Magazine Training: Lilly Learns About the Food Hopper

   Magazine training is perhaps the most important first step in training your rat to press the lever. The goal of magazine training Lilly was to teach her about the relationship between the light/sound of the food hopper and receiving a treat (which would later become her reward for pressing the lever). Lilly was deprived to 85% of her body weight, to ensure that she would be hungry enough to actually eat the sugar pellets when they were rewarded to her. Her initial starting weight was 247 grams, and the goal weight was 215 grams. By the time I began magazine training, she weighed 233 grams. Our sessions started at 3:30PM every day. In order to magazine shape her, I used the manual reinforcement setting on the computer program. This allowed me to reward her when she put her head near the food hopper, thus creating a relationship between the hopper and the treat. After that, I'd let Lilly walk away, and when she put her head in the hopper again, I'd reward her. We trained for 22 minutes, and I rewarded her 34 times. I would press the button when she was away from the hopper, and upon hearing the noise, Lilly would immediately run over to it. After the session was over, she had learned the connection between the light/sound and the reward, because she responded to the sound of the food hopper, even if she was on the other side of the operant box. I concluded that I could begin shaping the next day.