Shaping Peaches (day 2)

Our Goal:
To shape Peaches to press the lever in the Operant box in order to receive a pellet of food.  Megan and I decided that we were going to put Peaches on a manual shaping schedule because she was biting the lever on Shaping Day 1.

Shaping is a training procedure in which the rat is provided a reinforcement of successive approximations of a desired behavior.  Shaping makes it possible to establish a behavior in a few minutes that rarely or never occur spontaneously.  Manual shaping means that instead of Peaches automatically getting a pellet every time the lever was pressed or pulled down, we would have to reward her by pressing the hand switch.

Procedure:
The shaping session started at 8:45 A.M and lasted 30 minutes.  Peaches pressed the lever 36 times and received 56 reinforcements. She weighted 212.8 grams, .8 grams above her target weight. Megan was the trainer today and I was the observer.

Results:
When we put Peaches in the operant box she went straight to the lever, she would rear up over the lever and put her paws on it instead of her head. Although, when she wasn't reinforced right away she seemed to go back to her habit of biting the bar out of desperation to get food.

Peaches biting the lever

Peaches underneath lever, trying to bite it

It was interesting to see how she knew that the lever was where she needed to be in order to get food, but we just had to get her to put her paw on the bar instead of biting it down.  With 10 minutes left in the session she began to consistently press the lever to get food, a couple of those times she would bite the lever, but she would continuously have her paws on it.  Towards the end of the session she seemed to have lost some focus because she was wondering around the box more instead of staying in the area with the lever.  Peaches was reinforced 59 times and pressed the bar 36 times.

Cumulative Record of Shaping Day 2

Peaches pushing lever down

Discussion:
Although Peaches still tended to bite the lever down occasionally, she always seemed to have her paw on the bar.  This could be due to higher number of reinforcements given today than on day one.  She seemed to be able to understand that the lever is where she needed to go to get food and the only way to get it was to move the lever down.  We still need to work on not getting her to bite the bar, so on day 3 we will continue to reinforce her paws on the bar, but today was a vast improvement.

Shaping Peaches (day 1)

Our Goal:
To shape Peaches to press the lever in the Operant box in order to receive a pellet of food.

Shaping is a training procedure in which the rat is provided a reinforcement of successive approximations of a desired behavior.  Shaping makes it possible to establish a behavior in a few minutes that rarely or never occur spontaneously.

Procedure:
The shaping session started at 8:50 A.M and lasted 30 minutes.  On day 1 of shaping, I was the trainer and Megan was the observer.  The purpose of our training session was the reinforce the magazine training done the day before, to reinforce Peaches moving her head to the left, turing left of the hopper, moving in front of the lever and putting her paw on the lever.  Peaches weighted 213.6 grams, 1.6 grams above her target weight.

Results:
Peaches seemed to move to hopper during the reinforcement of magazine training and easily caught on to moving her head to the left.  But for some reason she wanted to put her head on the lever rather than her paw.  Even with her head on the lever she didn't push down on in, she would turn her body and bite the lever down in order to get food.  This caused us to regress our training to having her get back in the corner of the opposite side of the box and press the hand switch to see if she would come due the hopper due to the sound.  Once she was in front of the hopper she would move back to the lever, turning her body to bite and press the lever which worked several times in a row.  Through out the session she was reinforced 39 times and pressed/bit the lever 6 times.

Beginning of Shaping Peaches

Cumulative Record of Shaping (Day 1)

Discussion:
The results of putting her head on the lever and turning her body to bite the lever could possibly to due to the little number of reinforcements provided.  Peaches seemed to have developed a significant sound-food association, but her bar sound association and her action strength didn't seem to have developed as quickly.  She knew the area of the box she needed to be in in order to get food, but she didn't seem to understand the concept of pressing down on the lever to get food.  She found another way to get the lever to move...bite it.  We are going to have to take a couple steps back on Shaping Day 2 and try to significantly reinforce Peaches putting her paws on the lever to get food instead of biting the it.

Magazine Training Day 1 (Peaches)

Today was the beginning of training Peaches!!!!  Just like the Sniffy program Megan and I began the process with magazine training...

Our Goal:
To magazine train (classically condition an association between the sound of the food magazine and delivery of the food) Peaches.  The purpose of my session today was to condition Peaches to approach the food magazine each time Megan or myself pressed the hand switch.

