Remy's Training-Day 1

February 22, 2016.

Today my goal was to magazine train Remy. Similar to the magazine training protocol for Sniffy, the purpose for the day was to teach Remy to associate a clicking sound and a light switching off with receiving food in the magazine.

  

Here are a few more pictures of her! On her first day of training, she was approximately 93% of her starting body weight, weighing 207 grams (7 grams above her target weight). For this first training session, I partnered with Dr. Trench, and we met at 2:00 PM.

My methodology for Day 1 was to set the operant box computer program for a manual shaping, meaning that even if Remy pressed the bar, I would have to manually reinforce her. I chose to do this so that we could focus on one task at a time--the first task being getting Remy interested in the food and associating the clicking sound and the light switching off in the chamber with receiving food in the magazine. 

When Remy faced the magazine or got close to it, I reinforced her. But, as with Sniffy, it took time to pique her interest, and by the end I was not convinced that she was successfully magazine trained. Training continued nonetheless for about 24 minutes and 22 reinforcements.

Discussion:

First of all, I don't think Remy was as food motivated as I would have liked her to be. She was over her target weight and had actually gained 9 grams overnight the day before our first training. So, for the first 5-10 minutes, Remy showed no interest in the pellets at all and when she finally ate them, she was still distracted, which brings me to the other issue of the day. Remy is also very skittish. This worked against us in today's session because she spent much of her time grooming, freezing, or trying to escape the box altogether. In the next training session, I plan to put a cover on the front of the box that will block out noise and also prevent Remy from being scared due to any sudden movements, which will hopefully allow her to focus better on training.

Day 1 of training Remy was only remotely like training Sniffy and not nearly as simple. Part of the reason for this is likely because our textbooks and the Sniffy computer program, while they address the randomness of behavior, don't talk much about individual rat personalities or how much time the whole process takes. Descriptions can be summed up in a few paragraphs but they aren't as complex as real-life training situations. 

Regardless, for Day 2, I plan to continue magazine training and to begin shaping!

-Jessica