Week 4: Girls Just Want To Have Fun

Girls, they want to have fun.

Oh girls just want to have fun.

They want to have fun!

- Cyndi Lauper

YES! The girls just want to have fun. I'd say SMARTA is pretty fun for Celeste, Pandora, Pyxis, and Carme! And for some reason, Cyndi reminded me of the red ruffed lemurs.

This week I got to work with 2 new red ruffed lemurs. Pandora and her one-year old daughter Celeste joins the rotation to be part of my SMARTA color vision study. Celeste was very excited on her first day and her enthusiasm continues to the second day. She is currently my youngest participant. Celeste's mother, Pandora, was equally enthusiastic to participate in the study. Both had participated for two days and will continue their sessions next week.

Caught Celeste mid chewing craisins. Looks like she's very excited.

Pandora in her red (green? dum dum dum) perch.

Pyxis continues to be cautious around SMARTA and gets easily distracted by her mate and son. Pyxis is a stark contrast from Pandora (and Celeste) where they are not distracted by the males and instead focus intently on SMARTA. Though at the end of the week,  Pyxis started to approach SMARTA immediately when the sessions start. Currently, we are only reinforcing her to sit in front of SMARTA so she'll station perfectly in front of SMARTA before we start reinforcing her to look at the screen. Towards the end of the week, Pyxis has started to pay attention to the SMARTA screen. These are crucial small details that we have to pay attention to so that we are not reinforcing bad or superstitious behavior when using SMARTA. This is Pyxis's second week and even though she doesn't share the same enthusiasm as Pandora and Celeste, it is very common for animals to be apprehensive to novel objects (especially a towering object that makes noise). Luckily, Pyxis is whistle trained (meaning she know what a whistle cue means) so it is very easy to reinforce her and that she probably knows she is doing something right when she hears the whistle. Craisins help a lot too ;)

Pyxis starting to pay attention to the tablet on SMARTA

Carme continues to have at least 2 sessions per week since I came back to Duke Lemur Center. We addressed her left hand preference and her tendency to touch the left square at the beginning of each trial regardless of what color the square is. We don't know if she is has trouble using her left hand to reach to right square or if it's a superstitious behavior. Over the past few weeks, she had progressed tremendously and we feel like she finally "got it" this week. We ran a few testing trials with her and I think we are comfortable enough to say that she had graduated from training to fully automated testing. She should be on testing sessions next week.

Carme looking intently at the red square

Whistle Training with Carme

I talked about bridging here, where a bridge is a stimulus that "bridges" a correct response to a reinforcement (usually a food reward) and is almost often an auditory stimulus such as the sound of a whistle, clicker or praises (Good girl!). A bridge is usually an anticipation of something positive going to happen and bridging tells an animal that they did the desired behavior and a reward is on its way.

Carme touching the red square on SMARTA

At the beginning of this study, we thought that the sound of the conveyer belt inside SMARTA is a good bridge for the ruffed lemurs. We soon learn that it wasn't the case, and that they are probably not paying attention to the sound of the conveyer belt or that they might need to be trained to recognize that the sound of the conveyer belt is a bridge.

As most ruffed lemurs at the Duke Lemur Center are whistle-trained, we have incorporated the whistle as a bridge when we train them to use SMARTA. Here's a short video of Carme doing a red and gray discrimination task. Notice that the moment she touches the red square, a whistle is used to bridge her correct behavior to a craisin that falls off the chute a few seconds later.


Imagine without the whistle. Carme touches the red square and looks to the left. A craisin falls off the chute. The duration between touching the red box and looking to the left only takes a few seconds but that is also how long it takes for SMARTA to dispense a food reward. Carme might then associate looking to the left with a food reward, or any other behaviors she did after touching the red square.

Another positive aspect of using a whistle as a bridge is that we can tell the lemur almost instantaneously that they did a desired behavior as opposed to just giving them a food reward. Without a bridge, it might take more time for a lemur to learn the correct behavior or worse, associating an incorrect behavior with a food reward.

Week 2: MORE Pyxis and Carme

This week I worked with Pyxis and Carme again. Currently they are the only two red ruffed lemurs that I am working with but once Carme has been trained, we will train more female lemurs. I hope that this birth cycle brings more female babies. Would be nice to have a large sample to continue as my PhD project.

Pyxis being reinforced to pay attention to the touch screen.

