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Updated: Apr 6, 2026
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Operant Protocols for Assessing the Cost-benefit Analysis During Reinforced Decision Making by Rodents
Published on: September 10, 2018
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Rats are optimal in a choice task in which pigeons are not
R Emmanuel Trujano1, Vladimir Orduña1
1Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México D.F. 4510, Mexico.
Behavioural Processes
|July 23, 2015
Summary
Rats do not exhibit "suboptimal choice" behavior seen in pigeons. Rats consistently chose the option with a higher probability of reinforcement, unlike pigeons which preferred stimuli associated with discrimination.
Area of Science:
- Behavioral science
- Animal cognition
- Experimental psychology
Background:
- Pigeons exhibit "suboptimal choice," preferring stimuli linked to discrimination over those with higher reinforcement probability.
- This behavior challenges traditional models of decision-making under uncertainty.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate if rats, like pigeons, display "suboptimal choice" behavior.
- To compare inter-species decision-making strategies in the Experimental Analysis of Behavior.
Main Methods:
- Systematic replication of the pigeon experimental procedure with a rat model.
- Utilizing discriminative and non-discriminative stimuli with varying probabilities of reinforcement.
Main Results:
- Rats demonstrated optimal choice, selecting the non-discriminative alternative (0.5 reinforcement probability) over the discriminative one (0.2 reinforcement probability).
- Rats successfully discriminated reinforcement contingencies but prioritized overall probability.
Conclusions:
- Rats do not exhibit "suboptimal choice" in this paradigm, suggesting species-specific differences in decision-making.
- Procedural variations may account for the divergent findings between rats and pigeons.
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