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.