U.S.-Philippines Cooperative Research: Choice in Decisions of Uncertain or Diminishing Returns

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This proposal requests funds to permit Dr. Philip N. Hineline, Professor of Psychology, Temple University, to pursue with Dr. F. G. David, Professor of Psychology, University of the Philippines, for a period of 24 months, a program of cooperative research on choice in situations of uncertain or diminishing returns. The proposed research grant will enable Dr. David to continue his involvement in a research project in the psychology laboratories of Temple University. Professor David has been integrally involved in the formative stages of that project during a one-year post-doctoral fellowship supplemented by an additional year via sabbatical leave. The continuing participation would entail two summer periods at Temple University, during 1991 and 1992, and communications via electronic mail concerning data analyses and manuscript preparations during the intervening and subsequent periods. The research concerns pigeons' choices between differently distributed food deliveries: One set of experiments addresses a prediction of optimal foraging theory, that birds become risk-prone under negative energy budgets. Other experiments concern pigeons' sensitivities to, and preferences among, differing forms of variability in food delivery, and a third set concerns choices between fixed vs. escalating work require- ments for food delivery. These last procedures mimic the depleting patches of a foraging situation, so its results will be relevant to foraging theory; it is of special interest because advantageous short-term choices are disadvantageous in the longer term. This project is relevant to the objectives of the Science in Developing Countries Program which seeks to increase the level of cooperation between U.S. scientists and engineers and their counterparts in developing countries through the exchange of scientific information, ideas, skills, and techniques and through collaboration on problems of mutual benefit.