Dynamic Models of Reconditioning

描述（由申请人提供）：这些实验和相关的理论发展将使用连续条件反射和消退范式（自动塑造和负自持）来测量数千次试验中反应概率的变化。这些范式将方法的巴甫洛夫条件反射与阻碍方法的工具随变对立起来。试验持续时间、试验间隔时间的第一和第二时刻以及加固的概率是不同的。现有的条件作用和灭绝模型的相对可能性将根据这些数据进行比较。这些实验与传统实验的不同之处在于，数据中的自由度将大大超过模型中的自由度。其他实验将利用强化随变来改变对CS和背景的关注，从而将进度控制理论与联想条件反射联系起来。在其他实验中，上下文将被定位并以跟踪和延迟范式呈现，以测试上下文阻塞和保护模型。为了统一研究结果，将开发一种通过同时发生和即将发生的激励来控制目标反应的一般理论。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): These experiments and correlated theoretical development will measure changes in the probability of responding over thousands of trials using continual conditioning and extinction paradigms (autoshaping and negative automaintenance). These paradigms pit Pavlovian conditioning of approach against instrumental contingencies that discourage approach. Trial durations and the first and second moments of the intertrial interval and probability of reinforcement will be varied. The relative likelihood of existing models of conditioning and extinction will be compared in light of the data. These differ from traditional experiments in that the degrees of freedom in the data will vastly outnumber the degrees of freedom in the models. Other experiments will vary attention to the CS and background using reinforcement contingencies, to bridge a theory of schedule control to associative conditioning. In other experiments the context will be localized and presented in trace and delay paradigms to test a model of blocking-by and protecting-of context. A general theory of the control of target responses by concurrent and forthcoming incentives will be developed to unify the findings. This proposal will: (a) Provide a new test bed for models of associative conditioning; (b) develop analytic techniques to extract orders of magnitude more information from select experiments; (c) provide techniques for analysis of nonlinear dynamic conditioning paradigms, including spectral analyses and Hearst exponents; (d) address why the context can be more powerful than discrete CSs; and (e) develop a theory for the attraction to signs, and the handing-off of this attraction to their significates. Health implications: If people naturally behaved well, health promotion would be mundane. People do not behave well because they find the attraction to food, drugs, risk and aggression more powerful than attraction to the benefits of abstinence. This proposal is predicated on a theory of approach to attractors and signs of them. It provides new measurement tools for the vacillation in motivations over epochs of abstinence and relapse. It embeds the theory of conditioning in a real-time, closed-loop context, and develops requisite analytic tools. The pigeon's attraction to a response that has proven self-defeating a thousand times is perhaps not different in kind than an addict's craving and relapse. By providing statistically powerful tests of competing models of underlying behavioral machinery, we may get closer to understanding how to mitigate such fatal obsessions.