FR1 Schedule

Goal: Now that Despereaux is shaped to press the bar to receive her reinforcement, Logan and I aim to establish a consistent Fixed Ratio 1 (FR1) schedule, where she is rewarded automatically for each bar press.


Procedure: We used the "FR1" program and proceeded to place her in the operant box for 30 minutes. The software recorded everything, so we just sat back and observed.


Observations and Discussion:

     Since Despereaux ended yesterday's session on a good note, we were excited to start her on the FR1 schedule. The first 5min were slow and Des was quit distracted. However, by the end of the session she was consistently pressing the bar. It seemed as if she was really learning and improved so much within the 30min session. I was so sad that the 30 minutes passed so quickly and was excited that she was finally showing such large signs of improvement. In this session she pressed the bar a total of 51 times, with the majority of the presses occurring in the last few minutes. I wish the session lasted longer!

Friday (9/27): 

    On Monday (9/30), Despereaux showed great signs of improvement. It appeared as if she was really learning that pressing the bar would give her food and as seen in the cumulative record below she had two periods where she consistently would press the bar. In the first 15 minutes she pressed the bar over 30 times, so we were very hopeful. However, she also still had long periods of grooming and seemed uninterested in the pellets and spent the last half of training in the front left corner of the box sniffing around. We think the regress of behavior may be due to taking the weekend off from training and think she will get back on track after consecutive days of training. 

Monday (9/30)

Corner where Despereaux loves to sniff