Queso the Lab Rat

      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...

    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.

  Weight Chart for Queso *everything measured in grams*

     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.

    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.  

      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.

      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.

      FR15 I saw a slight improvement. Queso had pressed the lever 707 times, 14 more times than in FR12. At this point, I was hopeful that she would improve some more. I noticed that she was less frustrated than in FR12, so I was excited to see how she would perform in the next couple of sessions.

      Knowing Queso had dropped in activity, I was aware that she might stay stagnant or maybe even decrease  in activity some more, which she did. She only pressed the lever 693 times. This is when I started noticing her frustration.     When she would get frustrated, rather than an energy burst where she would repeatedly press the lever, she would chew on it, try to push it up from the underside, or she would simply keep holding it down. I'm obsessed with her pink nose!

     Day 1: Queso ended up pressing the bar 745 times, a 155 lever press decrease from FR7. She still showed a lot of activity, this was still an improvement from FR5, but I was a little disappointed. This is also the first session where we used the entire 30 minutes, most of the other sessions ended at around 26-28 minutes. I decided to do another day to see if she would improve.     Day 2: I decided another day of FR10 to see if Queso improved any. She did, but not much. She had 759 lever presses, only a 14 lever press increase from the previous day. Again, we used the entire training session.

      At this point, Queso is still on a roll. She is increasing the number of times she presses the lever by roughly 200 times. At the end of this session, she had pressed the lever exactly 900 times. This is the most activity I observed in Queso throughout all of her training sessions. After this, she started to decrease in activity.

      Next, FR5. I remember this day being around 40 minutes late because there was a wreck on the interstate and I was terrified that would mess Queso up. She was fine. She pressed the lever 683 times. This is a video that I sent my dad to show him that I am cooler than him.

    Our next training session, we moved on to FR3. Queso continues to exceed my expectations. I did not use the hand switch at all, this is the first session where this happened, and Queso ended up pressing the lever 408 times. She was always trying to get in my hair!

      For FR2, I was worried that she might have forgotten a little bit since we had just had the weekend, so I did reinforce her with my clicker 3 times, but I really had noting to be worried about. She ended up pressing the lever 247 times. All smiles for how smart my girl is!  

     After magazine training, which took a little under 10 minutes, I immediately went into shaping. So, for the remainder of the first session, we did shaping for about 15 minutes. First, I would reinforce Queso every time she turned and looked towards the lever. Once she started to turn and look at the lever and she would expect reinforcement, a chocolate pellet, I tried to hold off and see if she would touch the lever in any way. First, she did not touch the lever, but she would stand on her back legs and start coming down, so as she is making that downward motion, I would reward her. I made sure to not reinforce her if she went under  the lever, even if she touched it. Then, at the end of the first session, she had pressed the lever on her own twice.     During our second session, I barely had to do any shaping. We used FR1. I made sure she knew where her reinforcement came from, which was easy because as soon as she went into the operant box, she went ...

    Magazine training Queso took about 9 minutes and 45 seconds, this was done on the first day. My criteria for if she was magazine trained was if she went to the food dispenser within 3 seconds of me pressing the clicker. During this process, I noticed that Queso seemed very interested in her surroundings, especially the light. She would stand up on her back legs and try to bite the light bulb. Since she was so interested in her environment, at first I couldn't even get her to look at the food dispenser. However, after she was magazine trained, she did not want to leave the food dispenser. Her mouth cracks me up! This was right before we started training!