar more frequently. Sniffy seemed to be more focused on pressing the bar while on this reinforcement schedule than while I was shaping him. For example, he stayed in the area around the bar for the majority of the time and rarely explored the rest of the cage.

This is a section of Sniffy's cumulative record while on the VR5 reinforcement schedule

     Finally, the behavior Sniffy had worked so hard to learn, pressing the bar, was extinguished. In order to do this, Sniffy was no longer rewarded when he pressed the bar. The associations he built between the pressing the bar and receiving food quickly went away.

This is Sniffy's cumulative record for extinction.

     Training Sniffy was actually really fun. Personally, I think it was a great introduction to working with a live rat. I because of this, I was much more comfortable during training than I would have been without training Sniffy.

Meeting Ms. Jingles

Before our first lab, I was kind of hesitant about holding a rat. However, Ms. Jingles soon changed my mind. We chose to name her Ms. Jingles after the rat from the movie The Green Mile. Hillary picked her up first, and right away I could tell right away that this would be a pleasant experience. When she passed Ms. Jingles off to me, she seemed unafraid and didn't try to jump out of my hands. On top of being surprisingly calm, she was and much cleaner and softer than I thought she would be. After this positive first experience, I'm very excited to see what Ms. Jingles will be able to learn throughout the rest of the semester.

Me and Ms. Jingles!!