let's tap into the learning approach now with yet another new study in the syllabus this is on elephant learning by Fagan so as you can see there's this image of an elephant going through a trunk wash routine and this is essentially what the study is going to revolve so the background of the study is it's important to note that in 2011 the Government of Nepal which is where the study will be conducted so the Government of Nepal introduced this initiative this annual tuberculosis testing of captive elephants um initiative where they wanted to try and reduce the transmission of the disease TB TB of course is a very infectious disease which affects the lungs and one of the reasons how it can spread is is poor hygiene poor well-being of elephants and this is where the trunk wash technique is or plays a very vital role to allow not only for the elephants to maintain good hygiene but also to allow for samples to be taken in order to test for TB in these elephants however traditionally the technique that was used was one that was based on the concept of punishment where sharp bamboo sticks called coas were used by the elephant handlers who we refer to as mahouts or mots and these bamboos were often used to try and prod or um softly hit the elephant in order to train them in um to train them or to teach them a certain behavior however this new initiative is focused more on trying to train the elephants through positive reinforcement now what is positive reinforcement this is a very important concept that is part of Operate conditioning which is a form of learning which is crucial to not Justus this study but all three studies of the learning approach so positive reinforcement is like I said a form of Operating Conditioning where a behavior can be taught by rewarding it so in very simple terms positive reinforcement just means rewarding a behavior in order to encourage it if I want students to study for a test every time they do well in the test I may give them one extra Mark or let's say I want them to participate more in class so every time a student participates actively in class I may add one extra Mark in their final exam or their final score so the reward that I'm providing them the extra Mark will will act as a positive reinforcer and that serves as the main motive behind their um desire to engage in the in the particular behavior that I want from them now the same concept can be applied to teach animals certain behaviors the technique used in this study is that of secondary positive reinforcement now this like it says over here is a training technique in which a secondary reinforcer is used initially and Then followed with a primary reinforcer and the spr technique or the spr training is the main technique that is going to be used in this study by Fagan in order to try and teach and train the elephants to engage in a trunk washing technique um that will allow them to maintain their well-being so let's get into and like it says over here the last point this is a technique that has actually been used successfully with other animal species such as pandas antelopes zebras Etc moving into the psychology being investigated just to help us understand the concepts of a positive and uh positive reinforcer Operate conditioning primary secondary reinforcers Operate conditioning like I said is a process of learning through positive reinforcement negative reinforcement and or punishment now this study will be focusing mainly on positive reinforcement which like I said to you is simply rewarding a behavior in order to encourage it now spr looked at both a secondary reinforcer which is provided initially then is followed by a primary reinforcer now a primary reinforcer is a reward that is given that fulfills a basic biological need whereas a secondary reinforcer is a reward that is given but does not cause a natural response of Desiring them but instead the individual learns to desire the these res these rewards sorry so what that simply means is that let's say I want to teach a dog a certain Behavior a new trick the primary reinforcer is a reward that the dog desires that fulfills a basic biological survival need so food for example the dog will be motivated to show the desired behavior is if he's getting rewarded with food so the food is a reward that is fulfilling a basic need of hunger so that would be a primary reinforcer but I can link that with a secondary reinforcer such as praise so every time the boy sorry not the boy I don't know where the boy came in every time the dog is showing the desired Behavior I can Praise Him by saying good job or good boy that's why I was thinking of the word boy so you can say good boy or good job now the word good boy or the phrase good boy or good job in itself is not providing any reward but every time I say that and I follow it up with the treat or the food the dog is learning to show that behavior more more and more so the secondary reinforce in this case would be the praise that I'm providing him so through that he is learning that he's doing a good job and this will be followed by the main reward that he desires so this is the technique that's going to be used in this study and the primary reinforcer that is going to be used in the study by Fagan will again be one that is relating to food specifically chopped bananas and the secondary reinforcer will be the different techniques that will be taught um relating to trunk washing and every time it is displayed correctly the animal then can will then be rewarded with the primary reinforce forer of the Cho banana so these are just the terms you would have to describe if a question were to come about the psychology being investigated so yet again