Before I could place Lilly on a fixed reinforcement schedule, I had to shape her to press the bar with her paws. The first goal of shaping was to reward Lilly when she came close to the bar. I programmed the computer to allow me to reward manually and also reward when the bar was pressed, just in case she happened to press it during shaping. Lucky for me, Lilly is an incredibly energetic and curious little creature, so she performed a wide variety of behaviors that were easy for me to reward.
First, I began by shaping her to come close to the bar. This was difficult because Lilly moved around the box so much that sometimes I didn't catch her soon enough, and I felt that she wasn't understanding the reinforcement. Finally, after several minutes, she began to understand, and I could then began rewarding her when her head was over the lever. Once again this proved difficult, because Lily's constant movement meant I didn't always catch her as soon as she performed the behavior. Because this was so hard to catch, I decided to reward her when she put her nose on the bar, which was a behavior she seemed to be performing often. After I shaped her to place her head above the bar, I decided to end the training session for that day. Lilly seemed preoccupied with sniffing the cage, and I concluded that she was too distracted to move on. We trained for 25 minutes on the first day of shaping, and her weight was 230 grams.
On the second day, I was able to reinforce not only Lilly placing her nose on the bar, but also placing a paw on the bar. She caught on quickly, but the hardest part was getting her to press down. I decided that the best way to get her to begin hitting the bar was to stop reinforcing her paw placement. I theorized that this would frustrate her, and she would try another behavior. And guess what: I was right!! Lilly was immediately displeased that she couldn't get a reward, and she started pressing down on the bar. We trained for 23 minutes that day, and her weight was 220 grams.
Day Three of shaping was the moment of truth: did Lilly understand the connection between pressing the bar and getting a reward? Unfortunately, I felt like she did not. Sometimes she would press the bar and go retrieve the reward, and other times she didn't. To compound issues, I was sick and had to miss out on training her for two days in a row, and it was obvious that she had regressed. This meant I had to spend a fourth day of shaping her, to ensure that Lilly had truly learned how to correctly press the bar, AND I had to correct the issue of her using her neck instead of her paws to press down. But as you can see from the video of her final day of shaping, it looked as if Lilly finally understood the connection: if you hit the bar, you'll receive a reward. This meant we could finally move on to FR schedules! On the third day, we trained for 26 minutes and Lilly weighed 222 grams. On the fourth day, we trained for 21 minutes and Lilly weighed 219 grams.
Lilly's second day of shaping:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucdJ5ODF8GA&feature=youtu.be
Lilly's last day of shaping:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahKn3cg0dYQ&feature=youtu.be
- She's still a littleeee confused about the food hopper, but I determined that she had learned the association well enough to move on.
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