The uncertainty processing theory of motivation

Anselme, Patrick

doi:10.1016/j.bbr.2009.12.020

Cited by 72 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 230 publications

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“…Egger and Miller's (1962) seminal research on the blocking of stimulus control by a more predictive stimulus, followed by the landmark analyses of Rescorla (starting with Rescorla, 1967), revolutionized our conception of Pavlovian conditioning and underscored the importance of informativeness in conditioning (Rescorla, 1988). Recent work continues to enrich and exploit this hypothesis (Anselme, 2010;Balleine & Dickinson, 1998;Ward et al, 2012). (The discovery of robust backward conditioning (Keith-Lucas & Guttman, 1975) provides an interesting challenge to this approach, since the informativeness of a stimulus that postdicts reinforcement should be overshadowed by the immediately prior reinforcer itself.…”

Section: Originsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adjunctive behaviors are operants

Killeen

Pellón

2013

Learn Behav

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Adjunctive behaviors such as scheduleinduced polydipsia are said to be induced by periodic delivery of incentives, but not reinforced by them. That standard treatment assumes that contingency is necessary for conditioning and that delay of reinforcement gradients are very steep. The arguments and evidence for this position are reviewed and rejected. In their place, data are presented that imply different gradients for different classes of responses. Proximity between response and reinforcer, rather than contingency or contiguity, is offered as a key principle of association. These conceptions organize a wide variety of observations and provide the rudiments for a more general theory of conditioning.Keywords Adjunctive . Conditioning . Contingency . Contiguity . Proximity . Schedule inducedResponse acquisition with delayed reinforcement is a robust phenomenon that may not depend on a mechanically defined response or an immediate external stimulus change to mediate the temporal gap between response and reinforcer. Critchfield and Lattal (1993, p. 373) Schedule-induced drinking as the prototypical adjunctive behavior: Arguments against reinforcement Ever since the laboratory discovery of adjunctive behavioralso known as schedule-induced or interim behavior-by John Falk (1961), analysts have treated these anomalies as belonging to a separate class of behavior, induced by incentives such as periodic food, but not reinforced by them. The discovery of adjunctive behavior was a bombshell in the behavioral community, since it seemed an exception to the orderly account of all behavior subsumed under the tripartite hegemony of operant, respondent, and unconditioned responses. What were the implications for the Skinnerian project of applied behavior analysis, if so substantial a proportion of the behavior that was induced by reinforcement was adamant to control by reinforcement? In the case of schedule-induced polydipsia, Falk (1971) voiced the contemporary amazement:It was an outright absurd [finding]. It was absurd because food deprivation in rats yields a decrease in water intake, not an increase. It was absurd because heating a large quantity of room-temperature water to body heat and expelling it as copious urine is wasteful for an animal already pressed for energy stores by food deprivation. It is absurd for an animal to drink itself into a dilutional hyponatremia bordering on water intoxication. But perhaps most absurd was not the lack of a metabolic or patho-regulatory reason for the polydipsia, but the lack of an acceptable behavioral account. (p. 577) Falk detailed the arguments against various "acceptable behavioral accounts," which he summarized in the following: "Polydipsia is not the result of food delivery directly or adventitiously reinforcing water intake. Nor does it serve a problem-solving mediational, or timing function. Furthermore, drinking is not an unconditioned

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Section: Originsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Adjunctive behaviors are operants

Killeen

Pellón

2013

Learn Behav

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“…Uncertainty is determined by the probability P, that an event will occur, "being maximal at P ¼ 0.5 and decreasing at higher and lower probabilities" (Fiorillo, Tobler, & Wolfram Schultz, 2003, p. 1898. Anselme (2010) has shown that uncertain events can motivate individuals. The release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter which is associated with reward-seeking behavior (Arias-Carrión & Pöppel, 2007) increases as the uncertainty of stimulus-reward relationship is increased.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of uncertainty on learning in game-like environments

Ozcelik

Çağıltay

Ozcelik

2013

Computers & Education

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a b s t r a c tConsidering the role of games for educational purposes, there has an increase in interest among educators in applying strategies used in popular games to create more engaging learning environments. Learning is more fun and appealing in digital educational games and, as a result, it may become more effective. However, few research studies have been conducted to establish principles based on empirical research for designing engaging and entertaining games so as to improve learning. One of the essential characteristics of games that has been unexplored in the literature is the concept of uncertainty. This study examines the effect of uncertainty on learning outcomes. In order to better understand this effect on learning, a game-like learning tool was developed to teach a database concept in higher education programs of software engineering. The tool is designed in two versions: one including uncertainty and the other including no uncertainty. The experimental results of this study reveal that uncertainty enhances learning. Uncertainty is found to be positively associated with motivation. As motivation increases, participants tend to spend more time on answering the questions and to have higher accuracy in these questions.

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“…Schultz and colleagues think that dopamine is a signal for learning when prediction error is greater than zero, but there is substantial evidence that the alteration of dopamine levels has no direct effect on learning ability (Berridge 2007). Thus, another interpretation of this phenomenon may be that a limited number of exposures to a Pavlovian association remain insufficient to guarantee that reward delivery will follow the conditioned cue-some uncertainty subsists with respect to its delivery (see Anselme 2010). In contrast, a larger number of exposures to the association will reduce any doubt regarding reward delivery-its delivery becomes almost certain.…”

Section: Uncertainty Dopamine and Incentive Motivationmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…Demodularisation through the dopamine-acetylcholine pathway Many brain regions and neurotransmitters are involved in the control of motivation, but the so-called 'dopamineacetylcholine pathway' (Anselme 2010) and its psychological correlates encompass them to a large extent. The dopamine-acetylcholine pathway originates in the ventral tegmental area, where midbrain dopamine is partly produced.…”

Section: The Dual Process Of Demodularisation-remodularisationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modularity of mind and the role of incentive motivation in representing novelty

Anselme

2012

Anim Cogn

Self Cite

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Animal and human brains contain a myriad of mental representations that have to be successfully tracked within fractions of a second in a large number of situations. This retrieval process is hard to explain without postulating the massive modularity of cognition. Assuming that the mind is massively modular, it is then necessary to understand how cognitive modules can efficiently represent dynamic environments-in which some modules may have to deal with change-induced novelty and uncertainty. Novelty of a stimulus is a problem for a module when unknown, significant stimuli do not satisfy the module's processing criteria-or domain specificity-and cannot therefore be included in its database. It is suggested that the brain mechanisms of incentive motivation, recruited when faced with novelty and uncertainty, induce transient variations in the domain specificity of cognitive modules in order to allow them to process information they were not prepared to learn. It is hypothesised that the behavioural transitions leading from exploratory activity to habit formation are correlated with (and possibly caused by) the organism's ability to counter novelty-induced uncertainty.

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The uncertainty processing theory of motivation

Cited by 72 publications

References 230 publications

Adjunctive behaviors are operants

Adjunctive behaviors are operants

The effect of uncertainty on learning in game-like environments

Modularity of mind and the role of incentive motivation in representing novelty

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