THEORY OF ANIMAL TIMING--LEARNING AND REMEMBERING

动物时间理论——学习和记忆

• 批准号: 3380386
• 负责人: JOHN GIBBON
• 金额: $ 8.44万
• 依托单位: NEW YORK STATE PSYCHIATRIC INSTITUTE DBA RESEARCH FOUNDATION FOR MENTAL HYGIENE, INC
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 1986
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1986-04-01 至 1989-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/3380386
• 关键词: discrimination learning; expectancy; memory; psychophysics; stimulus interval; time perception

Over the past several years a formal theory of animal timing, Scalar Expectancy Theory (SET), has been developed and applied to a wide range of temporal control findings in animal learning. Theory and experiment to date have been focused on understanding anticipation, or expectancy, of reinforcement at fixed, well learned delays. This has meant that applications of the theory have been mainly focused on animal psychophysics preparations and instrumental and classical conditioning situations involving standardized, fixed interstimulus intervals. While considerable success has been found here, a frequent technique for studying choice behavior of animals under temporally based schedules of reward utillizes variable delays, in which the choice alternatives are stochastic, although generally constant in the mean. Variability introduced experimentally has revealed some important regularities in the learning laboratory. The most notable of these perhaps the "Matching Law", according to which choice proportions approximately match corresponding reinforcer proportions. Matching, and corollary regularities in choice for variable, time-based alternatives, are perforce based on some appreciation of aggregations of these delays. This proposal addresses the problem of how such aggregates are learned, remembered, and discriminated in a variety of settings. In particular, the theory is adapted to describe constant probability (Poisson process) variable interval schedules of reward, and addresses the Matching Law and regulated findings. A second focus is addressed to understanding the memory structure for these aggregates when they constitute discriminative stimuli rather than delays to reinforcement. Subjects will be tested in an animal psychophysics setting for their ability to discriminate variable ensembles from fixed and variable alternatives. The psychophysical task requires a very different response strategy, but it is based on the same memory for time. Hence, the research should reveal structural properties of memories.

在过去的几年里，一种正式的动物计时理论——标量 期望理论（SET）已被发展并应用于广泛的领域 动物学习中的时间控制发现。 理论与实验 日期的重点是了解预期或期望 在固定的、经过充分学习的延迟处进行强化。 这意味着 该理论的应用主要集中在动物心理物理学上 准备工作以及器乐和古典条件训练情况 涉及标准化、固定的刺激间隔。 虽然相当可观 在这里发现了成功，这是研究选择的常用技巧 动物在基于时间的奖励计划下的行为利用 可变延迟，其中选择方案是随机的，尽管 一般情况下均值恒定。 实验引入的变异性有 揭示了学习实验室中的一些重要规律。 最 其中值得注意的也许是“匹配法”，根据该选择 比例大致匹配相应的强化物比例。 变量、基于时间的选择的匹配和推论规律 替代方案，必然基于对聚合的某种理解 这些延误。 该提案解决了此类聚合如何 在各种环境中被学习、被记住和被歧视。 在 特别是，该理论适用于描述常数概率（泊松 过程）可变间隔的奖励计划，并解决匹配问题 法律和监管调查结果。 第二个重点是理解 这些聚合体构成时的记忆结构 区别性刺激而不是延迟强化。 受试者将 在动物心理物理学环境中测试他们的能力 将可变集成与固定和可变替代方案区分开来。 这 心理物理任务需要非常不同的反应策略，但它是 基于相同的时间记忆。 因此，研究应该揭示 记忆的结构特性。