Lilly's FR Schedule(s)

   Lilly and I spent a great deal of time on the FR schedule. Once we reached the FR10 stage, I decided that I wanted to continue to go upwards. The highest schedule we attained was the FR20 schedule, and I was so proud of Lilly for hanging in that long! I enjoyed going up to a higher level, because it really demonstrated the concept of stretching the ratio. We discussed it in class, but it wasn't until I actually did it myself that I really understood it. She consistently pressed the bar over 600 times at every session once we started the FR12 schedule, which was really cool to watch. You can see in the chart depicting response times (which is in another blog post) to see how much she pressed the bar, and see how the higher up we got in the FR sessions, the more Lilly pressed the bar. She also became more consistent in how often she pressed the bar. For example, when we first started the sessions Lilly was very hesitant and tentative about pressing the bar, even if I manually rewarded her to increase her interest. But as we got further along, she put a lot of time into pressing it, and would press it multiple times in a row until she received a reward. It seemed to me that she had learned it would take more effort to get a treat, and that made her put more work into pressing the bar. However, the fact that we went up to an FR20 schedule made extinction reeeeeeeally difficult when the time came... but more on that later! During our FR sessions, Lilly was about 5 grams underweight, and I theorize this might have contributed to her excessive motivation to press the bar. Either way, as you'll see in the chart documenting her average responses, Lilly was always eager to engage in pressing the bar. The goal of these FR sessions was to increase the number of times Lilly pressed the bar, and I firmly believe we achieved that goal.