two aims you can write either one um it's to test if free contact traditionally trained elephants can be trained to participate in a trunk wash technique by using positive reinforcement so the use of spr um and how that can effectively train elephants to volt voluntarily engage in a trunk wash technique um to investigate whether spr could be used to train elephants to voluntarily complete a trunk wash to allow them to be tested for TB so either of these two aims you can learn whichever one you write would be marked correctly let's look at the method and design so this is not a lab experiment but it is however a controlled observation as well as a structured observation so the reason this is not a lab experiment is number one it's not being done in the lab and the reason it's not an experiment at all is because from your knowledge of research methods you should know that in order for an experiment to be an experiment you must have an IV and a DV an independent variable and a dependent variable where you're testing cause and effect now we do not have an IV and DV in this study so immediately this is not going to be treated or considered as a as an experiment M however we will be observing the behavior of the elephants and it will be recorded using a behavioral checklist so a structured observation is one that uses a behavioral checklist where the researchers have a list of specific behaviors that we wish to either observe or in this particular case we wish for the elephant to learn and then we will observe if the elephants display those behaviors or not so that is why this is a structured OB observation and secondly it will be conducted in the Stables where the elephants live where they will be chained rather than in the wild so that's an important point to um remember when we talk about the ecological validity but it's going to be done in a highly controlled setup so that's why this is considered a controlled observation the sample of the study includes it's not a very large sample five female elephants four were juven which basically means young um children elephants and there was one adult they were all housed in the same elephant stable in Nepal the juveniles were aged between 5 to 7 years and they were born at this table whereas the adult elephant was estimated to be around 50 years old the reason these elephants were selected and this is an important point because this is something that could be asked in the exam the reason these elephants were selected over other elephants is that they appeared to to be more docile than the others and neither of them were currently pregnant nor were any of them looking after a cough and an important point is that their mahouts were also willing to take part in the study so we needed their handlers to be there we needed them to be present to try and handle the elephant because the researchers obviously do not have enough enough experience handling these elephants so we needed their mahals to be present so in order for the elephant to be part of the study their Mout would have to be willing and ready to participate in the study as well but with no real involvement um but rather there just for a safety aspect other points about the sample would be that all the elephants were traditionally trained so none of them had any prior experience with spr which is an important point because um if you have previous experience with spr then that may favor um one elephant over the other because they may be familiar with the training Tech technique but none of them were trained with this particular technique so all of them will be going through it for the very first time they spent most of the day Grazing In the Jungle under the control of the mahouts and the rest of the day they would be leg chained in a stable with freedom to move around 6 to 8 ft now what were they provided for food their diet included fresh grass grain nutritional supplements and they were also given to um given access to water at a river during Graz hours and of course it's a it's an opportunity sampling technique let's get into the procedure now so this's just one point I want to correct earlier I said that um the primary reinforcer would be the Cho bananas and I believe I said something else with the secondary reinforcer but over here um it says that the secondary reinforcer is actually going to be a short whistle blow so this very short sound of the whistle blow blowing would be serving as the secondary reinforcer which would then be followed by the main primary reinforcer of the chalk banana and these are the different um Rewards or reinforcers that will be used in the spr training technique now the training was conducted during indoor sessions from 7:30 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. as well as 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. and it was conducted by a trainer along with the mahout present for safety as I alluded to earlier who stood to the side of the elephant but would not speak to the elephant or signal to them in any way so this is important because again they're only there for the safety of the researchers because they're the ones who are able to handle the elephants the best but in no way will they interact or be involved directly in the experiment sorry not experiment it's an observation there will be there is no direct involvement of the mahouts in the study so they're not going to signal to them in any way they're not going to interact or speak to them in any way whatsoever the purpose of the spr training was to teach the elephants to perform a voluntary trunk wash according to several steps so there are certain steps that will be listed in the behavioral checklist