Toward a Procedure to Study Rule-Governed Choice: Preliminary Data.

Area of Science:

• Behavioral psychology
• Decision-making research
• Reinforcement learning

Background:

• Understanding choice behavior under conflicting rules is crucial.
• Reinforcement rates significantly influence decision-making processes.
• The role of discriminative stimuli and explicit rules in guiding choices requires further investigation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To model and investigate choice behavior between two incompatible rules.
• To examine how different reinforcement rates affect rule-following and choice.
• To determine the influence of discriminative stimuli and explicit rules on choice selection.

Main Methods:

• Two experiments were conducted using a two-component multiple schedule with concurrent variable interval (VI)-extinction (EXT) schedules.
• Experiment 1 involved undergraduate students following explicit rules associated with different reinforcement rates under specific discriminative stimuli.
• Experiment 2 explored choice behavior without explicit rules, focusing solely on reinforcement rates and discriminative stimuli.

Main Results:

• In Experiment 1, participants adhered to rules, selecting the option with the highest reinforcement rate when discriminative stimuli were present.
• When discriminative stimuli were absent, participants showed indifference in their choices.
• Experiment 2 revealed that participants preferred alternatives associated with higher reinforcement rates when stimuli were present, but choices were unsystematic without stimuli.

Conclusions:

• Explicit rules and associated discriminative stimuli strongly guide choice behavior towards higher reinforcement rates.
• Reinforcement rate is a primary determinant of choice, especially when cues are present.
• The absence of rules and discriminative stimuli leads to less predictable choice patterns, suggesting a reliance on learned associations or other factors.