Go to Sniffy
Exploring the Psychology of Learning
One of these programs, Sniffy the Virtual Rat (Alloway, Wilson, & Graham, 2005; hereafter referred to as Sniffy) was initially created in 1991 and has been revised three times. It is marketed as a more affordable way for students to have hands-on access to exercises with classical and operant. Like a real rat in a typical operant chamber, Sniffy can have a drink of water whenever he wants one. In the center of the back wall is the bar (or lever) that you will train Sniffy to press. Below the bar is the hopper into which Sniffy’s food pellets will drop. At the bottom of the screen is the cumulative recorder of Sniffy’s bar presses.
Sniffy the Virtual Rat, is a fun, interactive software program that gives undergraduate students a virtual laboratory experience . . . without all the drawbacks of using a real laboratory rat.
Using Sniffy, students can explore operant and classical by performing experiments that demonstrate most of the major conditioning phenomena discussed in textbooks on the psychology of learning.
There are two versions of Sniffy, the Virtual Rat.
Sniffy Lite demonstrates the most basic phenomena of Operant and Classical conditioning but does not have the complexity and flexibility for advanced learning topics.
Sniffy Pro is a comprehensive simulation of advanced learning phenomena as described in detail in this web site. It has been field tested at several colleges and universities for use in Learning and Animal Behavior courses.
The Sniffy, the Virtual Rat, home page has eight menu options on the left-hand side of the screen. You are advised to progress through the menus in order from top to bottom, unless you know specifically what you are looking for.
Steps for using this site:
- After you have read the Main page, and the About Sniffy page, run the Tutorial (takes about 15 to 20 minutes) to see how to operate the program to run learning experiments. Run the OVERVIEW first and then proceed through each of the three Projects.
- Read the Manual Contents to see the range of exercises possible. We have chosen 3 major exercises (as detailed in the Tutor) which you can try out using the Demo software. Please note the Demo runs for a limited time and does not allow you to save files.
- Read the Exercises pages, and print a hard copy so that you can have them beside you while you run the Demo.
- Use the Download menu to select the version of Sniffy Pro that you want to use on your own computer. Do the Tutorial first so that you know how to run the Demo!!!
- Double-click the Demo installer, and follow the instructions.
- Open the Sniffy Pro Demo folder and double-click the Sniffy Pro Demo icon (or in Windows look in the Programs section of the START menu, and select Sniffy Pro Demo).
- For the next 20 days you can try out these exercises and exercises of your own design!
Sniffy The Virtual Rat Machine
Created by
Tom Alloway, Greg Wilson, Jeff Graham, Lester Krames
Tom Alloway, Greg Wilson, Jeff Graham, Lester Krames
A couple of weeks ago, I had to learn how to train a virtual rat before I could begin making progress on/start training my live rat, Delilah. I magazine trained, shaped, and did a few reinforcement schedules on the virtual rat.
Magazine training involves teaching an animal to associate a neutral stimulus with a secondary stimulus. A secondary stimulus becomes a stimulus through the process of being paired with a primary stimulus. The neutral stimulus was the food magazine. The secondary stimulus was the sound that was made when the food magazine would deliver food.
The Sniffy software graphed Sniffy’s progress and produced cumulative records. Magazine training did not take very long, maybe 10-15 minutes. I had to press the lever to have food delivered and quite enjoyed watching Sniffy run across the operant chamber towards the hopper when he/she heard the noise.
![Sniffy the virtual rat macho Sniffy the virtual rat macho](/uploads/1/1/9/5/119503586/700287543.png)
Shaping took substantially longer to do than magazine training. I spent about 30 minutes to an hour trying to shape the virtual rat. Shaping is where the rat is actually taught to press the lever for food. Sniffy learned fairly quickly, for a computerized rat, that if he/she pressed the bar he/she would get food.
Sniffy The Virtual Rat Classical Conditioning
I do feel more prepared now after seeing an example of how magazine training and shaping are really done. It was good to experience this virtual world first before applying it to a real rat training situation. The training of the computerized rat was probably easier than trying to train a real rat. The computerized rat was very concentrated at the task at hand and I do not think most rats are like that.
I put Sniffy on a VR (variable ratio) 5 schedule. This means that Sniffy was rewarded after every five bar presses. I then went to VR 10 and then VR 20. Then, I played around with other reinforcement schedules. I put Sniffy on a FR (fixed ratio) schedule where she was rewarded every 50 times. I was just thankful there was a way to speed up Sniffy’s progress. That is something you cannot do with a real rat. I did notice that Sniffy was faster at learning the various reinforcement schedules compared to shaping. It was amusing to watch how Sniffy would learn the schedule. Sniffy would press the bar a couple of times and then give up/get frustrated and then would learn after a few tries how many times to push the bar before a reward of food would come.