Final Day of Extinction

Today, we began the last day of extinction at 3:41 pm. To reiterate, extinction is the gradual decline of behavior after ceasing reinforcement. I noticed that it took Fi-B some time to make her way to the bar to continue the previous behavior. She did attempt the behavior and had allotted 57 presses in under 4 minutes. Then after 9 and a half minutes, she had 127 presses. However, none of this behavior was reinforced. Since she was not being reinforced, Fi-B continued to get frustrated in the operant box. She had more time to do activities such as, sniffing the particularly appealing left corner, jumping, standing on her hind legs (this was a new one), and attacking the front window. At one point, she consistently pushed the bar for 20 seconds. If she were human, I would attribute this to her thinking that the bar was broken, but that it would be fixed if she continued to push it. This extinction session went better than the last with fewer extinction bursts.

Below you will find a video taken the last day of extinction. You can see that Fi-B is doing other activities in the operant box. However, at 26 seconds, you see her get frustrated with the bar because she isn't receiving a food pellet for her presses.

(Above is the cumulative record for our final extinction day. You can see one extinction burst around 20 minutes.)