SNIFFY THE RAT

Sniffy the Rat

Sniffy the Rat

Introduction

Studying the behaviors of animals has been great importance to many psychologists. By studying animal behaviors, researchers can determine what influences them, whether it is their surrounding environment, reinforcements or stimuli. A very famous psychologist, Burghs Frederic Skinner enjoyed studying animal behaviors. Skinner believed that any response that is followed by a reinforcing stimulus tends to be repeated. He also says that to modify behavior, one merely has to find something that is reinforcing for the animal whose behaviors one wishes to modify. Skinner explains this in his Skinner box studies. A Skinner box refers to an experimental test chamber that consists of a grid floor, lever, light and food cup.

Mainly used to study operant conditioning, which refers to increasing the rate at which a response occurs. These studies involve rats and observing the rat in the Skinner box. The rat receives food pellets through the feeder which is accompanied by a clicking noise. Skinner magazine trained the rat which involves training the animal to approach the food cup when it hears the clicking noise and/or seeing the food come out of the food cup. This noise is then associated with the food. After several trials of this, the rat left to bar press by itself, and when the rat does bar press, this response is reinforced with food which tends to be repeated. The more times this occurs, the higher the probability the response will occur again.

To shape an animal, the experimenter reinforced rats' behavior when it's close to the feeder and therefore, the rat tends to stay close to the feeder because of being reinforced. Shaping occurs when the rat bar presses on its own. This is done by successive approximation which is the response the rat makes is very similar to the response the experimenter wants to reinforce. These trials occur through acquisition trials. This is the process of gaining new information from one's observations (Zastrow, 2010).

What is Sniffy?

Sniffy is a term for virtual rat also known as Sniffy Pro and Sniffy Pro for Windows. It is computer software to teach psychology of learning which stimulates a rat in an operant box. It can be used to run experiments, classical and operant conditioning. It is used as an alternative with real rat, which use can be expensive and unethical. It isn't expensive and can stimulate many classical and operant conditionings. It provides a simple point and click user interface. It can be used as a tool for lecture, home assignment and writing a research report. It can be transferred in the form of spreadsheet and statistical-analysis. It provides the basics of learning and animal experimentation.

Classical/Operant Conditioning Experiments

Conditioning is the access of special patterns of behavior in the presence well-defined stimuli. Both the conditionings, i.e. operant and classical are basic types of learning. The subject associates behavior with a specific result. Classical is the form of learning where an organism learns to transfer a natural response from one stimulus to another, which ...