Pyxis is starting to learn that the big black box with a red screen is giving her treats but she hasn't quite associate the apparatus with food reward just yet. We have to rapidly reinforce her (giving her a lot of treats) when she is in front of SMARTA so she learns that the black box is giving her food rewards but it is imperative that she stays in front of SMARTA for that to happen. It may take well over a few weeks for her to make that connection, but in due time she will learn to associate SMARTA with food reward and mentally stimulating activities (think video games!).

Carme continues to be trained that she needs to touch the red square to get a food reward. She associates touching a square for food reward but still hasn't make the connection of touching the red square for food reward. She is close though as most of the time, her "incorrect" choices are just her trying to lean on the screen (her initial touch) and then touching the red square. Usually when she lean on the screen, she is touching the side of the screen with the incorrect choice. Because SMARTA is programmed to react to the initial touch, it will register as her "choice" thus resulting in a lot of incorrect choices should we run the test trials with her right now.

We are also training her that she can lean on SMARTA but she'll have to touch the acrylic part (shell) of SMARTA. Most of our sessions now are slowly approximating her from touching the middle of the screen to moving towards the middle of the square so that she knows she has to deliberately touch a square to make a choice and not just wily nilly touching the screen for food reward. We think it'll take another week or so before she is ready for testing.

Carme touching the center of the touchscreen but
some part of her hand is in the red square.

Carme touching the center of the red square. We are slowly trying to approximate
her from touching the middle of touchscreen (pictured above) to touching the center of the square.

I will be working with Pyxis and Carme again next week. On Monday, we will have a routine animal welfare observation. I think this is an annual routine, which I had one last year. It's good to know that Duke cares about the welfare of animals used in research.

Week 1: Carme & Pyxis

I worked with Carme on Tuesday and Thursday. She definitely understands that she needs to touch the screen, nay, she needs to touch a square for a reward to dispense. We don't know if she fully understands that she needs to touch the red square though. We will continue to train her so that she understands that needs to touch the red square for a food reward. We are also training her that her initial touch on the screen is her discrimination task "choice". Actually, let me back up a little. Carme usually stations in front of SMARTA and would put one of her hand on SMARTA as support and then the other to make her discrimination task "choice". As you can imagine, this pose a problem when her hand is on the screen; she would immediately get a trial correct or incorrect because her hand is on where the stimulus will appear. We wrapped up with her on Thursday and are quite confident that it'll take a few more sessions with her before she finally understands her task.

Carme using her hand to support herself on the SMARTA when doing discrimination tasks.

I only got to work with Pyxis on Wednesday. This is her first session with SMARTA so what we did was reinforced her when she gets close to SMARTA to investigate or when she looks at the screen. We interspersedly alternate a blank screen and a screen that is fully red to elicit attention from her. We do this to all the lemurs we train because we want them to know that this black box has a screen that will display stimuli. How easy this information is processed by the lemurs is debatable but one thing is for sure, using a well timed positive reinforcement to guide them through a task is imperative.

Oh I have a new part time research assistant and my full time research assistant will be here in March. Happy days!

North Carolina State Of Mind

I'm baaaaaaaack!! I took a long vacation from Duke Lemur Center to go back to NYC while my assistant continued my study until December last year. I'm back to continue my study with my last 3 lemurs. Carme, the red ruffed lemur is almost done. She just needs to finish her Phase 2 testing trials, which I think will be done before March.

I have a new research assistant that will be joining me early in March and we will be training Pandora and Pyxis to use SMARTA before running the trials. I am hopefully that these 2 lemurs will cooperate because they have done cognitive research before. Although, if experience had taught me anything, I probably shouldn't expect anything. Ha!

Today is my first day back at DLC but I didn't get to work with any animals. Instead, I spent most of my time fixing and servicing my apparatus. Unfortunately, I found out that one of my electronics for my apparatus broke! I had to order the part ASAP but chances are, I probably won't be able to work with the lemurs tomorrow. It's supposed to snow tomorrow and Monday as well, and from what I heard, usually roads are pretty treacherous this part of the country after it snowed. So, I probably won't be able to work with the lemurs at least until next Tuesday. Bummer! Oh well, at least I am all settled and comfortable at my hotel. More time to spend with my friends and my lil girl Luna.

Special shout out to JetBlue and their Jet Paws program. I brought Luna with me and she had a very pleasant flight out of JFK to RDU. If you are flying with a small dog, I'd suggest flying with JetBlue.