Training Sniffy

February 17, 2016.

As you may remember from my previous post, not only do I have a real rat named Remy for my Learning Psychology class, I also have a virtual rat named Sniffy (3.0)! Below are a couple of pictures of Sniffy eating from the food magazine (left) and rearing (right).

 

In order to prepare us for training our real rats, I and each of my classmates downloaded Sniffy. 

My first task was to magazine train this little lady. Magazine training in the case of Sniffy is to train her to associate a clicking sound that is produced by me, the trainer, pressing the space bar with receiving food in the magazine (pictured above).  This part is crucial to the training process because without this association, reinforcing Sniffy for behaviors I want would be meaningless.

After magazine training, my task was to train Sniffy to press the bar (silver; pictured above the food magazine). The bar dispenses food pellets without me having to do anything, but Sniffy is not aware of the association between the bar and the food dispensing yet. That is what shaping will eventually accomplish.

Magazine training-

I chose to reinforce Sniffy whenever she came close to the food magazine. The only problem is that she just sort of ambles around the operant box, grooming herself, rearing, and doing other rat-like things. Only every once in awhile would she even look in the direction of the food magazine. In these moments, my timing of reinforcement was critical--the closer she was to the magazine, the better. Sometimes by the time I released the food pellet, Sniffy was already walking away and it would take a few more seconds before she even realized that there was food, and then she would amble over to the magazine again. These delays were frustrating. 

Sniffy's curiosity and exploration continued throughout the magazine training task. Sometimes a breakthrough (at about the halfway point according to Operant Associations Mind Window on the computer program) would occur and Sniffy would linger by the the magazine after previously receiving a food pellet. I would take advantage of these time by rapidly releasing several more food pellets. This strengthened Sniffy's association of the clicking sound and receiving food from the magazine. The stronger this association was, the quicker Sniffy's response time to the magazine was, even if she was on the other side of the chamber. 

It took about 30 minutes and way more than 30 food pellets to magazine train Sniffy, so I saved a file and returned to shaping another day.

Shaping-

In order to shape Sniffy to eventually press the lever, I had to reinforce her behaviors when she was facing the bar, standing near the bar, or rearing up on the bar. Because Sniffy had previously been magazine trained (above), she realized that she was doing behaviors I liked when she heard the clicking sound and was rewarded with food. The behaviors I liked, then, became more and more frequent until Sniffy began pressing the bar. When she pressed the bar, this behavior was automatically reinforced, as pressing it dispensed a food pellet. 

Below is a video a few seconds long of Sniffy's behavior (in general) while first learning the result of pressing the bar:

Then, Sniffy began to associate a bar press with receiving food. Once she figured this out, I just sat back and watched her continuously press the bar until the association was at the maximum level on the Operant Associations Mind Window. The whole process took about an hour and a half, but much of the time was spent just watching Sniffy press the bar over and over. 

Sniffy post-shaping video:

The cumulative record of Sniffy's shaping is below. As you can see, on a continuous reinforcement schedule (or FR1), the behavior is increasing over time because at EVERY bar press, Sniffy receives food.

Now that Sniffy has been shaped, I can put her on a schedule of reinforcement and eventually learn how to extinguish the bar pressing behavior. Stay tuned!

-Jessica