Our goal today was to reinforce for the action of rearing and coming down on the bar. This specific action was chosen because we wanted to be selective in what type of reinforcements she got.
Procedure:
Today we would reinforce her on the way down from a rear. This was to get her in the habit of coming down on the lever. We had to be sure though not to give a reinforcement when she was sniffing the light because we did not want her to see that as the cue to get food. Today we reinforced mainly for the behavior we wanted but at times had to back up just one step to keep her interested in the bar. Also we installed the shield from the start today to minimize any distractions.
Results:
Today our rat got very used to raising up and coming down on the bar. We did not have as many regressions and she seemed to grasp the idea of pressing bar. She pressed the bar a total of 27 times and we reinforced her 47 times. The session lasted 27:52 minutes.
Discussion:
It seemed that today our rat was less distracted because of the shield and thus we were able to get more done. She seemed to be associating pressing the lever with receiving the food. This was great progress today and we believe within the next few days she will be full shaped and we can move on to some of the fixed ratio schedules.
Cumulative Record
No comments:
Post a Comment