Rat Extinction Lab

Experiment Results Predict Question: Predict Question 1: Make a prediction about the basal metabolic rate (BMR) of the remaining rats compared with the BMR of the normal rat you just measured. Your answer : b. The hypophysectomized (Hypox) rat's BMR will be higher than the normal rat's BMR. Predict Question 2: What do you think will happen after you inject thyroxine into the three rats? Your answer : c. The hypophysectomized rat will become hyperthryoidic and develop a goiter. Predict Question 3: What do you think will happen after you inject TSH into the three rats? Your answer : a. The normal rat will become hyperthyroidic and develop a goiter. Predict Question 4: Propylthiouracil (PTU) is a drug that inhibits the production of thyroxine

The extinction burst, is noticed as an increase in frequency, duration and intensity of an unreinforced behavior during the extinction process. Once the extinction process is successful. Then the effect of extinction is known as the disappearance of a previously learned behavior when the behavior is not reinforced. However, the term extinction is mainly associated with operant conditioning as well as respondent conditioning which is:

They were subjected to gears or buttons and scheduled reinforcement. The experiment in this chapter deals with a box of rats he receives from one of his colleagues. He wanted to see if he could use those rats to see if he could train them using positive reinforcement. He wanted to see if hungry rats placed in a box could learn to press a lever if they were rewarded with food. The box had a lever on the side that the rats would eventually find and accidentally knock or

Specifically, how might a reinforcer assessment have been relevant to this? (pg. 8) The reason why the reinforcement procedure did work might have to do with the lack of preference assessment of reinforcer because if a preference assessment was conducted, the frequency of the response will increase. I also think that the reinforcement procedure didn’t work because the organism might be satiated to the reinforcer.

Reinforcement is the main contributing factor in operant conditioning. There is more than one way to go about establishing reinforcement, if a delay occurs between the response and the reinforcement the response may not become strengthened. It is likely that if the reinforcement occurs immediately after the response that there will be a definite strengthening of the response. Continuous reinforcement is when reinforcement occurs at every instance of the desired response. Intermittent reinforcement occurs when a response is reinforced some of the time. The different schedules of reinforcement influence patterns of response. Intermittent schedules offer greater resistance to extinction than continuous schedules.

What is it like to be a barn rat? A barn rat is probably a term that you have never

PURPOSE: The purpose of this experiment is to encourage discrimination in rat #4, to measure how the rat distinguishes between pressing the lever when a light is on, and when it is off. Discrimination is the tendency for behavior to occur in situations that are very similar to the one in which the behavior was learned, but not in situations that differ from it. Therefore, as the lamp light was on while the rat was learning to press the lever in previous experiments, the tendency for the rat to discriminate when the light is on, or off, will be measured in this experiment.

A researcher named Burrhus Frederic Skinner thought he would develop the idea of operant conditioning. He suggested than we act in regard to consequences (reward or punishment) in which we actively learn. He suggested there are 3 types of these consequences of behavior; positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement and punishment. Positive reinforcement is receiving a reward for acting in a certain way. An example of this could be getting a school prize for performing well in your exams, because of the reinforcement of the prize, the student will try to perform well every time. Negative reinforcement occurs when we act in a way that avoids an unpleasant consequence (e.g. not being late to a meeting because you do not want to be perceived as rude). Punishment is an unpleasant consequence that comes from the way we act. For example, gaining a detention for arriving late to lessons. Punishment decreases like probability that behaviour is likely to be repeated. Whereas, in positive and negative reinforcement the chances are you will repeat the behaviour. Skinner’s conducted research in the form of a lab experiment. He used a hungry rat that was placed in a cage that had been especially developed for the purpose of the study and was named Skinner’s box. In the cage was a button and a food dispenser. When the rat pressed the button food would appear in the dispenser. The animal soon learned that

A virtual rat, Sniffy, was used for this experiment. Sniffy the Virtual Rat, Pro Version 3.0 allows for the demonstration of Pavlovian and operant conditioning of a virtual rat. Tom Alloway, Greg Wilson, and Jeff Graham, authors of Sniffy the Virtual Rat designed this program to be an affordable alternative for students to gain “access to the main phenomena of classical and operant conditioning that courses on the psychology of learning typically discuss” (Jakubow, 2007). The program allows for simulations for Pavlovian conditioning such as acquisition, extinction, spontaneous recovery, stimulus-intensity effects, compound conditioning, blocking, overshadowing, overexpectation, inhibition, sensory preconditioning,

I chose to investigate intermittent schedule of reinforcement because I predict a relationship between intermittent schedules of reinforcement and why individuals stay in abusive relationships. As I was exploring Sniffy, the virtual rat, I have realized that we are able to punish Sniffy for pressing the bar. After realizing that, I ran three quick trials as a part of an operant conditioning experiment. At first, I put Sniffy on a continuous schedule and conditioned him to press the bar every time he wanted food. Secondly, I put him on an extinction schedule, and punished him for each bar press. In time, Sniffy demonstrated a gradual decrease in the association between sound and food. Before extinction could fully occur, lastly, I put Sniffy

In the first chapter of her novel, Opening Skinner’s Box, Lauren Slater introduces B.F. Skinner, a neo-behaviorist who believed heavily in the power of reinforcement. He is most famous for his “Skinner boxes”, in which he would reward a rat with food whenever they accidentally pressed down on a lever. After a while, the rats would intentionally step of the levers, yet Skinner would alter the rate in which they received a reward for it, sometimes removing the incentives altogether. Skinner’s most significant discovery came from “variable schedules of reinforcement”, in which he intermittently rewarded the rats, where they would press the level but often walk away with nothing. By doing this, Skinner

The experiment lasted 15 consecutive days. During the experiment, the rats were placed into 12 identical operative chambers which was used for all behavioral training and testing. Each chamber had an automatic retractable lever

When your houseboat is invaded by ship rats, it’s fun to refer to the rodents using pirate lingo. Unfortunately, that’s where the fun ends. When ship rats stow away on your boat, they put the safety of everyone on board at risk. Here are three reasons to send those no-good ship rats sailing away today.

Operant conditioning developed by Skinner is one of the learning methods according to which the likelihood of behavior is increased or decreased by the use of reinforcement or punishment. In case of positive reinforcement a certain behavior becomes stronger by the effect of experiencing some positive condition. In case of negative reinforcement a certain behavior becomes stronger by the outcome of stopping or staying away from some negative condition. In case of extinction a certain behavior is becomes weaker by the outcome of avoiding to experiencing some positive condition or stopping some negative condition.

In this test the chemical being tested if force fed to rats or mice in small amounts until the dosage is in excess. This is continued until at least 50% of the test subjects die. Although the test rodent may not die right away, it may experience seizures and internal damage. This test is considered to be the most cruel of the tests and can only determine how much of a chemical substance is needed to kill a small animal not a human being.