which you will see in a bit and we want the elephants to learn each of those steps in order to perform the trunk wash in a particular order correctly and this would be done through spr training technique through the use of a posit um sorry a primary and secondary reinforcer so it says that um they would have to perform the voluntary trunk wash according to several steps in which they would actively move their trunks in response to a queue or signal so a little bit of learning well not a little bit a lot of learning is actually going to be involved in the study where the elephants are actually going to try and respond to certain cues or signals by the researcher that may encourage them to display each of the behaviors that are mentioned in the checklist and this will happen step by step so it'll begin initially by teaching them each individual behavior and then we try to create a chain of those behaviors in a sequence so that they're able to learn the entire trunk wash as one complete sequence none of the elephants would um go longer than two days without a training session and if any particular elephant chose to walk or turn away from the trainer then they were not required to take part in a session um the training would begin with teaching the elephants the link between the primary and the secondary reinforcer this would be through classical conditioning where they would repeatedly pair the primary and reinforcer so the whistle blow and the banana the whistle blow is what we call a marker and the banana is the main reward so what they would do is every time the elephant was to be rewarded with the banana they would first blow the whistle and follow it up with the reward of a banana and by doing this repeatedly the elephant would in its mind form an association between the two so every time you it hears the um the whistle blow it knows that it's going to be given the reward of a banana so the marker is now being directly linked with the reward and once this marker reward relationship has been established the training will then continue using three more methods which we refer to as capture lure and shaping now the capture technique is a method that is used to um it's basically to encourage the natural behaviors of animals that are part of their usual everyday behaviors using rewards so for example if we wanted the elephant to display one of the behaviors in um the trunk wash technique such as trunk up which is um something we'll talk about in detail later so every time the trunk up Behavior which is the elephant lifting her trunk up is displayed spontaneously L we would reward it we would give the elephant a chopped banana the primary reinforcer every time the elephant would lift its trunk up what this would do is it's capturing this particular behavior and it's allowing this trunk lifting Behavior to be more common the elephant is learning that the spontaneous usual behavior of mine of lifting the trunk up is something that I need to display more because I'm going to be rewarded and as I alluded to earlier it's an essential part of the entire trunk wash technique so that would be capturing lure is for more unusual behaviors which we want to encourage of the elephants and this would be done by carefully positioning the treats such as the bananas by the trainer for example if the trainer needed the elephant to stretch out its trunk then we would put the trit Out Of Reach to kind of lure the um elephants towards it so we place it very strategically to try and get the elephant to display the desired behavior and finally shaping now initially the elephants were rewarded with any behavior that was similar to the one that we wanted to see for example um one of the behaviors is that we wanted the elephant to take the water into its trunk and then blow the fluid into a bucket so if initially the elephant was not blowing the fluid into the bucket but near the bucket it would still get rewarded but then gradually we would only start rewarding the elephant if it started showing behaviors that was closer to the main and actual behavior that we want the elephant to learn so initially like I said we would first reward it for blowing near the bucket but then later on we would only reward the elephant for blowing the fluid into the bucket so this is shaping because the elephant the elephant's behavior is being shaped gradually in order to train her to learn the correct Behavior rather than the behavior that is similar or close to the correct one now we can look at the behavioral checklist and as you can see there are five main behaviors that are important to the trunk wash technique and these are Trunk here trunk up bucket blow steady you should know each of these you should know the description of these and we' even mentioned which particular Training Method from the three we just discussed is being used to try and train the elephant to display each of these to learn each of these so a potential question could come asking you to describe how either of these behaviors were operationalized which simply means how you would Define or describe each of these behaviors so let's look at each of them so the first one is trunk here now what is this this is when the elephant would place the end of her trunk in the trainer's hand and what is the role of this particular behavior in the trunk wash in the entire trunk wash Behavior this is to allow for the fluid or the water to be instilled in the trunk now the elephants are going to be given a saline or a water sample that they need to take into the trunk that will allow them to use that particular fluid to try and wash themselves or to wash their trunks and in order for them to do that they need to