For the last two days of working with Remy, I put the bar pressing behavior on extinction. The purpose of this is so that we can hopefully see principles discussed in lecture in real life. Extinction is a way to get rid of a response by no longer reinforcing it when it is present. Put in our terms, Remy will no longer receive a pellet for ANY of her bar presses. My goal would be for her bar pressing to decrease over time due to lack of reinforcements.
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| "You're going to do WHAT to me?!?" |
Results:
On the first day, Remy pressed the bar 81 times, and she pressed it throughout the 30 minute session. On the second day, Remy pressed the bar 34 times, and all but 10 of those bar presses were in the first one-third of the session.
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| Cumulative Record 3/13/16 |
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| Cumulative Record 3/15/16 |
I've also put together graphs that describe her number of responses per 5 minutes of each extinction session. Her responses clearly declined after 2 days of extinction but were not yet back to baseline, which meant that she could have used more sessions based on the definition of extinction.
Discussion:
Obviously, Remy was not a big fan of Extinction. During the two sessions, she spent a lot of time rearing (like trying to escape) and grooming (an anxiety behavior) when she wasn't attempting to press the bar. She also did some things I had never seen before, including biting the bar and scratching at the inside of the food magazine. Some of her emotional behaviors are below.
I did not see a spontaneous recovery but expect that I would have seen once potentially had I waited longer between the two extinction days (I only skipped one day in between) or if she had more days in the box that she was put on extinction.
The extinction process kinda made me feel bad for Remy after it was over, so I gave her a few more chocolate pellets and then put her on free-feed--which I'm sure she appreciated. Hopefully she has forgiven me!
-Jessica
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