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ABSTRACT: This commentary on the development of CyberRat points out that 1) CyberRat is an excellent educational alternative to a live rat in cases where instruction of basic operant conditioning principles cannot be carried out with live animals due to a lack of laboratory facilities, 2) CyberRat simulates a live rat very nicely as long as one expects no more than demonstrations of basic operant behavior principles (i.e., CyberRat is not suited for research into operant behavior), 3) neither a Kantorian interbehavioral analysis nor a Skinnerian functional analysis is sufficient for CyberRat to work, yet a combination of both types of analysis is in fact necessary for CyberRat to emit an adequate and realistic flow of operant behavior interceded by other (non-reinforced) behavior, 4) CyberRat has developed to the point where it certainly provides a near perfect illusion of being a single animal that quite realistically demonstrates basic operant conditioning phenomena embedded in a flow of natural behaviors.
Key words: CyberRat, Kantor, Skinner, behavioral interdependence, computer simulation, operant behavior
Roger Ray (2011/2012) deserves considerable credit for developing CyberRat, which provides an excellent demonstration of basic principles of operant conditioning in a close-to-real video and data format. Operant behavior (lever pressing) can be shaped with CyberRat and maintained under different schedules of reinforcement and extinguished as well as put under discriminative control. CyberRat is highly interactive as the user can modify the rat's behavior via controls that can be clicked on the computer screen (e.g., reinforcer delivery and discriminative stimulus on/off). In addition, the operant behavior changes are documented visually in traditional formats such as cumulative records of bar pressing and tabulated averages of response rates. As such, CyberRat is an excellent educational alternative to a live rat in cases where instruction of basic operant conditioning principles cannot be carried out with live animals due to a lack of laboratory facilities. In addition to educating about traditional findings from operant conditioning experiments, CyberRat also illustrates that operant behavior occurs not in isolation but embedded within a stream of additional natural non-reinforced behaviors such as grooming, exploring the chamber, sniffing at the lever, visiting the food tray, etc. Indeed, CyberRat is a compilation of actual video of three live rats, and the viewing experience is,...