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!
Conducting Experiments in
CyberRat
- 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!
