Today my goal was to finish magazine training Remy and also to begin shaping her. The purpose for the day's session was to teach Remy to associate the clicking sound and light switching off with receiving food in the magazine AND to associate a bar press with receiving food. This time, I put a soundproof cover on the front of the box to keep her from being spooked and/or distracted so easily (below). I watched her behaviors through the small window and reinforced her according to her behaviors during the session.
Today, she was food deprived to about 92% of her starting weight and weighed 203 grams. Our training session began at 4:30 PM. My procedure for this training session began the same way as yesterday while I attempted to magazine train Remy. I reinforced her for time spent near the food magazine at first. Later, I reinforced her for turning her head towards the bar after eating from the food magazine or for time spent exploring the area of the cage near the bar. I also reinforced her for touching the bar with her paw, gripping the bar, and also gave her bonus rewards a few times when she pressed the bar herself. The training session continued for 30 minutes and 37 reinforcements, an increase from yesterday. Remy also pressed the bar 4 times.
The results of today's training session were much more optimistic than the ones from yesterday!
Within the first 5 minutes, Remy seemed to have recalled what we did in our first session, showing that she associated the clicking sound and the light switching off with receiving food in the magazine. She went to the food magazine almost immediately every time I released a pellet. With respec to the bar, however, she only managed to press it 4 times in our 30 minute session, so I will continue shaping her in tomorrow's training session. Her cumulative record, indicating how many times I reinforced her (vertical tick marks on graph) and how many times she pressed the bar (movement on the y-axis), is shown below.
Discussion:
Putting the front cover on the box for this session was instrumental in getting Remy to calm down and interact with the food magazine and the bar more. She appeared to be magazine trained about 5 minutes into the session. Between minute 10 and minute 20, Remy began to be increasingly interested in the bar--she started putting her paws on it and wrapping them around it, even biting it at times! She doesn't seem to quite understand that pressing the bar gets her food yet; either that, or she is not very comfortable with it yet. For the last third of the training session, Remy started to lose interest in being rewarded and spent an increasing amount of time exploring the cage. She also spent a lot of time chewing and sniffing on the light (above the bar), groomed herself more, and spent more time in the part of the box without the bar and the magazine.
When I took her out at the end of the session, she did not want to leave, so hopefully that will be a good sign for tomorrow's training!
-Jessica
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