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Updated: Sep 30, 2026

Automated Visual Cognitive Tasks for Recording Neural Activity Using a Floor Projection Maze
Published on: February 20, 2014
Acquisition and extinction in autoshaping
1Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, University College London, England. sham@gatsby.ucl.ac.uk
Abstract:
C. R. Gallistel and J. Gibbon (2000) presented quantitative data on the speed with which animals acquire behavioral responses during autoshaping, together with a statistical model of learning intended to account for them. Although this model captures the form of the dependencies among critical variables, its detailed predictions are substantially at variance with the data. In the present article, further key data on the speed of acquisition are used to motivate an alternative model of learning, in which animals can be interpreted as paying different amounts of attention to stimuli according to estimates of their differential reliabilities as predictors.
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