learn to be able to take the fluid into their trunks and the very first part for that is the trunk here which like we just said is when the elephant places the end of the trunk in the trainer's hand and the method that would be used in order to encourage this Behavior would be that of Flor where a chopped banana would be placed in the train 's hand and that would encourage the um elephant to place the trunk in the trainer's hand as the primary reinforcer or the primary reward is very strategically placed over there the second behavior is that of trunk up this is when the elephant lifts its trunk upwards and the purpose of this is to allow the saline or water to run to the base of the trunk now over here the technique would be lure and shaping the trainer would lift the Cho banana over the head so the elephant reaches is the trunk upwards so this is the lower aspect where we're strategically placing the reward upwards so the elephant is learning to place its trunk upwards to allow the water to go down to the base of the trunk now initially if the angle is slightly wrong he will still or she will still be rewarded but gradually we will start rewarding the elephant with the reward only if the correct um angle and the exact behavior that is required for trunk up is displayed which is why shaping is also used third is bucket this is when the elephant places the end of the trunk in the bucket and the purpose of this is to allow the placement of the trunk into the bucket readying it to Exhale the fluid out again the technique of lure is going to be used over here where a chopped banana will be placed at the bottom of the bucket the fourth technique is that a blow this is when the elephant actually exhales through the trunk into the bucket and this will allow the entire sample of the fluid to come out for collection so that we can use it to test for TB or for any other disease over here the technique or the method being used is that of capture and shaping and how is this done we wait for the natural exhale and then we reward it so that is why it's capture because if you remember capture is used for any natural behavior that is going to be shown so naturally if the fluid is inside the trunk of the animal it will want to naturally exhale it out and the moment that is done we will r it with the banana and then we will shape it further with the reward for a more forceful exhale lastly we have steady this is when the elephant holds this position that they have been previously asked to do so and the purpose of this is to allow the elephant to hold and position for the required amount of time so we don't want the elephant to just stay in that position for like 2 seconds we need it to be there for a particular time to allow for all the fluid to come out and be collected in the bucket and the technique used over here would be that of shaping which is extending the period of time the position or behavior was held with a reward now along with these there were three other tasks which are targeting trunk down and trunk out that were initially introduced but then later they were discarded as they were not deemed essential for the trunk wash now what are each each of these because again this can be asked and for access to um all of this if you wish to have the detailed notes please contact me on the email ID that I have provided to you guys I some of you have contacted me I have not been able to get back to all of you um but I will hopefully do so in a bit and those of you whove asked me for the detailed slides I will provide them to you but the trunk down technique or the trunk down task refers to the trunk held in a relaxed position with the trunk hanging loose towards the ground the trunk out refers to the trunk being held stretched outward approximately parallel to the to the ground and targeting refers to the elephant moving such that the center of the forehead makes contact with the end of a certain targeting stick that is actually been placed at the height of the forehead now these were just three behaviors or three tasks that were initially there but like I said they were not deemed very essential for the entire trunk wash process so they were discarded by the researchers once the elephant performed these individual behavioral tasks each task was then paired with a verbal q and this verbal Q would be a one syllable word with no meaning in either English or in Nepali and the reason why it does not have any specific meaning is because we don't want it to mean anything to the mahout or the elephant because that would mean that if the elephant understood what that particular word meant it might mean something completely else and it might change the behavior or distract the animal completely or the mahout so it has to be a word that has no specific meaning except for the meaning that we want it to serve which would be to display a certain Behavior which is um part of the trunk wash so that is the verbal queue that is going to be used now once these basic behaviors were learned by the elephants the trainers proceeded to try and get the elephants to perform these behaviors in a sequence in response to the cues so like I said once each of these individual behaviors that we saw in the checklist checklist were learned we want the elephant to now try and form a chain of these behaviors because the trunk wash does not mean just showing one of these behaviors it means showing all of these behaviors in a specific order in a particular chain so once they've learned these individual behaviors the training will now Pro proceed to getting the elephant to try and show these behaviors all in one particular sequence and this will be done through the use of