Operant Box

Procedure:
Peaches was food deprived to 90% of her starting body weight (235.5 grams) and weighted 207.6 grams, 4.4 grams below her target weight (212 grams).  Daily sessions will be at 8:45 AM, but today our first session began at 11:52 AM.  Today Megan was the trainer and I was the observer, once Peaches was in the operant box Megan immediately pressed the hand switch to deliver a food pellet in the food magazine.  But we hit a tiny little issue...the food magazine would make the noise, but no pellet would appear.  Megan pressed the hand switch a second time and then a third time, but there was still no luck.  Then we proceeded to take Peaches out of the box so we would take the food magazine appear in order to try and fix it.  Once it was all put back together Peaches was placed back into the box and the training began again.  Megan pressed the hand switch again and a pellet appeared for Peaches, we waited for her to find it and eat it.  Then after she took her head out of the food magazine Megan pressed the hand switch again and we waited to see if she ate it.  The magazine training continued for about 24 minutes and 50 food pellets were presented to Peaches.

Results:
Megan pressed the hand switch when Peaches would be on the other side of the box, opposite of the food magazine to see if she would approach it and she did.  From this we believed that Peaches was beginning to develop a sound-food association.  After this step we then began to reward Peaches when she would move her head to the left of the food magazine close to the bar.  Sometimes she would press the bar herself.  Megan then began to press the hand switch when Peaches was on the way down from rearing in the area of the bar.  By the end of the session Peaches pressed the bar 12 times on her own.

Discussion:
By the end of the session Peaches seemed to have developed a decent association between the sound of the food magazine delivery and the presentation of the food.  We have to work in a new operant box tomorrow so we may have to take a couple steps backwards and retrain her so she can get used to the new box.  Over all Peaches seems to be developing a strong sound-food association, the stronger the association the easier it will be to shape her to press the bar.  I believe that we will be able to get a little farther with her training if we use the full 30 minutes.

Great start today Peaches pressing the bar on your own 12 times!!

Training Preparation (Sniffy)

In order to train Peaches properly we are using a program called Sniffy, the virtual rat.  This program provides us with some idea of how to magazine train, shape, reinforce, and extinction our real rats.  The first step of "Sniffy Training" is magazine training, which presents the food pellets, the primary reinforcer, in a way for Sniffy to learn to associate the sound of the magazine, the secondary reinforcer, with the availability of a food pellet in the food hopper.  So essentially every time Sniffy turned in the direction of the food hopper, which is placed in the middle of the operant box, I would hit my space bar so that a food pellet would be presented to her.  After a certain amount of time the program then proceeded to tell me that Sniffy had developed an association between the sound of the hopper and the food.  Once this happened I began the shaping process.  Shaping is a procedure used to train an animal to do something by reinforcing successful tries of the targeted behavior, getting Sniffy to press the bar.  In order to do this every time Sniffy reared up against the back wall no matter how close or far away she was from the hopper I had to reward her.  After she started to develop a Bar Sound and Action Strength Association, I created mental sections of the box, mean whenever Sniffy was in the certain section I would reinforce the behavior by providing a food pellet.  Soon after her bar sound association began to develop more and she was pressing the bar on her own.  Occasionally I would have to reinforce, but after a certain point Sniffy was pressing the bar at least 20 times during each 5-minute interval.  Here are some pictures...

The magazine training was pretty easy, I tried to take as many baby steps as I could.  A couple of times I pressed the bar when I shouldn't have just because of reflexes, but her Sound Food Association developed quickly.  It was more of the shaping that I had a difficult time with because I was never sure if I was reinforcing her rearing on the back wall enough, so since I was so unsure I started over.  The second time I started the shaping process I made sure to reinforce her rearing on any part of the back wall.  Once I saw that her bar sound and action strength were developing I created the mental sections in the box and limited my reinforcements.  Soon after that she was pressing the bar on her own and I was one proud mama!  The shaping process took me a little over an hour and a half just because I restarted.
Once I had shaped Sniffy properly, meaning she was pressing the bar on her own at least 20 times every 5-minute interval, I put her on a variable-interval (VI) of 20 seconds schedule.  This is a type of reinforcement scheduling which provides a time interval following reinforcement that must pass before the next response is reinforced.  I decided to do a time interval of 20 seconds.  At first Sniffy was pressing the bar and expecting food, but when it didn't come she continued to press the bar multiple times then stopped to check for food.  Sniffy seemed to get a little frustrated if food wouldn't appear after pressing the bar several times since she was so used to getting food after every single time she pressed the bar.  If a food pellet was not presented she continued to press the bar until she heard that sound.  This continued for a good amount of time, then once Sniffy realized that food wasn't coming out of the hopper every time she pressed the bar she started to walk around the box more like she did when she was being magazine trained.  Time continued to pass and she developed a slow steady response to the variable-interval schedule.
After going through this process I feel much more comfortable and confident in being able to train Peaches properly.  I know I can't sit around for hours feeding Peaches like I could for Sniffy, but I believe I have a much better feel for what I will have to do in comparison to not using the program at all.  Tomorrow is the beginning of training for Peaches and I'm so excited!