CyberRat Product
Information
What is
CyberRat?
-
CyberRat is a fully interactive and responsive digital
video presentation
of a real laboratory animal. CyberRat provides a database containing over
1,600 behavioral video clips, all seamlessly played back in unique
sequences using stochastic algorithms. Student record keeping and data
archives are maintained on our own internet servers to give instructors
easy access to student progress summaries-- anywhere, anytime!
For examples of CyberRat assignments and how they relate to Learning Course goals, please feel free to read:
Ray, R. D. and Miragli, K. M. (2011). A Sample of CyberRat and Other Experiments: Their Pedagogical Functions in a Learning Course. Journal of Behavioral and Neuroscience Research. 9(2), 44-61.
Why CyberRat is Realistic Beyond All Expectations!
Gross-motor activity
habituates to the novelty of an animal being placed
into the chamber during pre-conditioning habituation
sessions.
Pre-session water deprivation levels have realistic
effects on performance.
Water satiation occurs naturally within sessions
involving high-density use of
reinforcements. CyberRat allows the use of "successive
approximation" training
techniques for shaping many new behaviors, including
some--like bar
pressing--that will almost never occur unless you shape
them. Prior to
shaping, magazine train subjects to respond to
conditioned reinforcement
sounds associated with primary "water" reinforcement
delivery. Intermittent
schedules of reinforcement, whetherinterval or ratio
create standard
response rate patterns. Schedule densities result in
realistic rate
differences and you may even experience "ratio strain" if
you lean a schedule
too quickly! Here's just one comparative example of two live animals reaching satiation across a 60 min session vs. a single CyberRat equivalent session:
Click to enlarge
