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.
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