Today, my goal was to finish shaping Remy. She has been difficult and distracted the last few days, and I have definitely been feeling a little discouraged. The purpose of this, as a reminder, is to get her to associate a bar press with receiving food in the magazine.
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| Remy, clearly super excited for another day of shaping! |
This session began at 4:30 PM and Remy weighed 200.4 grams (her target weight and 90% of her starting weight). I decided to change up my methodology because I felt that I wasn't really getting anywhere with shaping in the way I had been trying earlier in the week. As dictated in Pryor's Don't Shoot the Dog, if one shaping method isn't working, try another--because there's always a new and creative way to do something! I again refreshed her memory on the operant box by issuing a few reinforcements up front to remind her that the clicking sound and the light switching off in the chamber would give her food in the magazine. Then, I gave her little to no reinforcements for simply sniffing the bar. I also did not reinforce her for rearing up by the light above the bar. Her first repeated reinforcements were for putting one paw on the bar. I then raised the criteria to putting both paws on the bar. Once I stopped reinforcing for that, Remy learned to press the bar herself! (huzzah!!!)
I am happy to report that my results today were enthralling. I was concerned that raising my criteria would not be good enough to teach Remy that a bar press = receiving food in the magazine. After the first 10 minutes in which she seemed rather unmotivated, though, she became pretty focused and spent a great deal of time near the bar. I used that time to my advantage, and by the end Remy had pressed the bar 25 times! The training session went on for 30 minutes and 42 reinforcements.
Here is the cumulative record for today, which you can see is much better in comparison with the last couple of training days:
Discussion:
We got a lot done today in our training session! Depending on how well she seems to remember this session the next time that I train her, I will continue to let her make the association between a bar press and receiving food in the magazine for next time. Unfortunately, I have to go out of town and will not be training for 3 days, which is probably going to result in a bit of a step backwards. The shaping process so far has been taking much longer than I expected based on class readings and my experiences with Sniffy, but today taught me to persevere! As you can see above, it took 20 minutes before Remy started to make progress. With patience I'm sure she will be shaped soon.
-Jessica
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