The Big Finale!

This has been one heck of an experience! It has been about a month since I first met Ratna. Ratna has taught me a few things, and I have taught her a few tricks as well. I have thoroughly enjoyed interacting with Ratna. She gained trust in me as I handed and cared for her throughout these past few weeks. As for me, I learned how to be a good trainer. She has taught me to be enduring even during frustrating times.  I learned various learning techniques such as magazine training, shaping, ratio, and interval schedules. Not only did I learn the concepts in class, but this lab allowed me to fully apply those techniques to use. It was really exciting to observe Ratna’s learning process. Even though she only partially got through shaping, it was still amazing to see how she picked up on what I taught her. I did, however, wish Ratna could have gotten farther because I could see she had the potential to improve significantly. As mentioned in my “problems blog post”, one way to resolve this issue would be to have longer training sessions. The only misconception I had about training was how much time each schedule would take. Based on Sniffy, I thought shaping Ratna would be quick and easy. Furthermore, I had a misconception that once an animal learned a certain behavior they would remember it forever. I quickly realized that rats are just like humans. They have their own unique personality and learn at different rates. Ratna has shown me that learning and training takes patience, dedication, and time.

            I never thought in my wildest dreams that I would be able to train a rat. It’s pretty amazing that I can tell people that I was able to train a rat. Even though I once had a very disgusting view on rats, I have a newborn veneration for this species of animals. Furthermore, I now fully understand how important their role is in scientific research. This experience has prepared me with the fundamentals of training, so I can apply this to real-world life experiences. Chance, Pryor, Sniffy, class discussions, and readings for this class will help me in life for sure, especially when I have a child or dog. This experience is one I will never forget, and I will cherish the bond I have developed with the one and only “gem”, Ratna! :)

Ratna in her cage getting chow. 

Rat Room in Stephens Science Center, Birmingham-Southern College( aka Ratna's home)

Farewell Ratna! :( 

Food Deprivation & Weight Chart Results

In order to motivate Ratna to eat the chocolate pellet reinforcements, Ratna was deprived of food for the duration of training.  Ratna's target weight, 90% of her body weight, was 199 grams. It took me about 3 days to get her down to this target weight by feeding her anywhere from 2-6 grams of chow. If Ratna was within 1-2 grams of her target weight, then I fed her between a range of 5-8 grams. If she ever lost below the 199 gram mark, I would give her anywhere from 10-14 grams of chow.  Three days before I began training, I gave Ratna the chocolate pellets so that she could try it and get used to those new pellets. Adjustments were made to maintain a weight near this target weight throughout the course of training. I did notice a few fluctuations throughout the training period. This could be attributed to the hyperactivity Ratna performed in the cage and the Operant Box. Furthermore, the chocolate pellets given to her could have also caused these variations. The weight chart below shows her weight in grams along with how many grams of rat chow was given to her during that day. The picture below shows the device we used to measure Ratna's weight, it was zeroed before she was placed in there. 

Date	Weight(g)	Food(g)
2/17/2016	221	2.2g
2/18/2016	220.6	2
2/19/2016	203.5	3.6
2/20/2016	198.7	5.5
2/21/2016	196.5	6.9(chow+ pellet)
2/22/2016	195.5	8.1(chow+pellet)
2/23/2016	194.8	10.3(chow+pellet)
2/24/2016	199	7.2
2/25/2016	200.7	5.9
2/26/2016	197.4	7
2/27/2016	195.3	9.9
2/28/2016	194	11
2/29/2016	195	13.1
3/1/2016	196.5	11.2
3/2/2016	200.1	10.7
3/3/2016	200.5	9.1
3/4/2016	199.5	9.8
3/5/2016	200	9.2
3/6/2016	201	8
3/7/2016	200.1	8.9
3/8/2016	199.5	9.6
3/9/2016	202	8.6
3/10/2016	200	10.2
3/11/2016	200.5	9.8
3/12/2016	199.8	8.8
3/13/2016	200.3	7.1
3/14/2016	199	8.4
3/15/2016	199.8	FREE FEED

Device used to measure weight. 

Extra Training Days( Training Sessions 16 &17)

Goal: Continue to shape Ratna until she develops an observable strong association between pressing the bar in the Operant Box and the delivery of the chocolate food pellet reinforcement from the magazine.

Procedure: Shaping training sessions were held from 4-4:30 pm every day. The dates, Ratna’s weight for training on that day, reinforcements given, and bar presses Ratna performed are all shown in Table 1 below. Note: Ratna’s target weight is 199 grams. I continued to only reinforce Ratna when she reared, looked at the light, and came down on the bar with both paws. She had to perform this behavior of motion 3-5 times in order to get a reinforcement. I wanted to perform some extra days of training to see how far Ratna would progress.