these cues and this particular process is as it says over here behavioral chaining now the idea behind the behavioral chaining is that once the behavior is learned to be strongly associated with the primary reinforcer that behavior itself becomes a reinforcer for for the behavior that precedes it so that simply means that as a result by completing the first behavior of the sequence of the trunk wash the elephant would then perform the second Behavior the next Behavior correctly in order to receive the reward so it's performing one Behavior after the next because it knows that it's going to receive a particular reward now separate behavioral tasks were initially paired beginning with the bucket and blow and then they were combined in longer sequences until they performed until they formed the entire trunk wash procedure at this point the trainer also introduced the use of a syringe to the trunk here position and the syringe was gradually brought closer to the elephant's trunk then it would touch the trunk then it would be inserted into the trunk then it would be inserted with increasing amounts of fluid beginning initially from 1 to 15 mL until the elephant was able to tolerate the full ml required for the sample collection and this process was done incrementally step by step so as to desensitize the elephant to the syringe now desensitization is being used over here because the syringe may act initially as an aversive stimuli aversive stimuli from animal ethics is something that the animal May fear so if we were to use the syringe and insert the entire 60 ml directly the elephant might get scared it might be afraid of this range because it's not something that it's used to seeing so we want to desensitize it we want the elephant to rather than think of it as as a fearful object instead we want it to um not be afraid of it but instead through a process of counter conditioning teach the elephant to associate the syringe with the arrival of a reward rather than associating it with fear so that's counter conditioning so we'll start Slowly by first bringing it near the trunk then touching the trunk and all the steps that I mentioned starting with a little bit of the fluid 1 ml then 15 mL up till the point eventually where the elephant is able to insert the entire full 60 ml which is required for sample collection and no longer a afraid or possibly afraid of this range but instead through counter conditioning able to associate this range with the arrival of the banana now as a control the elephants were actually offered water to drink before each training session so that they wouldn't drink the saline or the fluid however there was one particular elephant who preferred drinking the saline and would reject reject the drinking water so for that particular elephant for the behavioral task we switched it to water um a water solution rather than saline now for collection of data there was no particular time limit that was put on any of the stages of the training process as each elephant had its own different rates of learning some would learn faster than others so there was no fixed time limit that was set but data was collected by recording two things number one is session times and number two is number of offers now session times was recorded by having an assistant who would record the length of each training session in minutes and this would begin from the very first queue that was offered and it would end after the elephants respond to the last queue that was offered now the total number of session times obviously was recorded in minutes and then an average score was taken and if a particular session provided inaccurate data or we were unable to accurately time the session because of a lack of personnel then the missing data for that session would just simply be replaced by the average um minutes per session for that particular individual elephant the second thing like I said that was recorded was number of offers number of offers were recorded also with an assistant who would tally the total number of times the elephant was given a cue for a certain Behavior so number of offers basically refers to number of cues that the elephant was given for a certain Behavior then we have the performance tests this is where the previously taught behaviors are now going to be tested to see if the elephant has learned them correctly or not and they would begin after session 10 and the reason they would begin after session 10 which is um pretty late into the procedure is to allow the elephants to go through enough sessions to understand the basic training methodology before they could start learning the behavioral tasks and then be tested on them so the performance test would begin at session 10 and then they would be administered to each elephant approximately after every five sessions so then the next one will be at session 15 then session 20 and so on so forth now at each test session elephants would tested on all the previous behaviors that they were taught which we saw on the checklist and in order for them to get a passing score they would have to get at least 80% which is eight out of 10 correct offers to operationalize the behavioral response as qualifying for passing so when we say 80% passing what do we mean by a passing score so eight out of 10 correct eight correct out of 10 offers what do we mean by that it basically means and this is in inverted commas because these are the exact words stated by the researchers the exact explanation a passing Behavior passing response or behavioral response would be of sufficient quality to function in a trunk wash so this was subjectively determined by the trainer the trainer would determine