Assignment 1: Adaptation, Magazine Training, Shaping, & CRF zName

Apparatus

General Procedure z“A Sprague-Dawley albino rat was weighed, transported to test room, and placed in the operant chamber.” zEtc…

Adaptation Phase Habituation to stimuli in a novel environment.

Purpose of Adaptation Phase zNovel environments tend to elicit fear or excessive exploratory behavior in rats. The adaptation phase is needed to allow the animals to habituate to the chamber. Any fear or excessive exploratory behavior that the animals display should decrease(i.e., habituate) with sufficient exposure to the operant chamber.

Adaptation Procedure zThe rat was allowed to explore the chamber for 10 minutes. zThe location of the rat was recorded every 10 seconds. (note: in your final paper you will need to explicitly state how you determined the rat’s location) zEtc.. Day 1

Figure 1 Figure 1 shows that the rat explored all areas of the lower chamber during the first 5 minutes, but by the last 3 minutes the rat remained primarily in one area of the chamber (area C). This pattern of behavior change suggests that there was habituation of exploratory behavior.

Magazine Training Phase zHabituation to the click of the magazine and click-food associations

Summary & Conclusions