Sniffy the Virtual Rat: Version 4.5 Book

Now you can reinvent the lab experience without using live animals! Sniffy, an incredibly realistic software package developed by psychology researchers Lester Krames, Jeff Graham, and Tom Alloway at University of Toronto, provides a virtual rat laboratory environment. And Sniffy is published by Brooks/Cole for an unbelievably low list price of 40.50! Sniffy The Virtual Rat is a popular, affordable program for Macintosh (published) or Windows (due January 1996), which allows you to explore the principles of shaping and partial reinforcement in operant conditioning using a virtual rat named Sniffy. You'll learn by doing--conditioning your own rat--and you'll receive many of the benefits of true animal experimentation with none of the drawbacks associated with using real animals. The Sniffy software comes packaged in the back inside cover of a brief, hands-on Student Lab Manual (120 pp.) that walks you through the steps you'll follow as you condition Sniffy to perform up to 15 behaviors. Sniffy's On-line help is also available to you as you work through Sniffy's repertoire of conditioning behaviors. But don't just take our word for it! Here's what the ECONOMIST had to say in a recent review about Sniffy. Some student have qualms about experimenting with animals in their science classes; some teachers have qualms about asking them to. People who may have no objection to the use of animals for genuine research find their suffering and sacrifice on a purely pedagogical altar harder to stomach...Now there is a rat-friendly alternative: Sniffy, a digital rodent programmed by researchers at the University of Toronto...Sniffy mimics a caged rat. Starting with Sniffy pacing around its barren virtual box, the student gradually trains the rat to press a bar above a food dispenser. Students seem to get the same sort of insights out of the screen version as they do out of the live one...So addictive is this training procedure that Sniffy's creators have organized contRead More