Shaping Continued Days 8-14: Training Session 9-15

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

Procedure: Shaping training sessions were held mainly from 4-4:30 pm every day, except one day where I had to train from 12-12:30 (see Table 1 for full times). 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. For the following training sessions I continued to shape Ratna to press the bar. On day 8 of shaping I gave Ratna reinforcements every time she either touched the bar with both paws or reared up in front of the bar. I did not reinforce her every time she did those behaviors, however I only reinforced after she did them 3-6 times. On days 9-12, I continued to reinforce Ratna when she had both paws on the bar and when she looked at the light after coming down from the rear. This helped a little bit because she realized she would have to complete that motion of behavior in order to get a reinforcement. Again, I only reinforced Ratna after she did those behaviors approximately 3-5 times. Day 13 was so exciting for me, Ratna had a sudden change of success. I did not have to reinforce Ratna that much at all because she pressed the bar a total of 13 times. Day 14, the last required day of shaping, was Ratna's best day so far! She pressed the bar 28 times during the 30 minute duration. I was so happy that Ratna progressed so quickly. See Table 1 below for results.

Table 1: Ratna’s Data for Shaping Days 8-14 (Training Session 9-15)

Date	Time	Schedule/ Day	Runtime (minutes)	Ratna’s Weight (g)	Reinforcements	Bar Presses
3/6	4-4:30 PM	Shaping Day 8	29.43	201	52	4
3/7	4-4:30 PM	Shaping Day 9	29.78	100.1	31	5
3/8	4-4:30 PM	Shaping Day 10	26.54	199.5	35	6
3/9	4-4:30 PM	Shaping Day 11	29.34	202	38	6
3/10	4-4:30 PM	Shaping Day 12	29.2	200	34	6
3/11	12-12:30	Shaping Day 13	27.57	200.5	20	13
3/12	4-4:30 PM	Shaping Day 14	30.00	199.4	9	28

 Results/Discussion: As shown in Table 1, Ratna’s maximum number of bar presses was only 28 this week. Ratna clearly has not yet developed a strong association between the action of bar pressing and delivery of the reinforcement, the chocolate pellets. She has really improved though this week. She still does a lot of grooming in the operant box, which wastes a ton of training time. Ratna also still continues to go into the left corner and sniff for quite a while. Overall, the results of this week have shown me that Ratna is learning because she does go near the bar and performs various behaviors to get the treat she loves. One thing I noticed was that when Ratna had to perform the behaviors 3-5 times before I gave her a treat was that she would perform them quickly and then look at me. Clearly, she has realized that she has to do something around the bar to get those lovely chocolate pellets. Figure 1 below shows the cumulative recorder for day 10. On the x-axis shows the time (minutes) and the y-axis shows the bar presses. Figure 2 shows the cumulative recorder for day 13. You can see there is a slight increase towards the last ten minutes of training for that day. Sorry for the blurry picture! Day 14, last day of shaping, was the best yet! One observation I noticed was that Ratna was trying to touch the light. She used the bar as her stepper to reach the glowing light. Thus, she pressed the bar 4 times with her feet, but the other 24 bar presses Ratna performed with both her paws. Figure 3 below shows the cumulative recorder for Ratna's bar presses on day 14.  In conclusion, Ratna has developed a mediocre relationship between bar pressing and the delivery of the reinforcements. Shaping, as discussed in class, is similar procedure wise. However, shaping took much longer than I expected, and Ratna is still not fully shaped. Shaping does vary from individual to individual and requires a lot of time. 

            Overall, I plan on training Ratna a few more extra days even though I have finished the required amount of training, because I want to see if she can accelerate. I'll discuss with Dr. Trench if I should perform extinction on Ratna or not.

Figure 1: Cumulative Recorder for Ratna’s 10^th day of Shaping (6 bar presses).

Figure 2: Cumulative Recorder for Ratna’s 13^th Day of Shaping Day (13 bar presses).

Figure 3: Cumulative Recorder for Ratna’s 14^th Day of Shaping Day (28 bar presses).