Shaping

     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 straight to the food dispenser. I reinforced her about 10 times using the clicker, which is when she got close to the lever or on top of it. After only using the clicker, she started pressing the lever on her own. She ended up pressing the lever 129 times. So that second session, I shaped her for around 10 minutes before she started doing her own thing. In total I shaped Queso for about 25 minutes over the course of 2 days.

    My case was a little bit different than how shaping was described in class and our reading. I thought that I would have to reinforce her with every single baby step possible that would point her towards pressing the lever, however, Queso did not take baby steps. She leapt.