Last week in ABA lab, my lab partner, Lauren and I, worked on getting our rats better aquainted.  We placed the “baking soda” boxes in the correct position within the wooden box in the animal room and placed both Tinkerbell and Rooth into the box to habituate to the box and the new box platform.  After fall break we will begin the hard work on our experiment and these beginning steps are very important to the success of our experiment.  Both Tink and Rooth enjoyed exploring the new platform and freely hopped on and off of the boxes.  It is definitely going to be a challenge to condition Tinkerbell to ring the bell at the top of the platform with Rooth playfully running from corner to corner.  Once our new box is completed, I expect some changes in both the rats, as the smells from the ”well used” animal room box will be gone. Today we begin our conditioning trials for our experiment.