Peaches vs. Sniffy

Overall shaping Sniffy took much longer than shaping Peaches, but reinforcing Peaches behavior in comparison to Sniffy took much longer.

Magazine Training:

The difference between magazine training Sniffy and Peaches was the amount of time it took.  Sniffy took a much longer time to magazine train compared to Peaches.  For Sniffy I was never sure if I was reinforcing her behavior at the right time and it took about 45 minutes to fully magazine train her.  It was much easier to see when Peaches' behavior needed to be reinforced in order for her to realize that the magazine sound meant there was a pellet of food in the food hopper.

Shaping differences:

When shaping Sniffy it took me a couple of hours because I wasn't sure if I was doing it the right way.  I had to take baby steps meaning that in the beginning I would reinforce Sniffy when she would rear up against the back wall of the operant box.  Once she was rearing closer to the lever she would get a reinforcement and at times she would press the lever herself.  Soon her bar-sound association grew and she began to realize that if she pressed the lever she would get a pellet of food.  I would have to reinforce at times, but eventually Sniffy was pressing it consistently.  After she was pressing the lever by herself, I just had to wait for her to be fully shaped and that part took the longest time because "fully shaped" for Sniffy was making sure that the bar-sound association and the action strength bars were at the max level.  

For shaping Peaches, it took a two sessions (1 hour total) to fully shape her to press the lever in order for her to be reinforced.  Megan and I didn't have to wait for bars to be at their max level in order to successfully move on to a reinforcement schedule.  We had to figure it out by ourselves and if Peaches wasn't fully shaped than she couldn't move on to the fixed ratio schedule of reinforcement.  It was much easier to see when Peaches was shaped compared to when Sniffy was shaped.  Through Peaches behavior Megan and I could see that she had developed a strong bar-sound association, for Sniffy I had to wait for the bars to reach their max level.

Peaches Cumulative Record for FR5 (Peaches had to press the lever 5 times in order to get a reinforcement)

Strength of each experience:

Training Sniffy really helped in getting an understanding of what to look for in trying to successfully train Peaches, our live rat.  With Sniffy, although it was a computer program, it allowed me to see what works for training and what doesn't.  I knew that taking baby steps was very important, especially when shaping the rat to press the lever to get reinforced.  With Peaches I was able to experience everything that Pryor talks about in her book.  I was able to see how important it was to know her "rules of shaping."  Everything we learned in class from Skinner and Thorndike we were able to adapt to our own rat and see how important reinforcement can be in learning a behavior.

I would recommend continuing to use both Sniffy and the real rat.  Sniffy, although it was a computer program, was able to prepare me to see what training a live rat would be like.  I felt much more prepared by completing the Sniffy program, but it also didn't seem fully realistic which is why I enjoyed training Peaches.  With Peaches I was able to compare and contrast things that I had learned in class and the Pryor readings.