Bring the Theories of Learning to Life

Instructors praise Sniffy, a realistic digital rat in an operant chamber (Skinner Box), for its ability to give students hands-on experience in setting up and conducting experiments that demonstrate the phenomena of classical and operant conditioning.

Students begin by training Sniffy to fear a sound or light or to press a bar to obtain food. Then they progress to studies of more complex learning phenomena. Throughout each exercise, a series of "Mind Windows" enables students to visualize how Sniffy's experiences in the chamber produce the psychological changes that their textbooks discuss and how these changes affect Sniffy’s behavior.

Available on a cross-platform CD-ROM, Sniffy comes with a Lab Manual that provides background information and walks students through the steps necessary to set up learning experiments. Students can also print or e-mail their results, so that Sniffy can become part of students' homework assignments and term papers.

Steps for using this site:

The Sniffy, the Virtual Rat, home page has 10 menu options on the left-hand side of the screen. You are advised to progress through the menus in order from top to bottom, unless you know specifically what you are looking for.

• Read the Main and About Sniffy pages to get an introduction on how to use Sniffy is to teach the psychology of learning.
• Run the Tutorial (takes about 5 minutes for each of 6 projects) to see how to operate the program to run the learning experiments. Run the OVERVIEW first and then proceed through each of the Projects.
• Read the Manual Contents to see the range of exercises possible and the major phenomena simulated by the program.
• We have chosen 5 major exercises (as detailed in the Tutor) which you can try out using the Demo software. Please note the Demo runs for a limited time and does not allow you to save files.
• Read the Exercises pages, and print a hard copy so that you can have them beside you while you run the Demo.
• Use the Download menu to select the version of Sniffy Pro that you want to use on your own computer. Do the Tutorial first so that you know how to run the Demo!!!
• Double-click the Demo installer, and follow the instructions.
• Open the Sniffy Pro Demo folder and double-click the Sniffy Pro Demo icon (or in Windows look in the Programs section of the START menu, and select Sniffy Pro Demo).
• For the next 20 days you can try out these exercises and exercises of your own design!

Created by
Tom Alloway, Greg Wilson, Jeff Graham