THEORY OF ANIMAL TIMING--MEMORY AND CHOICE

前几年在这个项目上已经看到了定量的发展， 动物计时理论，标量期望理论（SET），适用于广泛的 动物学习中的时间效应。过去的工作分析了 其中，时间延迟被以各种方式记忆和区分， 动物心理物理学准备。前一个补助期也 研究了联想学习中的时间控制，并解决了一些问题。 SBT和替代刺激竞争理论之间的紧张关系， 联想学习，原型是Rescorla-Wagner理论。 竞争延续的主要焦点是研究 连续选择情况下的内存采样率。最近的一些 挑战我们先前对同时选择的解释（匹配定律， Herrnstein，1961）进行了深入分析。匹配是一个很好的工作 这是一个非常大的文学现象，但一个直到最近才有 能够区分不同的分子机制。 本提案的主要贡献是分析了 在并发选择中访问存储器的自由运行速率 situations.这导致了一个系统，它在形式上是一个马尔可夫链， 空间和时间。我们表明，矛盾的偏好结果解释 通过对存储器进行采样的速率和 对给定的选择做出选择的概率。应用 这些想法的2路和3路选择是追求。这样做的一个结果是 分析是一种选择的觅食模拟的表征， 猎物类型和猎物的延迟，经典的饮食选择问题。稍后 项目的重点是研究当备选方案 是平均回报率，类似于补丁选择问题， 行为生态学

Previous years on this project have seen the development of a quantitative theory of animal timing, Scalar Expectancy Theory (SET), applied to a wide range of timing effects in animal learning. Past work has analyzed the way in which time delays are remembered and discriminated in a variety of animal psychophysics preparations. The preceding grant period has also studied temporal control in association leaning, and resolved some of the tensions between SBT and alternative stimulus competition theories of associative learning, prototypically the Rescorla-Wagner theory. The major focus of the competing continuation is the study of the role of memory sampling rate in continuous choice situations. Some recent challenges to our previous account of concurrent choice (the matching law, Herrnstein, 1961) are analyzed in depth. Matching is a well-worked phenomenon with a very large literature, but one which only recently has been amenable to differentiating between different molecular mechanisms. The major contribution in the present proposal is the analysis of the free-running rates at which memories are accessed in concurrent choice situations. This results in a system which is formally a Markov chain in space and time. We show that paradoxical preference results are explained by a combination of the rate at which memory is sampled and the probability with which choice for a given alternative is made. Application of these ideas to 2-way and 3-way choice is pursued. One result of this analysis is a characterization of a foraging analogue of choices between prey types and delays to prey, the classical diet choice problem. A later focus in the project is study of concurrent choice when the alternatives are averaged rates of payoff, analogous to patch choice problems in behavioral ecology.