CyberRat: Operant Laboratory Simulations Program

CyberRat (Rattus Cyberneticus) is an interactive and responsive digital video presentation of a real laboratory animal. CyberRat includes a database containing more than 1,600 behavioural video clips, all played back in sequences using stochastic algorithms. Student record keeping and data archives are maintained on the supplier's internet servers to provide instructors with an easy access to student progress summaries. Students can study the behaviour of a real rat placed in the chamber after having been deprived of water in the pre-session. 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 behaviours, including some, like bar pressing, that will almost never occur unless the rat is shaped. Prior to shaping, magazine train subjects to respond to conditioned reinforcement sounds associated with primary "water" reinforcement delivery. Intermittent schedules of reinforcement, whether interval or ratio create standard response rate patterns.