A day in the life Jolene

 I thought that training Jolene was super fun a class where you can train a live animal to do something is always a fun experience. Somethings that I did not like is that the boxes would go down from time to time and that is just how technology is but still it would make training difficult sometimes to get done. The most surprising thing that I saw was how the concepts that we were learning in class were translating to the real world with our rats. Like the extinction burst and there were many others. Some misconceptions that I overcame was that I thought rats would be dumb but I came to learn that these animals are really smart. Overall this was a fun experience and would recommend to anyone to try it out on there own!

  This is a line graph showing the number of responses that Jolene did over her training days some days are averaged out like Shaping, FR 2, FR 3, FR 5, and FR 12 

 Jolene was very agitated during the extinction period she would bite the lever and jump. On the first day  she hit the lever 239 times and then after that it went down considerably, but on both day one and two she would hit the lever more between the 10-15 minute mark. I did see spontaneous recovery on day two she hit the lever but at the end of the session she did not hit the lever for the last 5 minutes.  Table for Both Extinction Day's

 Target Weight:195.5

 I would say at first some problems that I faced was that I would not reinforce Jolene fast enough. She would do something and I would not give her a reward. Another problem was that I would not keep her engaged enough during the first days of training. I would let her sit around to much and that would in-turn make her not engaged. Another was the box would not work sometimes in the begging so she would get frustrated and not understand what I wanted her to do. How I overcame these were I would stay more focused during training so that I could give Jolene a reward right when she did something.  Also I made sure to check to see if the box was working before putting her in the box. Somethings that I wised I had done different is that I should have pushed Jolene more. I feel like putting her on the same FR schedule for two days may have been too slow for her.  Looking back I feel that Jolene could have made some higher FR schedules if I had pushed the training more. 

Today was the last day training Jolene and she did so well for her last training session. She hit the lever 1149 times her best training session to date. I was worried that she would not do good at all because of the last two training sessions but I was wrong! She did so well over these training sessions and tomorrow will start extinction. I am excited to see what happens during it if she will show any of the characteristics that come with extinction. 

 Jolene did even worse than last training session she hit the lever only 854 times. I am not sure why see is not hitting the lever as much as she has done in the past. She did not seem very engaged today not sure why but tomorrow is the last day of training before Jolene starts extinction I am going to put her on FR15 not sure if it is the best idea but we will see.   

 After the last session I was excited to see how Jolene was going to and she did ok she hit the lever 927 times. Jolene was showing some old bad habits she would bite the lever, hit the lever several times stop to check if food was there and then continue hitting the lever until rewarded, and putting her nose under the bar. Not sure why this was happing the last training session went so well. I will keep her on FR12 one more day so not to push her to much.  

This was by far the best day of training that Jolene has done to date! she hit the lever 1109 times she was on fire. The stopping and going that I have noticed from other training sessions was not present in todays training. I was worried to put her on FR10 because that is a big step from FR7 but she put my worries to rest and I am excited to see what she does next. The next training session will be on FR12.  

  On day 9 I decided to move Jolene up to FR 7 seeing how she did so well on FR5 the session went great she hit the lever 621 times. Each training session she is getting better and better she is still having some problems in which she will stop for a little bit and not do anything and then start hitting the lever again. excited to see what she will do next. Going to FR10 for the next training session!

 Even though Jolene did so well on FR5 I did not want to push like I did a couple of days ago and have a bad day of training so I wanted to just keep her on FR5. I also kept her at FR5 because I took two days off and did not want to go to a new FR schedule after two days off. she did very well and hit the lever 579 times. She is getting extremely good at hitting the lever at this point and the there is still some time between hitting the lever she will take brakes but not as often. A great day of training I will be putting her on FR7 tomorrow we will she how it goes.    

 On Day seven I was debating putting Jolene back on FR2 but since she had over 20 minutes on FR3 the day prior I would keep her on FR3. She did fantastic hitting the lever 271 times in 10 minutes at that point I felt confident in her ability and came to realize the day before was just odd and I put her on FR5 for the last 20 minutes. Jolene did even better hitting the lever 400 times this was by far her best training day she was still having bursts in the times she hit the lever, but they were becoming smaller and smaller in time. Overall a great day for her and I was so proud of her!!!!   

On Day 6 I started Jolene on FR2 but she was doing very well and had 66 lever hits in 3:60 minutes so I decided that I would put her on FR3. Looking back it was probably not the best idea because she ended the session with only 88 lever hits. I think I pushed her to fast which made her go back to bad behaviors like putting her nose under the lever and bitting it. 

 For FR2 Jolene did very well seeing as she was not getting anymore rewards from the hand switch. She would only get one by hitting the lever 2 times I was a little nervous because it was a step up in schedules  but Jolene put my nerves to rest she hit the lever 233 total times. I noticed that she would hit the lever and then for a long time not do anything she would just sit in the corner and then towards the end of the session she would hit the lever a lot. Overall great session!!!

To shape Jolene it took me 4 days total which was 120 minutes. How I got Jolene to be shaped was first Whenever Jolene went to the back side of the Operant Box I would reward her. I did this until she was spending most of her time in the back of the box and not the front. I would reward her every time she would look at the lever after I got Jolene to look at the lever I would reward her when she was extremely close to the lever and example would be if she would sniff the lever she would get a reward. After I got Jolene sniffing the lever I started to only give her a reward if she would put a hand on the lever I started to give a reward if she only had one hand on the lever. she achieved this goal very well and was sometimes hitting the lever with only one hand. She would put her nose under the bar with one hand during this time even though she had one hand over the bar I would only reward her if she had one hand and her nose over the bar and this was somewhat difficult. When we over ca...

 For my first day of training I worked with Dr. Trench to get Jolene comfortable with being in the Operant Box. The first objective was to get Jolene to be aware of where she would get her reward for hitting the lever. This was the goal of Magazine Training. She had to be able to immediately go to the feeding area whenever the light went off and when she heard the ping sound in the box. She was Magazine trained at 17 minutes. I noticed that she was confused at first but over time she started to understand what was going on, and was quicker to get her reward. I would say that Jolene's behavior was like how it was described in the book because she was confused but once she did what I wanted her to do she started to pick up speed and respond faster.