whether the behavior shown by the elephant was sufficient enough or was of sufficient quality to function in a trunk wash so it's not very objective it is down to the interpretation of the trainer which is an important point to remember when we discuss the validity a few other points if the elephant received at least an 80% success rate for a sequence of tasks this was considered a pass for the entire sequence so one is for individual tasks and then we're looking for an 80% success access rate for a sequence of tasks and if it was able to do so then we would say that the elephant has passed that entire sequence for example the sequence of trunk here Behavior into the trunk up Behavior into the bucket so if the elephant were to get an 80% success rate for these three behaviors this entire sequence we would say that the elephant has passed this entire sequence and each individual behavior in the sequence was then given a passing score as well and the training would be considered complete so again they would get a passing score for the entire sequence as well as for each of the individual behaviors so the trunk here Behavior would be given a passing score um the trunk up Behavior would be given a certain score and the bucket Behavior would be given a certain score so the entire sequence as well as the individual behaviors the steady and trunk down behaviors were tested separately as the trunk down Behavior was not necessary for the full trunk wash and the steady Behavior included three positions one of which was the trunk down Behavior so these two particular behaviors trunk down and steady were tested separately because they were not deemed to be necessary for the entire trunk wash and the steady Behavior actually involved three particular behaviors in which one of them was the trunk down I believe the other one was um I'm not entirely sure but one of them was defitely the trunk down one and because the trunk down was not deemed very important for the full trunk wash um these two particular behaviors were tested separately if an elephant were to not pass a sequence of behaviors then each task or shorter sequences were retested to determine the point of failure so if for example the sequences trunk here Behavior into the trunk up Behavior into the bucket if the elephant failed to get an 80% success rate for this sequence we would make them do this sequence again and we would try and determine which particular Behavior it was where they were unable to get the 80% success rate so was it the sequence from trunk here to um the trunk up Behavior was it trunk up to the bucket at what point was the elephant failing or was it the entire sequence or was it one particular Behavior so this would just be repeated to see at what point was the elephant failing to display the correct Behavior now let's talk about the results before we discuss the results let's discuss some controls that allow the procedure to be a controlled observation so all the elephants went through the same training of um spr there was a behavioral checklist that was used to record specific behaviors um the trunk down Behavior although was not necessary to the full trunk wash was still used as a control method all elephants received the same reward of a chop Anana um they were all offered drinking water as well before switching to the saline solution for the behavioral task of course except for that one who would use who would drink the saline and instead it was switch to a water solution for the behavioral task so these are just some points which will be which would be important when evaluating the study for reliability and validity let's get into the results of the study so the four juvenile elephants actually successfully learned the trunk wash the fifth elephant the adult elephant failed to do so and had a total training time of 424 minutes now we'll talk about why this fifth elephant the adult elephant was unable to learn the trunk wash later on so if you look at the individual results of the elephants elephant 2 passed her final test only after 25 training sessions with a mean duration of 10.29 minutes if you can't remember this exact number you can just say approximately 10 minutes in your answer the total training time was 257 minutes during this um up until the 25th training session elephant one passed her test after 30 training sessions with a mean duration of approximately 12 minutes with a total training time of 373 minutes yes you should know these numbers because Cambridge can ask you very specific quantitative data elephant 3 and four passed their tests after the 35 training sessions with a mean duration of 13 and 11 minutes respectively and the total training time was 389 minutes and 451 minutes respectively let's analyze this graph over here this is something which could come in paper two in which they could ask you to describe a couple of conclusions that you can derive from this chart so on the y- axis we have the mean percentage of mean percentage correct for all the tasks and at the bottom on the x-axis we have the session numbers so as you can see in the early sessions beginning from the first performance tests session 10 you can see that it wasn't a very high score it started around 36 to 39% correct but then it started to increase gradually so as they started doing more and more sessions they started performing The behavior more correctly for each of the tasks up until the 20 I think up to the 25th session they were getting a score of around 86% and it remained in the high 80s in the last um few sessions from 25 to 35 then we have this chart which is the number of sessions needed before each elephant passed her test for the full trunk wash