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Virtual rat roams college classrooms
May 30, 1996
Web posted at: 10:25 p.m. EDTFrom Correspondent Ann Kellan
TORONTO (CNN) -- What looks like a rat and acts like a rat but does not smell like a rat? "Sniffy" the virtual rat is the answer for some college psychology students.
"Sniffy" is a computer program designed for students who do not want to get personal with the yellow-toothed creatures and college administrators who do not want the hassle and expense of caring for the living, breathing animals.
Rats have been used in college psychology courses for years to teach the fundamentals of animal and human behavior.
Rats placed in controlled environments, like the Skinner Box, named for inventor B.F. Skinner, teach students concepts like operant conditioning. The operant conditioning experiment in the Skinner Box suggests that animals and people learn certain behaviors through a system of reward and punishment. "Sniffy" is designed to mimic a real rat in a Skinner Box.
To create "Sniffy," professors and researchers studied rat movements, noting every scratch and sniff. They calculated that a live rat has about 80 individual moves. About 30 of the rat's signature moves were used for "Sniffy."
Next, the team that built "Sniffy" had to analyze how a rat learns, and then supply the program with artificial rat intelligence. After several months of deconstructing rat intelligence, they were able to devise a trainable electronic rodent.
In the classroom, teams of students attempt to teach "Sniffy" to exhibit a certain behavior and then eat cheese as a reward. It generally takes novice rat trainers between 40 minutes and an hour to get the virtual rat doing what they want. (723K QuickTime movie)
Students say they enjoy the interactive nature of the program. They claim that there is somewhat of an emotional investment involved in getting "Sniffy" to follow orders and take rewards.
His creators admit that "Sniffy" is not as smart as a real rat, but he is close enough, especially considering that he is easier to work with and train and is always hungry.
The "Sniffy" program is only meant to teach first-year psychology students simple response conditioning, so keeping the program simple was not a drawback.
But the virtual rat's creators are already working on a more realistic version. Developers are videotaping images of real rats and pasting them into the virtual world as the embodiment of the experimental rat.
Once the researchers, programmers and artists are finished with their work, a sequel to "Sniffy" should be scampering into a psychology class near you.
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