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!!