elephant 5 does not have a bar over here because it never passed she never passed her trunk wash test elephant one as you can see it took around 30 sessions for her to um pass the entire full trunk wash elephant 2 took around 25 elephant 3 and four took around 35 so what are the conclusions that we can drive Juvenile and free contact traditionally trained elephants can be trained to participate in a trunk wash using only spr training spr training can be carried out with the voluntary participation of elephants avoiding punishment in order to produce reliable results so there is no need for punishment there's no need for a traditional form of training to teach these elephants to engage in the trunk wash positive reinforcement is a very effective technique to try and um train these elephants in order to encourage them to engage in a voluntary trunk wash so that we may collect samples in order to test for TB now before getting into the evaluation and the issues and debates I do want to discuss a little bit more about elephant 5 the adult elephant now she was the one who did not learn the entire trunk wash and there are certain factors that can be attributed to this one factor could be her age she was a lot older than the others the juveniles were aged 5 to 7 years whereas this adult elephant was approximately 50 years and she did have some visual impairment the researchers noted that she had some trunk weakness and she was also reported to be very distracted and impatient especially during the last week of the study she also had some problem with her foot during this period and there were some other issues as well for example there was um a younger elephant that came into her um training area during her training sessions from another stable which may have served as a distraction so yes there are multiple factors that can be a possible reason as to why she may not have learned the trunk wash um but I think one of the main factors is again the age as well as the fact that she had a trunk weakness and um so yeah those were the results important to remember the numbers important to remember these little details there is obviously not a lot of qualitative data none really because it's um mostly quantitative that we're collecting now discussing the issues and debates we'll start off with the nature nurture debate now naturally being a study of the learning approach we expect this to favor the nurture side of the debate which it does the elephants went through a training process um they went through the spr training method in order to learn how to voluntarily implement the trunk wash behaviors through the use of Operate conditioning as well so positive reinforcements specifically was used in order to train these elephants so yes it's something that was learned it was something that was taught to them however there was one particular elephant the adult elephant who did fail to learn the trunk wash behavior and this could have perhaps been attributed to Natural factors such as her age such as the trunk weakness or even visual impairments so that this one small Point can perhaps um favor the the sorry the nature side of the debate but overall it is favoring the nurture side in terms of the individual situational explanation the study supports the situational explanation as the elephants were taught the trunk wash Behavior by being placed in various situations involving spr in which they gradually learned each specific behavior and then were able to eventually learn the entirety of the trunk wash technique however we cannot ignore individual differences so the individual explanation will also be looked at will also be favored because the time taken for each elephant to learn was different and this was due to each elephant's learning ability some were able to learn a lot faster than others the adult elephant for example was not able to learn the trunk wash technique at all again perhaps due to her age um because the younger elephants were clearly able to learn and learn a lot faster so these would be points that would favor the individual or support the individual explanation now the application to Everyday Life Is that the findings of the study are useful to train elephants to maintain their health and well-being through a safe and effective trunk wash technique that is not built around punishment but rather positive reinforcement and this can also help them reduce the risk of diseases such as TB and this this spr technique positive reinforcement can also be used to train other animals um like I talked about earlier zebras antelopes other animals can be taught certain behaviors through the spr technique in which you would not have to rely on punishment okay um before evaluation one more issue in debate which is the use of animals in psychological research so there is no evidence to suggest that the animals were harmed in any way um the training process was conducted over a number of weeks and it involved training training almost daily so it wouldn't have been practical to have a study conducted on humans which is why the study was done on animals instead um it was useful to help understand um that elephants can learn to apply a trunk wash technique voluntarily uh which is something that is beneficial to their well-being that is beneficial to allowing trainers to collect um samples for testing of different diseases like TB so it is highly useful um to use animals such as elephants in studies such as this especially where there is no real or any form of um pain or distress either physical or emotional being caused to the animal okay now we can talk about the evaluation beginning with reliability so because it's a controlled observation