Problems on Problems on Problems

One of the main challenges I faced during training Ratna was trying to shape her to press the bar. Ratna got close every day but never really progressed. I tried shaping her different ways, but nothing seemed to work. Ratna was often distracted, which deterred her from pressing the bar. One issue was that Ratna would sniff the far left corner of the Operant Box. I wiped the corner down a few times but that did nothing. Ratna continued to go to the suspicious, interesting corner. Ratna also looked at me a lot from the glass window. Ratna would put her paws on the bar and then look at me to give her a treat. I realized quickly that Ratna knew I was giving her the treats. I did try putting the Operant Box cover so Ratna could not see me, but that did not help at all.

             The last week of shaping I saw more results. I tried to make Ratna work harder to receive reinforcement, whereas in previous training sessions I gave her more pellets. I believe this adjustment helped a lot because she was less likely to become satiated due to the fact that it took longer and more work to receive the pellets. Furthermore, I believe I could have seen more improvements by extending the amount of time spent working in the Operant Box. Ratna started progressing toward the end of the 30 minute training sessions. I also noticed that Ratna did not satiate quickly. If I was allowed to train a little bit longer, I feel like Ratna could have improved faster. Therefore, I believe Ratna made adequate progress in her training towards the end of each training session because she started learning that she had to press the bar to get a treat. I used Pryor’s advise and ended each session on a high note, which helped Ratna when we began training again the following day. Towards day 13 and day 14 of shaping, Ratna tried to sniff the light. Ratna began to rear and grasp the light with her front paws by pulling herself to the very top of the box using the bar as her step stool. She did press the bar this way approximately 3-4 times. I made adjustments to this behavior by rewarding her when she just looked at the light and then put her paws on the bar. I did train two extra days, but Ratna's performance level declined. I decided, with Dr. Trench's expertise, to not extinct her behavior. I really wish Ratna got to the fixed ratio schedules, but unfortunately she did not. 

             I also had some computer screen glitches. The computer screen often went into a dark sleep mode and then would come back on after I clicked the mouse. After it did that a few days, I decided to just keep the mouse moving to prevent it from going out. The Operant Box and computer overall worked well for me, other than this minor computer screen issue.