Shaping Nala Part 2-5

Goal: Continue to shape Nala until she is pressing the bar on her own.

Procedure: Over the next two sessions, I continued with the same procedure from the previous shaping session. I rewarded Nala when she was near the bar. I then rewarded Nala when she touched/bit/sniffed the bar. 

Results: Nala did not press the bar at all during these two training days. Nala would be interested in the corner with the bar in it for about the first 10 minutes of the session. After the first 10 minutes, Nala seemed disinterested in the food pellets. She found the front left corner of the box to be very interesting and would stay in the corner sniffing for most of the remaining time. This continued for the next three training sessions. 

Discussion: It seems like Nala is not interested in the food pellets. After the first few minutes, Nala did not go to the hopper to get the pellet out. She would go to the opening and sniff around without eating the pellet. I would reinforce her for another behavior and the pellets would pile up because she was not eating. I think that I may need to reduce the amount of food that she is eating. Her weight has stayed within 5 grams of her target weight (199 g). However, the target weight is 90% of her body weight. I may need to try to get Nala to 85% of her body weight in order for the pellets to become reinforcing. The shaping has been more difficult than I imagined it would be after reading the book and the discussion we had in class. I thought that Nala would be more focused and that if I was reinforcing her she would catch on. Actually putting the tools that we learned into action is more difficult than it sounds.