there are going to be many controls and I give examples of controls earlier um they all were given the same reward of a Cho banana they all were tested on the same behaviors um on the checklist and they were recorded the same way so this makes the procedure very standardized and easy to replicate for reliability now one point against reliability however would be the training time for the elephants that is something that wasn't standardized because each individual elephants learning ability was different so the training time for each elephant would be different as well this is something which was not standardized which would lower the reliability of the study validity is a strength because verbal cues were used which should not mean anything specific in either English or Nepali and as a result this would ensure that there would be no demand characteristics another strength is that the mahouts were also instructed to not signal or speak to the elephants so they would not be able to add any additional cues or signals which may change the behavior of the elephants but instead they were simply there for the safety of the researchers one weakness however of um the study of relating to validity could be the element of subjectivity which I talked about when we were assessing the um passing scores of the elephants in the trunk wash I said that it was subject to subject it was um subject to the interpretation of the researchers and if they deemed it to be accurate enough to qualify as U an effective trunk wash technique then they would include it in the results as being correct so perhaps to just favor um the results being correct they may have had some bias in their interpretations which could have potentially um lowered the validity or they might have even just made some mistakes perhaps the angle of the elephant's trunk was incorrect In some particular trials or sessions which may have mistakenly been interpreted as being correct so again this can lower validity General generalizability is a weakness a very small sample only five elephants one of whom was an adult um they were all part of the same stable in Nepal so you cannot apply it to a wider population of elephants particularly adult elephants because only one was being represented that to a really old one who had a trunk weakness um she had a visual impairment as well so perhaps the learning abilities of other older elephants might have been very different and maybe they would have been able to learn the trunk wash technique so we cannot generalize the findings to other elephants based on just these five because it's a very small sample it's not very representative so we cannot assume that all adult elephants will be unable to learn the trunk wash technique just because this one particular adult elephant was not able to do so ecological validity we can say is a bit of strength and weakness um the setting was close to the natural environment there were other elephants around as well in the Stables however being a controlled observation it was a very controlled environment elephants do not naturally go through this training technique in their everyday lives in the wild so it is something that is not expected for them in the jungle in the wild and hence the study May lack mundane realism in terms of animal ethics it is a strength numbers the guideline of numbers is maintained as only a small sample of five elephants were used um there was no pain or distress that was caused the elephants were rewarded with a primary um reward of a chopped banana um they made sure that the syringe did not act as an aversive stimuli as it was gradually introduced to them it was desensitized and through counter conditioning they were able to associate it with the reward rather than it being a fearful um object they were not deprived of any basic needs they were given water and food and they were also housed in the same stable with their mAh present as well to make sure that they're comfortable they were chained but only during the time where they were not in training sessions and they had around 6 to8 um feet of movement as well data is quantitative which is objective and numerical we can compare results which was clearly shown in the number of um trials or sessions it took for the elephants to learn the complete trunk was wash so we can compare the results of each individual elephant through this quantitative data and lastly observation so we can use um points of structured observation as well as a controlled observation both obviously are highly standardized can be replicated for reliability um structured observation is something that we can use um in other studies as well if we were to repeat the study if we were to teach other elephants a trunk wash technique then we could use the same checklist of behaviors that uh Fagan used in this study so again um the reliability point would be a major um point for the observation evaluator point so hope you understood this study it was pretty easy um in my opinion if you have any queries please reach out on WhatsApp or on email and again if you wish to have the detailed studies please again contact me and sorry the detailed slides of the study contact me and I can provide them to you I will be back soon inshallah with um more studies I will perhaps come up with the mgram and Andrade study now of the cognitive approach and gradually increase um my Channel with the new studies as well so I've still got three new studies in the syllabus and the old studies as well as long with a lot of more content learning material ways to answer questions short questions paper one paper two questions and eventually then I'll move on to um A2 as well so see you next time