                    Table 1: Ratna’s Data for Shaping Days 15-16 (Training Session 16-17)

Date	Time	Schedule/ Day	Runtime (minutes)	Ratna’s Weight (g)	Reinforcements	Bar Presses
3/14	4-4:30 PM	Shaping Day 15	29.40	199	20	15
3/15	4-4:30 PM	Shaping Day 16	29.67	199.8	28	12

Results/Discussion: As one can see in the data presented in table 1 above, Ratna declined from shaping day 14, where she pressed the bar 28 times. Ratna did seem more hyperactive on 3/14 and 3/15. She was trying to climb on all the corners of the Operant Box. Furthermore, she spent a lot more time sniffing around and grooming herself. I was very disappointed that Ratna did not progress. After talking with Dr. Trench, I decided to not perform extinction because Ratna was not fully shaped. If Ratna had pressed the bar about 60 times, I could have moved on to a fixed ratio schedule. I was very frustrated because Ratna did not perform well, but I kept in mind that just like humans, rats learn at different rates and have different talents. 3/15 was my last day training with Ratna. It was bittersweet. Since it was my last day of training, I no longer had to food deprive her, so I placed Ratna back on the free feed schedule. Below is a picture of Ratna eating her chow after our last day of training. 

Last day with Ratna (3/15/16).

Ratna vs. Sniffy

Ratna in the Operant Box( 3/12/16)

Sniffy the Virtual Rat

Even though my live rat, Ratna, and Sniffy the Virtual Rat were not exactly the same, they both were very beneficial to me. I worked on Sniffy the Virtual Rat before I began training and this allowed me to see what to expect for magazine training, shaping, and other reinforcement schedules as well as the extinction process. Furthermore, it helped me understand how the Operant Box worked. Personally, I felt like completing Sniffy before moving on to training Ratna helped me a lot because I was more comfortable about any uncertainties I had about training. One thing I liked about Sniffy was that he could be trained in one session. In training Ratna, I was forced to cut off the training session after 30 minutes. However since I did not time out the sessions with Sniffy, I was not able to fully see how the behaviors vary on different days like it did for Ratna. Furthermore, Sniffy did not satiate or get worn-out. I tried to limit the amount of reinforcements I gave Ratna, because I wanted her to perform the behavior throughout each session. Ratna was also more hyper or aggressive some days and not as active others days. Sniffy, however, had the same energy and relatively the same behavior. It was also very helpful to visualize Sniffy's responses because it helped me understand how cumulative records work. The x-axis is time and the y-axis is the number of responses.  Response rate—a steep slope of the line indicates a high response rate while a flat line indicates a low response rate. Understanding the response rates on the cumulative record for Sniffy helped me understand the cumulative records for Ratna.
              Overall, magazine training for Ratna and Sniffy were relatively similar besides the amount of time it took for them to grasp the technique. Magazine training took Sniffy about 15 minutes, while Ratna took 21 minutes to be fully magazine trained. I was able to keep both Sniffy and Ratna interested in the food magazine area by rewarding them immediately. Sniffy and Ratna quickly learned the association between the magazine and the delivery reinforcement. One difference I noticed was that if Ratna was on the opposite side of the Operant Box and I wanted her to come back to the magazine, she would respond to the delivery of the reinforcement and come back to the correct side. Sniffy on the other hand did not. Sniffy continued his behavior for a few minutes before slowly going back to the magazine. Furthermore, Sniffy had to rear over the lever in order to be considered magazine trained, while this was not the case for Ratna.

            Shaping Sniffy was definitely way easier than shaping Ratna. The program for Sniffy had a low variability of behaviors compared to the Ratna’s assortment of behaviors. For Sniffy it was easy to just watch the bar-sound graph's progress and see the trend behaviors to reinforce.  For example, Sniffy had to rear up to receive reinforcements. Ratna on the other hand was reinforced after she reared and then came down on the bar. Furthermore, I had to change my shaping technique several times because Ratna was not pressing the bar hard enough. One advantage I had over Ratna’s various behaviors is it allowed me to determine which behaviors to reinforce quickly for her to gain an association. Shaping took Sniffy 1 hour to complete, and for Ratna it took over 7+ hours over the course of two-three weeks to shape her partially( **** See Shaping Blog Day 8-14 for Cumulative Recorders).

            All in all, I found it very useful to train the virtual rat before training my live rat. Sniffy the Virtual Rat helped me pay close attention to the behavior performed because if I missed a behavior that should have been reinforced, then the bar-sound association graph decreased. This essentially helped me pay very close attention to Ratna throughout my shaping training sessions. Due to Ratna's high variability of behavior, time constraints, and Ratna’s compliance, I was only able to partially complete the shaping technique. I highly recommend using Sniffy for future classes. I also believe that requiring the students to do all the different types of reinforcement schedules in Sniffy will be beneficial because it will help them understand how the behaviors vary across the different schedules.