Rats and Touchscreens: The SkinnerBox Goes High Tech

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Rats and Touchscreens The Skinner-Box Goes High
Tech

• Mark S. Schmidt,
• Dept.of Psychology and Sociology
• Columbus State University
• Schmidt, M.S. (2000, February). Rats and
  touch-screens The Skinner-box goes high-tech.
  Paper presented at a meeting of the Columbus Area
  Psychological Association, Columbus, GA.

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Touchscreens

• Restaurants
• Information Kiosks
• Cash registers
• Games
• Others?

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Research with Humans

• Cognitive Psychology Research
• Adults, Children and Infants, Older adults
• Large variety of visual stimuli
• Graphics, photos, video clips,
• scanned images, anything that can be saved
• as an image file.
• Accuracy and RT measurements

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Research with Humans

• Spatial contiguity between stimulus and response
• Subject does not have to remember which key goes
  with which stimulus.
• Older adults and children can respond to a large
  image on the screen rather than to a small key on
  a keyboard.

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Research with Humans

• Spatial contiguity between response and
  reinforcement with infants.
• Cartoons, funny faces, animals, etc. can be
  presented on the screen at the place the child
  touches.
• Responses can be recorded with near millisecond
  precision (like keyboards)

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Research with Animals

• In the old days research with primates was done
  with a manually operated test apparatus.
• Ex) The WGTA used by Harry Harlow at the
  University of Wisconsin

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Wisconsin General Test Apparatus (WGTA)
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WGTA

• Experimenter had to position stimuli and record
  responses manually on each trial.
• Had to avoid the Clever Hans effect
• Mirrors often used to see monkeys responses
• Much time and effort required to run a study.

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Research with Pigeons and Rats

• Research with pigeons and rats was done primarily
  with the Skinnerbox invented by B.F. Skinner
• Variety of visual stimuli was very limited.
• Colored lights, simple geometrical shapes on
  pecking keys, etc.
• With rats, responses were lever presses which
  were not contiguous with stimuli.

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Research with Rats

• Studies that needed more complex visual stimuli
  used manually operated apparatus (like WGTA).
• Ex) Karl Lashleys Jumping Stand

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Touchscreens with Animals

• Touchscreens began to be used in the 1980s with
  pigeons and primates
• Infra-red technology
• First and most common technology used.
• Computer screen is fitted with a device that
  directs beams of infrared light across the front
  of the screen.

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• When the animal touches an image on the screen,
  their finger (or beak) breaks the IR beams.
• Computer calculates location of the break and
  converts it into X-Y coordinates

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Capacitive Technology

• Capacitive technology
• First used with primates
• The screen itself is sensitive to touch.
• A small electrical current drains off into the
  finger when the screen is touched.
• Computer calculates the location of the current
  drain and converts into X-Y coordinates

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Capacitive Touchscreens

• Examples of uses with primates
• Orangutans at the National Zoo
• Squirrel monkeys at UGA
• Matching to sample task

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Capacitive TouchScreens

• Cant be used with pigeons because a beak does
  not conduct electricity very well.
• Could it be used with rats?
• Rats paws and noses should conduct electricity
  OK.
• Could rats be trained to touch images on a
  computer screen? Yes.

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Rats and Touchscreens

• Rats can be easily shaped to touch the screen for
  reinforcement (45 mg food pellets.
• They are then trained to go to the back of the
  test box and nose-poke to initiate each trial.
• Nose-poking is a species-typical behavior in rats
  (easily trained).
• Insures that the rat is at the back of the box
  and far from the screen at the start of each
  trial.

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Uses with Rats

• Visual discrimination learning
• Matching to sample (MTS)
• Taps into interference in memory
• Delayed matching to sample (DMTS)
• Taps into working memory functions
• Spatial Learning
• Taps into spatial memory

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Uses with Mice?

• Touch screens have not been used with mice (as
  far as I know).
• Transgenic mice models are being developed for
  several behavioral disorders.
• Ex) Alzheimers Disease - Mouse has been
  developed that has both amyloid plaques in the
  brain and spatial memory deficits.
• Behavior geneticists do not have the background
  to conduct appropriate behavioral tests.
• Are in need of proper behavioral protocols
  including learning and memory tests (APA Monitor,
  current issue)
• Touch screens might be useful