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Review the research conducted to establish CyberRat's simulational realism

and Contribute to our developing database

to make it even more realistic!

Realistic as Possible.
 

The Behavioral Systems Dynamics research which inspired the development of the original CyberRat V 1.0 were first introduced by Ray and Brown (1975) and Ray and Ray (1976). These and subsequent projects were fully summarized in an integrative article published by Ray and Delprato (1989). CyberRat itself was an elaboration of a cartoon simulation of a trainable monkey summarized in Ray (1992) and in Ray and Mitchell (1992); while the first video-rat "proof-of-concept" was drafted by Ray in 1993. From these humble beginnings the first commercial-level development of CyberRat, programmed by Victor Begiashvili, began in 1993. In March, 1996, V1.0 was introduced to the consumer via Brown and Benchmark Publishers. The subsequent sale of Brown and Benchmark, along with other Times-Mirror Higher Education Publishing Group companies, to McGraw-Hill in 1996 transferred distribution rights to McGraw-Hill. Distribution rights were returned to the developing company, (AI)², Inc. in late 1999. When development started on CyberRat, Version 2.0 in January, 2001, all sales activity of CyberRat were frozen until the new version could be completed. The new version (V2.0) of CyberRat now includes a total rewrite of all algorithms and matrixes, as well as a total retaping/editing of new video footage.

The new CyberRat is being founded upon three fudamental sets of models: 1) behavioral kinematics measured by conditional probability matricies and represented by corresponding video clips of each behavioral category; 2) transitional functions suitable for modeling gradual evolutions from existing matricies to new ones; and 3) "switching" functions allowing for situationally specific matrix selection/translation dependent upon appropriate setting functions, including establishing (deprivation/satiation) and discriminative training (S+/S-) operations. A primary purpose of this sub-site is to share with potential adopters and the academic community at large the specific empirical research and critiques used to define the new CyberRat's parameters for simulations. A second purpose of the site is to invite submissions by the behavioral research community at large any-and-all data which might help us to refine and improve CyberRat's realism in simulating fundamental behavioral dynamics under various training and reinforcement scheduling conditions. We are limiting the scope of our efforts to singular manipulandum and simple schedules, but want to offer the most realistic effects possible for those conditions we are attempting to simulate.

Feedback from users of CyberRat V1.0 was critical in defining our total commitment to rewriting and retaping the new CyberRat V2.0. For example, Ray (1996) reported that CyberRat V1.0 had a limited repertoire/sample-of-video-clips for playback of bar-press variations. More importantly each of the several clips in this sample incorporated not only the bar press itself, but also a subsequent visitation to the water reservoir. As Paul Brandon graciously pointed out originally (unfortunately too late for us to correct it), this resulted in a critical artificiality of the V1.0 CyberRat simulations on two important fronts: 1) no bar-press response "runs" involving bar pressing were possible wherein only successive bar presses occurred without reservoir visitations; and 2) maximum bar-press response rates were kept significantly and artificially low as a result of the excessive durations of our representative video clips of bar pressing (since visitations to reservoir were included) elongating the "duration" of each occurrence (translating into artificially long IRTs). The minimum duration of clips was between 3-4 seconds, and thus the minimum IRT reflected this parameter.

A second design-imposed artificiality in CyberRat V1.0 was pointed out by Richard Malott during our many demonstration at APA from the Brown and Benchmark display booth. After successfully magazine training CyberRat, the animal rarely responded within a short latency to shift from ongoing behaviors to the natural "run to the water reservoire" typical of a well established elicitational change in behavior (c.f., Ray and Brown, 1976). Unfortunately the fact that video clips are used that must "play out" to their "natural" transition-to-next-behavior successive clips, and the fact that some of these are relatively long (a matter of a few seconds), translates into an unsolvable dilemma within the confines of reasonable amounts of source video footage. This this criticism will apply to CyberRat V 2.0 as well. Nevertheless, we were mindful of the effect and made every effort to minimize it.

We have tried our best to correct many such obvious errors in V2.0 and have thus relied much more heavily on empirical probes and published data to guide our latest efforts. The following pages share those efforts explicitly with the scientific community and invite feedback, conversation, and data submissions from our potential user base and/or all other interested parties to help us fill in the numerous missing pieces we have discovered in our searches of extant literature. Many of these pieces are missing because the literature upon which we have relied is silent on parameter specifications required for guiding realistic simulation and model construction. We thus invite any and all to add their knowledge, whether based on shared references or original data, to guide us to our goal of making CyberRat V2.0 as realistic, and thus as useful for simulated laboratory exercises, as is possible given the current limitations of technology and practical (including financial) constraints.

Please keep in mind that V2.0 of CyberRat is still somewhat limited in its aspirations for variety of simulations. We are only targeting realistic simulations of the following experimental conditions in operant chambers where only one manipulandum (a lever) is present:


1. Pre-conditioning Habituation-to-an-Operant-Chamber effects on behavioral system dynamics.
2. New response shaping and existing response probability change processes based on contingency manipulations.
3. Establishing Operations which include:

A. Bar Pressing under AdLib (Satiation) home water availability
B. Bar Pressing following water deprivation scheduling (including "phase-in" effects on response probabilities).
C. Extinction and Spontaneous Recovery following CRF maintenance
D. Stimulus discrimination (sound) attending selective response reinforcement.

4. Simple intermittent reinforcement scheduling effects (both transitions and steady-state patterning) attendant to:

A. CRF (Constant Reinforcement)
B. Fixed Ratio (FR)
C. Fixed Interval (FI)
D. Fixed Temporal (FT) - including superstitous ritual development
E. Variable Ratio (VR)
F. Variable Interval (VI)
G. Variable Temporal
H. Differential Reinforcement of Other Behaviors (DRO)

5. Extinction
6. Leaning across successive parameters of Ratio and Interval schedules
7. Schedule transitions between one simple schedule to another (We especially need lots of input from the community on these!)

With these specific goals in mind, we offer links from each item on this list to a page (where we were able to conduct the research and thus make it available) detailing the data upon which we have based our simulations. Most of our experimental animals used in the above studies were also used for the new video taping, and thus had a variety of (limited/brief) experimental histories that we have assumed had no significant effect on the results herein reported. Click Here to view the exact sequence and time intervals invovled. As noted above, we invite you to please join us in our quest to make CyberRat V2.0 as realistic as possible, thus meeting your most discriminative needs for laboratory teaching without live animals! Thanks for your help and interst--e-mail us whenever you feel inclined.