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Related Concept Videos

Timing and Consequences on Behavior01:08

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 factor...
Instinctive Drift01:05

Instinctive Drift

Instinctive drift refers to the tendency of animals to revert to their innate behaviors despite repeated reinforcement. Breland and Breland demonstrated this concept in an experiment with a raccoon. The raccoon was trained to pick up two coins and place them in a container in exchange for food. Initially, the raccoon learned to associate the coins with food, making them a conditioned stimulus or a substitute for food. However, over time, the raccoon became less willing to put the coins into the...
Reinforcement Schedules01:24

Reinforcement Schedules

Positive reinforcement is a powerful method for teaching new behaviors to both animals and humans. B.F. Skinner demonstrated this with his experiments using rats in a Skinner box. When a rat pressed a lever, it received a food pellet. This immediate reward encouraged the rat to repeat the behavior. This method, where a reward follows every instance of the behavior, is known as continuous reinforcement. It is highly effective for establishing new behaviors quickly.
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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 31, 2026

Pavlovian Conditioned Approach Training in Rats
06:57

Pavlovian Conditioned Approach Training in Rats

Published on: February 4, 2016

Reference-point dependent reinforcement learning in humans and rats.

Lachlan A Ferguson1, Magdalena Soukupova2,3, Sébastien Bouret4

  • 1Univ. Bordeaux, CNRS, INCIA, UMR 5287, Bordeaux, France.

Nature Communications
|May 28, 2026
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Reinforcement learning shows reference-point dependence in both humans and rats, indicating conserved relative value encoding across species. This study confirms shared behavioral and computational mechanisms for reward processing.

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The Double-H Maze: A Robust Behavioral Test for Learning and Memory in Rodents
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Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: May 31, 2026

Pavlovian Conditioned Approach Training in Rats
06:57

Pavlovian Conditioned Approach Training in Rats

Published on: February 4, 2016

The Double-H Maze: A Robust Behavioral Test for Learning and Memory in Rodents
09:01

The Double-H Maze: A Robust Behavioral Test for Learning and Memory in Rodents

Published on: July 8, 2015

Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Cognitive Science
  • Behavioral Economics

Background:

  • Reinforcement learning involves encoding rewards and punishments absolutely and relatively.
  • Reference-point dependence, a bias seen in adaptation-level and prospect theories, is a proposed mechanism for relative value encoding.
  • Understanding cross-species conservation of these mechanisms is crucial.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the conservation of reference-point dependence in reinforcement learning across species.
  • To compare behavioral and computational mechanisms of value encoding in humans and rats.

Main Methods:

  • Designed parallel reinforcement learning tasks for humans and rats.
  • Conducted behavioral analyses to assess value encoding.
  • Employed computational modeling to evaluate reference-point dependence.

Main Results:

  • Demonstrated robust relative value encoding in both humans and rats.
  • Confirmed that reference-point dependence accurately models behavior in both species.
  • Observed some interspecies differences in behavioral and modeling parameters.

Conclusions:

  • Relative value encoding is a fundamental aspect of reinforcement learning conserved across humans and rats.
  • Reference-point dependence serves as a shared computational mechanism for value representation.
  • While core mechanisms are conserved, species-specific variations exist.