Facilities - The Rat Lab

Jennifer Adkins demonstrates the bonding process with her own rat

The FSU animal laboratory in the Psychology department, aka "the rat lab", is primarily an operant conditioning facility for student use.

There are six Skinner Box work stations that pairs of students share when they take the course, The Experimental Analysis of Behavior. It is a 4 credit laboratory course where students have their own rat, housed in the animal colony, and used to study principles of learning. Emphasis in laboratory assignments is placed on reinforcement, extinction, discrimination learning and schedules of reinforcement.
Aversive procedures, such as electric shock, are not allowed. Other types of learning experiments are conducted using mazes, obstacle courses, and a variety of inventive equipment that the students build themselves.

For more information, contact Dr. Pat Santoro.

More Lab Pictures

Fall 2007 Class

Students compare similarities and differences in appearance of their assigned rats.

Fall 2004 Class

 

Fall 2003 Class