Downtown CyberRat Lab 1 Report

Download the Microsoft Word form that you’ll use to prepare this assignment by clicking on the CR01.docx link directly above. Save the form on your computer. After you run the session according to the instructions below, answer the questions in the spaces provided on the form. Be sure to save your answers. When you’re ready to submit it, click the title of this assignment (CyberRat 1) to open the ASSIGNMENT INFORMATION page and attach your Microsoft Word document and the three required screenshots in the ASSIGNMENT SUBMISSION section.

OBJECTIVES

• To become familiar with the CyberRat program
• To gain experience with behavioral observation and measurement
• To begin learning about cumulative graphs
• To observe momentary changes in behavioral hierarchies

PREREQUISITE READING

• CyberRat User’s Guide CyberRat User’s Guide – Alternative Formats : Start with Using the Colony (p. 16) and read through Other Graphing Menu Alternatives: Make Graph Snapshot (ends on p. 42)
• How to read a cumulative graph

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Launch the CyberRat program.
2. Click the + icon from the lower-left of the screen and add a rat to your colony that is Naive, no training.
3. Click the Settings tab, then the Reinforcement tab, and under Reinforcement Rules select Habituation. Leave all other settings as they are (hours of water deprivation = 23, amount of reinforcement = .1 ml per drop). For all CyberRat assignments, these two settings will always remain the same.
4. Click the Session Control tab. Under Experimental Session Conditions select Fast Simulation with Video Off. Behind the scenes where you can’t see it, a full 60-minute session will be run but it will only take a few seconds in real time. All sessions are recorded, so after any session has been run, you can watch it in real time by clicking Replay at the top of the screen.
5. Set Session’s Duration to 60 minutes.
6. Start the session by clicking the Experiment tab at the top of the screen.
7. When the session is complete and the program transitions to the graphing screen, click OK to dismiss the pop-up message. Now click the Beh Analysis icon at the top of the screen and then the Beh Examples tab. On the right you’ll see abbreviations for 11 different behaviors. Click on them one at a time and you’ll see two kinds of information for each behavior. The most important is the operational definition of the behavior. These are good examples of how psychologists define behaviors in such a way that they can be measured. You’ll also be able to see all of the instances of these behaviors that your rat performed during this session. If an abbreviation is grayed-out, that means your rat didn’t perform any instances of that behavior.
8. Now click the Beh Probabilities tab. You’ll see a bar graph showing the probabilities of the 11 behaviors in the form of the percentage of time during the session that your rat was engaged in each behavior. Take a screen shot of this graph to submit as part of this assignment.
9. Click the Graphing icon at the top of the screen. In most of your other CyberRat assignments, this is where you’ll inspect the graphs of your rats’ sessions. Click the Graphing icon again, then Graphing Preferences, then Without Pen Resets, then Save. From the menu at the top right, select Grooming. Take a snapshot of this graph by clicking the Graphing icon and Make Graph Snapshot. Also take a snapshot of the graph for Nose Top Front Left. If there were few or no instances of this behavior, try one of the other Nose behaviors. Store these two snapshots on your computer so you can submit them as part of this assignment. While you’re on the Graphing screen, inspect the graphs for some of the other behaviors on the menu.
10. Answer the questions on the downloaded Microsoft Word form.
11. You will use the same rat in CyberRat 2. So until then, don’t do anything more with this rat. You can explore using as many other rats as you wish, but the rat used in CyberRat 1 should not receive any additional experience until CyberRat 2.