A Computational Model of an Animal Designed for High-School Education

This work describes a computational model, which can be used to simulate learning in animals. Model is based on a variation of q-learning and can imitate general types of learning, such as classical and operant conditioning. It differs from similar computational models in that it is designed solely for use in educational software. Therefore the simulation of learning is rather fast, for student to be able to see the consequences of his own actions during a short training session. Main topic of this work lies in description of the model, analysis of its behavior and comparison with some other computational models. All of this takes place in the specific context of three virtual animals: a dog, a lemur and a parrot