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Related Experiment Videos

Rapid acquisition in concurrent chains: evidence for a decision model.

Randolph C Grace1, Anthony P McLean

  • 1University of Canterbury, Department of Psychology, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand. randolph.grace@canterbury.ac.nz

Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior
|May 6, 2006
PubMed
Summary

Pigeons rapidly adapt their choices to changing reward schedules. Their decision-making appears based on categorizing delays as short or long, rather than learned stimulus values.

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Area of Science:

  • Behavioral psychology
  • Animal cognition
  • Learning and decision-making

Background:

  • Pigeons' choice behavior in concurrent chains demonstrates adaptation to changing contingencies.
  • Previous research showed sensitivity to immediacy ratios when terminal-link schedules changed daily.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the effect of delay variation across sessions on acquisition rate in pigeons.
  • To test whether pigeons' initial-link responding is determined by learned stimulus values or categorical discrimination.

Main Methods:

  • Pigeons were exposed to a rapid-acquisition procedure with two conditions: minimal and maximal variation in terminal-link delays.
  • Terminal-link schedules involved fixed-interval (FI) schedules with varying delays (e.g., FI 4s, FI 8s, FI 16s).

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  • Response rates were analyzed in relation to the immediacy ratio within each session.

    • Main Results:

    • Pigeon responding remained sensitive to the current-session immediacy ratio in both minimal and maximal variation conditions.
    • No systematic difference in sensitivity was observed between the two conditions across subjects.
    • These findings challenge the learned value hypothesis for initial-link responding.

    Conclusions:

    • Initial-link responding in pigeons may be controlled by a categorical discrimination process (short vs. long delays).
    • A decision model based on delay categorization successfully accounted for the observed data.
    • This categorical discrimination model shows potential for explaining other choice behaviors.