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The Final Post on Queso

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      Overall, I really enjoyed this project! I was scared and nervous about having to work with and take care of a rat, but within a week or so, I was absolutely obsessed with Queso. I thought that rats were gross and I didn't think that they had a personality of their own, since I was comparing them to dogs, but I was proven wrong. I would send my dad pictures of me with Queso, and he once responded with, "hope you don't get rabies." He is a very dry and sarcastic man, so he was  joking, but maybe that's where I got my original idea of rats. Sometimes I would have to feed another rat as well as Queso, and their personalities were so different! Queso overall is pretty sweet and cuddly, while some of the other rats are more feisty. One of my classmates, who fed Queso for me while I was at work, texted me just to tell me that she is a "sweet little lady."      The only thing that I didn't like about this experience is the amount of gas that I burne...
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Graph

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    Here is a graph of Queso's activity across all training schedules! At first, she increases her lever presses so much so quick! After FR7, she drops and then grows stagnant. At the end, she drops very quickly for exctinction.
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Weight Chart

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  Weight Chart for Queso *everything measured in grams*
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Extinction Day 1 & 2

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     Day 1: Extinction day one when as I expected. I noticed a behavior burst in Queso, but about halfway through the session, I think she lost all interest. She ended up pressing the lever 204 times.  This was around the time she lost all interest.     Day 2: That lack of interest continued into Day 2. Queso never even went near the lever of the food dispenser. She showed no spontaneous recovery, and pressed the lever a whopping 0 times. She had more interest in me than the lever. A bar graph on Queso's activity during extinction. As you can see, she had no activity on day 2.
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Problems in Training

    As I mentioned in some of the FR Schedules blog posts, I noticed that Queso started to get frustrated as the ratio numbers increased after a certain point. She would bite on the lever, try to push up from the bottom of the lever, hold the lever down, or she would place one hand on top of the lever and one hand on the bottom and rattle it. Sometimes, her rattling it would push the lever down enough that she was rewarded, so maybe she thought that since she was being rewarded, then she kept on doing it.     I unfortunately could not really find a way to fix this, but looking back, I wish that in those training sessions I would've done all the reinforcement manually. The video is a very short example on what she would do. Sometimes, she would get so frustrated and rattle the lever so much, that she would slip and fall.  
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FR20

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      The last day of the FR Schedules! I thought that I would see a slight improvement in Queso, I was hoping for around 800 lever presses, but Queso pressed the level 571 times. This was the lowest since FR3. Queso's frustration was at an all time high. I even noticed that she would lose interest completely and just roam around the operant box.  Queso showing no interest whatsoever in the lever.
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FR18

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      Queso had improved some more! She had pressed the lever 775 times, 68 more times than in FR15! However, I noticed that her frustration started to come back. She would hold down the lever, push up from under the lever, sometimes she would just rattle the lever. Sometimes, rattling it would count as lever presses, so sometimes she would keep rattling it and eventually get 3 pellets delivered, but she would be so frustrated she wouldn't even notice for a while.
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