THEORY OF ANIMAL TIMING: MEMORY AND ASSOCIATION

前几年在这个项目上已经看到了一个正式的发展， 动物计时理论，标量期望理论（SET），应用于一个 在动物学习中有广泛的时间效应。 过去的研究分析了 时间延迟的记忆和辨别方式， 各种动物心理物理学制剂。 最近的赠款期 已经研究了记忆的聚合可变延迟到强化， 与固定延迟的存储器相反。近期出版物（附录A） 总结了许多关于这个问题的理论和实证工作。 它表明，在文献中的各种共同发现， 选择（过匹配、欠匹配、匹配和变量偏好 延迟）可以包含在SET的一般规则中， 一个主要 寻找一直是编码和解码记忆的“单样本”规则 对于可变延迟。 客户对比偏好测试 泊松变异性，在实验室（和自然界）中常见， 可变延迟的独特新分布（后向指数），对于 该偏好不表现出迄今为止常见的不对称性。 一 计划继续开展这方面的工作， 利用时间概括程序的记忆延迟。 技术的发展，允许一个试验一个试验的分析， 记忆和反应方差的相对贡献。 竞争性延续的第二个重点是研究 习得联想的时间因素。 早期工作 在这个项目上，设想收购一个协会， 更好的感知，即更短的延迟，以强化提示， 条件刺激，相对于其他线索的情况。 的 目前的建议将解决早些时候在SET和SET之间形成的紧张关系， 联想学习的刺激竞争理论-- 这就是瑞斯科里亚-瓦格纳理论。 竞争理论 联想学习最初并不是为了解决时间问题而设计的， 预测性问题，而是要了解一些标志性的 学习过程的性质，阻塞和遮蔽。 集中的 相反，它是为了理解时间处理而设计的， 认真解决遮挡和遮蔽现象。 一些 非应急协议与应急协议领域的强有力设计 (e.g. Durlach，1983）都倾向于对语境阻塞的学习解释。 本提案的初步工作对这一解释提出了质疑。 拟议中的研究将试图推动时间之间的对比- 基于比较器理论和基于竞争的增量理论， 多个协会的出现。

Previous years on this project have seen the development of a formal 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 timed delays are remembered and discriminated in a variety of animal psychophysics preparations. The recent grant period has studied memory for aggregates of variable delays to reinforcement in contrast to memory for fixed delays. A recent publication (Appendix A) summarizes much of the theoretical and empirical work on this problem. It is shown there that a variety of common findings in the literature on choice (overmatching, undermatching, matching and preference for variable delay) may be subsumed within the general rubric of SET., A major finding has been the "one-sample" rule for encoding and decoding memory for variable delays. Tests of the account contrast preference for Poisson variability, common n the laboratory (and in nature), with a unique new distribution of variable delays (Backward exponential), for which preference does not exhibit the asymmetry heretofore common. A continuation of this line of work is planned examining these sets of delays in memory utilizing a temporal generalization procedure. Techniques are developed which permit a trial-by-trial analysis of the relative contribution of memory and response variance. A second focus of the competing continuation would study the role of temporal factors in the acquisition of learned associations. Early work on this project conceived of the acquisition of an association as the perception of a better, i.e. shorter, delay to reinforcement cued by the conditioned stimulus, relative to other cues in the situation. The present proposal will address a tension developed earlier between SET and alternative, stimulus competition theories of associative learning -- prototypically, the Rescoria-Wagner theory. Competition theories of associative learning were not originally designed to address temporal predictiveness problems, but rather to understand some hallmark properties of the learning process, blocking and overshadowing. SET, in contrast, was designed to understand temporal processing, and has not seriously addressed the blocking and overshadowing phenomena. Some strong designs in the area of non-contingent versus contingent protocols (e.g. Durlach, 1983) have favored a learning account of context blocking. Preliminary work for the present proposal challenges this interpretation. The proposed studies will attempt to push the contrast between a time- based comparator theory and a competition based incremental theory of the emergence of multiple associations.