THEORY OF ANIMAL TIMING: LEARNING AND REMEMBERING AGGRE

在过去的几年里，动物计时的正式理论，标量 期望理论（SET）已经发展并应用于广泛的 时间控制在动物学习中的发现。 理论和实验， 日期一直集中在理解预期，或期望， 在固定的强化，良好的学习延迟。 这就意味着 该理论的应用主要集中在动物心理物理学上 准备和仪器和经典条件作用的情况 包括标准化的固定的刺激间隔。 虽然数量可观， 成功在这里被发现，这是研究选择的常用技术 基于时间的奖励效用表下的动物行为 可变延迟，其中选择方案是随机的，尽管 平均值通常是恒定的。 实验引入的可变性 揭示了学习实验室中的一些重要问题。 最 其中值得注意的也许是“匹配定律”，根据哪种选择 比例近似匹配相应的预混比例。 匹配，以及基于时间的变量选择的推论 替代品，必然是基于对聚合物的某种评价， 这些延迟。 这一建议解决的问题是， 在各种环境中被学习、记忆和歧视。 在 特别是，该理论适用于描述恒定概率（泊松 过程）的可变间隔时间表的奖励，并解决了匹配 法律和监管调查结果。 第二个重点是理解 当这些集合体构成时， 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， 区分可变集合与固定和可变的选择。 的 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。

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.