Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Related Concept Videos

Framing Effects

Framing Effects

Information is everywhere and its presentation—such as how and when items are presented—can impact our perceptions and decisions surrounding the info. This broad concept umbrellas framing effects—influences that occur due to the way information is framed in its appearance, whether it’s purely the order or the specific wording of a message. Let’s take a look at numerous ways in which two versions of something can objectively say the same thing, yet we respond in...

Timing and Consequences on Behavior

Timing and Consequences on Behavior

In operant conditioning, the timing of reinforcement is crucial. For animals like rats and cats, immediate reinforcement (within a few seconds) is much more effective than delayed reinforcement. For example, a food reward for a rat needs to follow within 30 seconds of pressing a bar to be effective.
Humans, however, can respond to delayed reinforcers. We often make decisions between immediate small rewards and delayed larger rewards. This ability to delay gratification is a significant...

Decision Making

Decision Making

Decision-making is a fundamental cognitive process that involves evaluating alternatives and selecting among them. This process can range from simple choices, such as deciding what to wear, to complex decisions, like choosing a major in college or a career path. The complexity of the decision often dictates the approach we use, which can be broadly categorized into two types: automatic and controlled decision-making.
Automatic decision-making is fast, intuitive, and relies on gut feelings...

The Availability Heuristic

The Availability Heuristic

A heuristic is a general problem-solving framework (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974). You can think of these as mental shortcuts that are used to solve problems. Different types of heuristics are used in different types of situations, and the impulse to use a heuristic occurs when one of five conditions is met (Pratkanis, 1989):

The Anchoring-and-Adjustment Heuristic

The Anchoring-and-Adjustment Heuristic

In order to make good decisions, we use our knowledge and our reasoning. Often, this knowledge and reasoning is sound and solid. However, sometimes, we are swayed by biases or by others manipulating a situation. For example, let’s say you and three friends wanted to rent a house and had a combined target budget of $1,600. The realtor shows you only very run-down houses for $1,600 and then shows you a very nice house for $2,000. Might you ask each person to pay more in rent to get the...

Hindsight Biases

Hindsight Biases

Hindsight bias leads you to believe that the event you just experienced was predictable, even though it really wasn’t. In other words, you knew all along that things would turn out the way they did. Can you relate this to the phrase "Hindsight is 20/20" now?

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

Effects of Initial Experiences on Risky Choice.

Quarterly journal of experimental psychology (2006)·2026

Same author

Combining social and private information: How ants use pheromones and learnt cues to navigate.

Learning & behavior·2026

Same author

Waiting for reward: preference for signalled delays increases with average wait time.

Animal cognition·2026

Same author

Risky effort.

Cognition·2024

Same author

A special issue honoring Ken Cheng: navigating animal minds.

Learning & behavior·2024

Same author

Route retracing: way pointing and multiple vector memories in trail-following ants.

The Journal of experimental biology·2023

Same journal

Mind wandering during first- and foreign-language reading.

Psychonomic bulletin & review·2026

Same journal

Lexical word processing is unaffected by rapid invisible frequency tagging in reading: Evidence from eye movements.

Psychonomic bulletin & review·2026

Same journal

Anxiety modulates voluntary attentional orienting to emotional gaze cues: Eye movements for pro- and anti-saccades.

Psychonomic bulletin & review·2026

Same journal

Faster key-press responses to front vowels than back vowels when matching heard vowels with represented vowels.

Psychonomic bulletin & review·2026

Same journal

Testing the interleaving effect without response bias: A forced-choice reevaluation of Kornell and Bjork (2008).

Psychonomic bulletin & review·2026

Same journal

The impact of social interaction on abstract concepts.

Psychonomic bulletin & review·2026

See all related articles

Search research articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 26, 2025

The Joint Effect of Social Comparison and Social Distance on Evaluation of Intertemporal Choice Outcomes in Event-related Potential Studies

The Joint Effect of Social Comparison and Social Distance on Evaluation of Intertemporal Choice Outcomes in Event-related Potential Studies

Published on: August 25, 2023

Temporal context effects on suboptimal choice.

Margaret A McDevitt¹, Jeffrey M Pisklak², Roger M Dunn³

¹McDaniel College, Westminster, MD, 21157, USA. mmcdevit@mcdaniel.edu.

Psychonomic Bulletin & Review

|May 17, 2024

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Pigeons

Keywords:

Conditioned reinforcement Initial-link duration Pigeon SiGN model Suboptimal choice Temporal context

More Related Videos

Errors as a Means of Reducing Impulsive Food Choice

Errors as a Means of Reducing Impulsive Food Choice

Published on: June 5, 2016

Measuring Delay Discounting in Humans Using an Adjusting Amount Task

Measuring Delay Discounting in Humans Using an Adjusting Amount Task

Published on: January 9, 2016

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Jun 26, 2025

The Joint Effect of Social Comparison and Social Distance on Evaluation of Intertemporal Choice Outcomes in Event-related Potential Studies

The Joint Effect of Social Comparison and Social Distance on Evaluation of Intertemporal Choice Outcomes in Event-related Potential Studies

Published on: August 25, 2023

Errors as a Means of Reducing Impulsive Food Choice

Errors as a Means of Reducing Impulsive Food Choice

Published on: June 5, 2016

Measuring Delay Discounting in Humans Using an Adjusting Amount Task

Measuring Delay Discounting in Humans Using an Adjusting Amount Task

Published on: January 9, 2016

Area of Science:

Behavioral economics
Animal cognition
Decision-making under uncertainty

Background:

Reward anticipation and signaling influence choice behavior.
The Signal for Good News (SiGN) model explains how reward-predicting stimuli affect decisions.
Previous studies show pigeons sometimes prefer signaled suboptimal rewards.

Purpose of the Study:

To test quantitative predictions of the SiGN model in pigeons.
To investigate the impact of choice period duration on reward preference.
To determine if temporal context alters the relative value of choice options.

Main Methods:

Pigeons chose between a signaled 20% food reward and an unsignaled 50% food reward.
Choice period duration was systematically manipulated across two experiments.
The Signal for Good News (SiGN) model's predictions were quantitatively assessed.

Main Results:

Pigeons preferred the suboptimal signaled option at shorter choice durations.
Pigeons preferred the optimal unsignaled option at longer choice durations.
Results strongly supported the SiGN model's predictions.

Conclusions:

Choice period duration significantly influences preference between signaled and unsignaled rewards.
The relative value of options is dynamic and context-dependent, not fixed.
The SiGN model accurately predicts choice behavior influenced by temporal factors.