Numerous examples in the decision-making literature demonstrate that animals sometimes make choices that are not in their long-term best interest. One particular example finds pigeons preferring a lowprobability alternative in lieu of a high-probability alternative, referred to as suboptimal choice. Although there is ample evidence that pigeons engage in such suboptimal choice, there is currently weak evidence (at best) that rats also do so. Cunningham and Shahan's (2018) temporal information-theoretic model suggests that suboptimal choice in pigeons arises when (1) the low-probability alternative provides stimuli that convey more temporal information than stimuli associated with the high-probability alternative and (2) when the delay to food is much longer relative to the delay to temporally informative signals at the choice point. The latter condition plays the important role of biasing decision making to be governed by the relative temporal information conveyed by stimuli rather than the relative rate of food delivery. The present experiment explored the possibility that rats will engage in suboptimal choice if the delay to food at the choice point is sufficiently long, as the temporal information-theoretic model suggests. Rats were given a choice between a suboptimal alternative providing food 20% of the time and an optimal alternative providing food 50% of the time. The suboptimal alternative provided stimuli that differentially signaled choice outcomes whereas the optimal alternative did not. The postchoice delay was manipulated across conditions and ranged from 10 s to 50 s. As with previous research, rats did not engage in suboptimal choice when the postchoice delay was 10 s. However, once the delay was at least 30 s, rats engaged in suboptimal choice. These results are consistent with the temporal informationtheoretic model of suboptimal choice and suggest that rats and pigeons likely do not differ in the decision-making processes involved in the suboptimal choice procedure.
Suboptimal choice refers to preference for an alternative offering a low probability of food (suboptimal alternative) over an alternative offering a higher probability of food (optimal alternative). Numerous studies have found that stimuli signaling probabilistic food play a critical role in the development and maintenance of suboptimal choice. However, there is still much debate about how to characterize how these stimuli influence suboptimal choice. There is substantial evidence that the temporal information conveyed by a food-predictive signal governs its function as both a Pavlovian conditioned stimulus and as an instrumental conditioned reinforcer. Thus, we explore the possibility that food-predictive signals influence suboptimal choice via the temporal information they convey. Application of this temporal information-theoretic approach to suboptimal choice provides a formal, quantitative framework that describes how food-predictive signals influence suboptimal choice in a manner consistent with related phenomena in Pavlovian conditioning and conditioned reinforcement. Our reanalysis of previous data on suboptimal choice suggests that, generally speaking, preference in the suboptimal choice procedure tracks relative temporal information conveyed by food-predictive signals for the suboptimal and optimal alternatives. The model suggests that suboptimal choice develops when the food-predictive signal for the suboptimal alternative conveys more temporal information than that for the optimal alternative. Finally, incorporating a role for competition between temporal information provided by food-predictive signals and relative primary reinforcement rate provides a reasonable account of existing data on suboptimal choice. (PsycINFO Database Record
We review quantitative accounts of behavioral momentum theory (BMT), its application to clinical treatment, and its extension to post-intervention relapse of target behavior. We suggest that its extension can account for relapse using reinstatement and renewal models, but that its application to resurgence is flawed both conceptually and in its failure to account for recent data. We propose that the enhanced persistence of target behavior engendered by alternative reinforcers is limited to their concurrent availability within a distinctive stimulus context. However, a failure to find effects of stimulus-correlated reinforcer rates in a Pavlovian-to-Instrumental Transfer (PIT) paradigm challenges even a straightforward Pavlovian account of alternative reinforcer effects. BMT has been valuable in understanding basic research findings and in guiding clinical applications and accounting for their data, but alternatives are needed that can account more effectively for resurgence while encompassing basic data on resistance to change as well as other forms of relapse.
The idea that stimuli might function as conditioned reinforcers because of the information they convey about primary reinforcers has a long history in the study of learning. However, formal application of information theory to conditioned reinforcement has been largely abandoned in modern theorizing because of its failures with respect to observing behavior. In this paper we show how recent advances in the application of information theory to Pavlovian conditioning offer a novel approach to conditioned reinforcement. The critical feature of this approach is that calculations of information are based on reductions of uncertainty about expected time to primary reinforcement signaled by a conditioned reinforcer. Using this approach, we show that previous failures of information theory with observing behavior can be remedied, and that the resulting framework produces predictions similar to Delay Reduction Theory in both observing-response and concurrent-chains procedures. We suggest that the similarity of these predictions might offer an analytically grounded reason for why Delay Reduction Theory has been a successful theory of conditioned reinforcement. Finally, we suggest that the approach provides a formal basis for the assertion that conditioned reinforcement results from Pavlovian conditioning and may provide an integrative approach encompassing both domains.
Sunk cost sensitivity describes escalating decision commitment with increased spent resources. On neuroeconomic foraging tasks, mice, rats, and humans show similar escalations from sunk costs while quitting an ongoing countdown to reward. In a new analysis taken across computationally parallel foraging tasks across species and laboratories, we find that these behaviors primarily occur on choices that are economically inconsistent with the subject’s other choices, and that they reflect not only the time spent, but also the time remaining, suggesting that these are change-of-mind re-evaluation processes. Using a recently proposed change-of-mind drift-diffusion model, we find that the sunk cost sensitivity in this model arises from decision-processes that directly take into account the time spent (costs sunk). Applying these new insights to experimental data, we find that sensitivity to sunk costs during re-evaluation decisions depends on the information provided to the subject about the time spent and the time remaining.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.