Operant Conditioning
Final Scientific Project Requirement Details
IV(1) – Choose from one of the following combinations of schedules of reinforcements:
a) FI, FR, VI, VR
b) Fixed versus Variable schedules of reinforcement (MY CHOICE)
c) Interval versus Ratio schedules
IV(2) – Overtraining time ( 0, middle, high)
DV – Resistance to extinction
Overall purpose – To determine how one IV interacts with the other.
Hints:
SNIFFY has a limited lifetime; you may need to be efficient in your basic training sessions so that you can finish everything you need to do before he goes to sleep for good.
You will probably need to measure the time each step of your experiment takes so that you can plan the lengths of the IV(2) levels.
You will need to calculate group means along with appropriate error bars (variability) for your main effects and interactions – this means you will need to collect more than one measurement for each group.
Finally, you will probably find it necessary to repeat certain parts of your experiment until you get the kinks worked out – don’t be shy about starting over a few times to get it “right”.
Before starting the experiment make sure sniffy is magazine trained under the Operant Conditioning Experiment
STEP 1: Magazine trained sniffy to bar press, at a 5 level increment (5, 10, 15, 20, 25….50) and 10 minutes interval gradually elevate the Fixed Ratio to 25(FR-50) and also gradually elevate the Variable Ratio to 25 (VR-50). Then, to find the result for the hypothesis below: Over-train (IV 2) the virtual rat at 3 levels, test the hypothesis by conducting an experiment for IV 1: Fixed versus Variable schedules at each level of IV 2 (0, med, high) to extinguish the behavior of bar pressing.
HYPOTHESIS: If Sniffy (the virtual rat) have been extinguished once, it is possible to extinguish twice.
Independent Variable (IV) 1: Fixed versus Variable schedules of re-enforcement
Independent Variable (IV) 2: Overtraining Time (3 Levels) levels starts at (0, MED, HIGH)
Dependent Variable (DV): Resistance to extinction
INTRODUCTION: Make sure it covers the operational definition of what is being measured. Cite only empirical articles from peer-reviewed journals (No books)
METHOD: Statistical Analysis (One way T-Test analysis of invariance)
RESULTS: Transfer the accumulative record results from Sniffy the Virtual Rat Version 3.0 into SPSS or ANOVA to get the statistical differences and correlation between the IV. Create a graph with error bar of the result and the significant difference between IV1 and IV2
Discussion: Discuss the findings
Conclusions: Bring the research into a conclusion