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Psychophysics of remembering
1Department of Psychology, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. kgwhite@otago.ac.nz
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior
|February 24, 1999
Summary
This study introduces a new behavioral model for remembering in conditional discrimination tasks. The model explains how reinforcement history influences choices in delayed matching to sample, validated with pigeon experiments.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Psychology
- Behavioral Neuroscience
- Animal Cognition
Background:
- Remembering is crucial for conditional discrimination tasks like delayed matching to sample.
- Existing models may not fully capture the influence of reinforcement history on memory-based choices.
Purpose of the Study:
- To propose a novel behavioral model of remembering within conditional discrimination.
- To explain how effective stimulus values and reinforcement history influence choice behavior.
- To predict how memory and discrimination difficulty affect choice outcomes.
Main Methods:
- Developed a new computational model representing stimulus effects as Thurstonian distributions.
- Incorporated a critical assumption linking effective stimulus values to past reinforcement ratios.
- Utilized the matching law to determine choice probabilities based on reinforcement history.
- Empirically tested the model using a delayed matching-to-sample procedure with pigeons.
Main Results:
- Model predictions align with empirical data from pigeon experiments.
- The model successfully explains the role of reinforcement history in choice behavior.
- Standard deviations of stimulus distributions increase with retention interval duration.
- The distance between distribution means is influenced by discrimination difficulty.
Conclusions:
- The proposed behavioral model offers a robust framework for understanding remembering in conditional discrimination.
- Reinforcement history is a key determinant of choice in such tasks.
- The model's predictions regarding discriminability and retention interval duration are supported by empirical evidence.
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