Final Post

 Overall I really enjoyed this experience. I thought that it was a little difficult to come to campus every five days to train since I am a commuter. I also thought it was very difficult to come and feed every day since I also work during the week. That being said, I liked how I had a partner because it relieved the pressure of having to come on two out of the seven days to feed. The most surprising thing I learned through this process is that it is very easy to bond with your rat. I also found it very surprising that rats are so easy to train and that they catch on very quickly. I overcame the misconception that rats are really scary even though I still would not like it if one was in my house. I think that this experience was amazing and I would definitely do it again!

Extinction Graph

 

For extinction, on day one we forgot to record in 5-minute increments, but we did it on day two!

Extinction

 On the first day of extinction, we forgot to record for every 5 min, but in total, she got about 330 lever presses in 30 minutes, which would make her have about 55 lever presses every 5 minutes. On day one she had an extinction burst where she continuously pressed the lever waiting for a pellet to drop. On Day two of extinction Cheez-it only got 87 lever presses in 30 minutes. This put her at 45 lever presses for the first 5 minutes, 22 lever presses at the next 5 minutes, 0 lever presses for the next 5 minutes, 0 lever presses for the next five minutes, 10 lever presses for the next five minutes, and 10 for the last five minutes. On the second day of extinction, she definitely recovered by barely pressing the lever at all because she did not expect a pellet to drop out.

Typed Weight Chart

 

Graph of Average Responses Per Training Session

Problems/ Challenges Overcome

  A problem that I had during training was trying to stay focused on the task at hand. Cheez-it would sometimes go and sit in the corner for about five minutes, and when she would do this I would use the hand lever to get her attention and she would start back pressing the lever. I also had a problem with the box one of the days and really there is no solution to fixing it besides stopping the training session and putting her in a new box, which is something I will do differently. Another problem I had while going through training is keeping her weight at her goal weight. I think that now that I have been through the process I have a better understanding of how to do this.

Highest Schedule Attained

 The highest schedule I attained was FR15. She did very well for how frustrated she got throughout the process. The more times Cheez-it had to press the lever, the more frustrated she got. The only signs of frustration she showed was the she would aggressively groom herself and bite at the light above the lever.

FR15

 Cheez-it started FR15 today and she started off really good, but sadly the machine stopped working and her session ended at 21 minutes and 3 seconds. She did a total of 631 lever presses and deceived a total of 41 chocolate pellets for the day. I noticed the machine broke when Cheez-it started getting really frustrated because she wasn’t getting any treats. Cheez-it did really good for the amount of time she had. 

FR12 Day 2

 FR12 was continued today because I didn’t think Cheez-it had been trained enough on it to move on. She got a total of 57 chocolate pellets, which she got from pressing the lever about 699 times. While she did press the lever a lot, she did not get as many treats because of her having to press the lever 12 times before even receiving a single pellet. I think she did great today even though she took the whole 30 minutes to complete this training session.

FR10 Day 2

 Today Cheez-it did another round on FR-10. I didn’t think she was quite ready to move on yet, so I keep her at this point to see if she had any progress. She pressed the lever around 540 times which then gave her 54 treats. Although she didn’t move up on her lever presses she remands consistent and took the whole 30 minutes to complete this training session. 

FR10 and 12

 For today’s training session I did a mixture of FR10 and FR12. I did this because I still wasn’t quite sure if Cheez-it was ready to move on. For the first 17 minutes I did FR10 and she did great with already having 471 lever presses and receiving 45 treats. For about 14 minutes I finished her on FR12 and she also did great on this one by getting 365 lever presses and receiving about 30 chocolate pellets. I think that Cheez-it was very motivated today and got a lot done with a total of 836 lever presses and 75 treats.  Today Cheez-it trained for approximately 31 minutes.

FR10 Day 1

 For FR10 Cheez-it did not get to receive that many pellets. Although she pressed the lever 566 times, she only received 55 treats. When I say she was mad, she was really mad. Cheez-it literally started trying to bite the light and also started jumping up and down a couple of times.

FR7

For this day I could tell as soon as I put Cheez-it in the box that she was not feeling it, but she ended up doing a great job. Cheez-it pressed the lever about 560 times and received 80 treats in 25 minutes. She of course got frustrated for having to press the lever so many times, so she started roughly cleaning herself. 

FR5 Day 2

 Although Cheez-it did great on FR5 yesterday, I decided to do another day of it. She immediately got the hang of pressing the lever and ended up pressing it a total of 426 times. Doing this she received a total of 85 treats in 25 minutes. She really did not do anything to interesting to report on, but she did a great job today.

FR5 Day 1

 When working on FR5 I noticed that she slowed down a little bit, but not that much. She was very determined to get chocolate pellets today and ended up pressing the lever 463 times which she received approximately 92 chocolate pellets received. Not only did she press the lever that many times, but she did it repeatedly by pressing the lever back-to-back to receive an abundance of her in a row. She did take a break from pressing the lever for about five minutes but ended up only using 25 minutes total to train.

FR2 and 3

 To make sure Cheez-it was ready to move onto FR3, I decided to do the first five minutes of training as a practice round. During those first five minutes in FR2, she pressed the lever 47 times and got 20 pellet deliveries. I then followed with training her for 20 minutes in FR3. During this time, she accomplished pressing the lever 273 times, and she was then rewarded with 88 chocolate pellets. During this session, I also noticed her roughly grooming herself and being obsessed with the light, but she then added a new trick by hitting her nose against the wall right by the light.

FR2

 Today we work on FR2 by placing her in the box and hoping she would comprehend the things she accomplished yesterday. Cheez-it did not disappoint. She ended up getting 103 pellet deliveries with 216 lever presses. Something I noticed during training is that when she gets irritated, she roughly grooms herself. She also is very fascinated with the light above the lever, which is very distracting for her.

Shaping

 Cheez-it only took two days to shape! In total it took approximately 54 minutes and 5 seconds, but on day one it took 26.28 minutes and on day two it took 27.37 minutes. For shaping me and my partner took the approach of delivering a treat every time she would go near the lever, and then advancing to delivering a treat every time she put her foot on the lever. On the first day, it took longer to accomplish pushing down on the lever, but on day two she was soaring through getting 131 pellet deliveries that day. The process of training a rat is very similar to what Dr. Trench described in a class by how fast they learn and also how motivated they are to get a treat.

Magazine Training

 How many minutes did this take, in total?  It took a total of 19 min and 40 sec. for training with Dr. Trench but only took 9 min to actually magazine train Cheez-it.

If you spent two days, add up the minutes for day 1 and day 2.  What were your criteria for determining she was magazine trained? The criteria to determine whether or not they were magazine trained as if they came and retrieved the food after dropping it 3 seconds. 

What did you notice about her behavior during this process? Cheez- its behavior during the training was very confusing at first, but it quickly changed when she learned where the food was coming from. 

Was this similar to the book/class discussion of magazine training?  Why or why not? Yes, it was in a sense that she did not take long at all to retrieve the treat from where it drops, and it also did not take long to shape her into going towards the lever for that treat to drop.