THEORY OF ANIMAL TIMING--MEMORY AND CHOICE

在这个项目上的前几年已经看到了一个量化的发展 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范围。过去的工作已经分析了这种方式 在这种情况下，时间延迟被记住并在各种 动物心理物理准备。之前的授权期还包括 研究了联想学习中的时间控制问题，并解决了一些问题 SBT与另类刺激竞争理论之间的紧张关系 联想学习，典型的Rescorla-Wagner理论。 竞技性延续的主要焦点是研究 连续选择情况下的记忆采样率。最近的一些 对我们之前关于同时选择的描述(匹配定律， Herrnstein，1961)进行了深入的分析。配对是一种精心设计的 这一现象有很大的文献，但直到最近才有 能够区分不同的分子机制。 本提案的主要贡献是对 在并发选择中访问内存的自由运行速率 情况。这导致了一个形式上是马尔科夫链的系统 空间和时间。我们解释了自相矛盾的偏好结果。 由内存的采样速率和 对给定备选方案进行选择的概率。应用 在这些思路中，向双向和三向选择是被追求的。这样做的一个结果是 分析是对在以下两种情况下进行选择的类比的描述 猎物类型和对猎物的延迟，这是经典的饮食选择问题。晚些时候 项目的重点是研究备选方案的并行选择问题 是平均回报率，类似于 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.