Timed excitatory conditioning under zero and negative contingencies.

Williams, Douglas A.; Lawson, Carla; Cook, Rachel; Mather, Amber A.; Johns, Kenneth W.

doi:10.1037/0097-7403.34.1.94

Cited by 25 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…A fixed 30-s interval between CS and US led to accurately timed responding, such that response rates rose across the first 30 s of the CS, and then decreased again for the next 30 s. A variable CS-US interval led to a sharp rise in responding at CS onset that remained elevated for the full length of the CS. Both findings replicate previous demonstrations (Church et al, 1994;Harris & Carpenter, 2011;Smith, 1968;Williams et al, 2008), and show that conditioned responses track the expected time of US arrival. Nonetheless, there was a modest fall in response rate across the CS in Group VT30, evident in Figure 3C, that has not been observed in our previous experiments using variable CS-US intervals.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

“…This timing of CRs was described by Pavlov (1927) and has been reported in many conditioning paradigms across many different species including rats, rabbits, pigeons and fish (e.g., Davis, Schlesinger, & Sorenson, 1989;Drew, Zupan, Cooke, Couvillon, & Balsam, 2005;Kehoe & Joscelyne, 2005;W. A. Roberts, Cheng, & Cohen, 1989;Smith, 1968;Williams, Lawson, Cook, Mather, & Johns, 2008). Timing of CRs is most clearly revealed using the peak procedure.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 64%

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Changes in the distribution of response rates across the CS-US interval: Evidence that responding switches between two distinct states.

Harris

2015

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cogniti

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Two experiments used the peak procedure to examine timing of conditioned responses in a magazine approach paradigm with rats. A conditioned stimulus (CS) was reinforced with food on 50% of trials. Food was delivered at a fixed time, either 20 s, 30 s or 40 s into the CS presentation. Response rates were recorded during non-reinforced CS presentations that extended well beyond the scheduled time of food delivery. The mean response rate (averaged over many trials) increased during the CS, peaking at the expected time of reinforcement, and decreased again. Detailed analyses of the frequency distribution of response rates showed that responding was described by two distinct distributions, consistent with the rat being in a low response state on some trials and in a high response state on other trials. Modeling of these frequency distributions showed that the systematic rise and fall in response rate across a trial was primarily explained by a change in the proportion of time that the rat spent in the low versus high response state. However, the change in responding was also explained in part by a continuous shift in the high response state, such that responding in that state increased and then decreased gradually across the trial. These results support accounts that describe response timing as an abrupt change from low to high responding during the CS, but also provide evidence for a continuous change in conditioning strength across the duration of the CS. The implications of these findings for timing and associative theories of conditioning are discussed.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 64%

Changes in the distribution of response rates across the CS-US interval: Evidence that responding switches between two distinct states.

Harris

2015

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cogniti

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“…In all the experiments reported by Harris and Carpenter, the CS-US interval varied randomly from trial to trial, whereas in all the experiments by Bouton and Sunsay the CS-US interval was fixed for every trial (as is true of most delay conditioning experiments). This means that Bouton and Sunsay's rats were almost certainly learning the fixed timing of the US, and their response rates as time elapsed during the CS would have varied accordingly, as has been shown in many Pavlovian conditioning paradigms (Church, Meck, & Gibbon, 1994;Davis, Schlesinger, & Sorenson, 1989;Kehoe & Joscelyne, 2005;Pavlov, 1927;Roberts, 1981;Smith, 1968;Williams, Lawson, Cook, Mather, & Johns, 2008). Given this, it is likely that all points in time during the CS were not alike in terms of their impact on what the rats learned about the rate of reinforcement.…”

mentioning

confidence: 96%

Pavlovian conditioning and cumulative reinforcement rate.

Harris¹,

Patterson²,

Gharaei³

2015

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cogniti

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In five experiments using delay conditioning of magazine approach with rats, reinforcement rate was varied either by manipulating the mean interval between onset of the conditioned stimulus (CS) and unconditioned stimulus (US) or by manipulating the proportion of CS presentations that ended with the US (trial-based reinforcement rate). Both manipulations influenced the acquisition of responding. In each experiment, a specific comparison was made between two CSs that differed in their mean CS-US interval and in their trial-based reinforcement rate, such that the cumulative reinforcement rate-the cumulative duration of the CS between reinforcements-was the same for the two CSs. For example, a CS reinforced on 100% of trials with a mean CS-US interval of 60 s was compared with a CS reinforced on 33% of trials and a mean duration of 20 s. Across the five experiments, conditioning was virtually identical for the two CSs with matched cumulative reinforcement rate. This was true as long as the timing of the US was unpredictable, and thus response rates were uniform across the length of the CS. We conclude that the effects of CS-US interval and of trial-based reinforcement rate are reducible entirely to their common effect on cumulative reinforcement rate. We discuss the implications of this for rate-based, trial-based and real-time associative models of conditioning.

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“…Thus the passage of time within a trial is coded by a temporally-distributed representation of the CS, and it is this distribution that accounts for the emergence of timed responses to fixed duration CSs. Such "real time" extensions of the Rescorla-Wagner model have proved very successful in accounting for experimental demonstrations of timing in delay conditioning (Joscelyne & Kehoe, 2007;Kehoe, Horne, Macrae, & Horne, 1993;Williams et al, 2008). They have also been used to great effect in modeling the behavior of dopaminergic neurons in substantia nigra of awake monkeys (Ludwig, Sutton, & Kehoe, 2008).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, when animals are trained with a fixed duration CS whose offset coincides with the US, known as "delay conditioning", the frequency of CRs increases over the time course of the CS, typically peaking near the time of US presentation (e.g., Davis, Schlesigner, & Sorenson, 1989;Kehoe & Joscelyne, 2005;Pavlov, 1927;Roberts, 1981;Smith, 1968;Williams, Lawson, Cook, Mather, & Johns, 2008). Indeed, recent evidence suggests that information about the timing of the US can be more important than contingency in determining whether an animal learns a CS-US association (Williams et al, 2008). Such withintrial features of conditioned behavior are not within the explanatory realm of simple trialbased models.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Response rates track the history of reinforcement times.

Harris¹,

Gharaei²,

Pincham³

2011

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes

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When conditioning involves a consistent temporal relationship between the conditioned stimulus (CS) and unconditioned stimulus (US), the expression of conditioned responses within a trial peaks at the usual time of the US relative to the CS. Here we examine the temporal profile of responses during conditioning with variable CS-US intervals. We conditioned stimuli with either uniformly distributed or exponentially distributed random CS-US intervals. In the former case, the frequency of each CS-US interval within a specified range is uniform but the momentary probability of the US (the hazard function) increases as time elapses during the trial; with the latter distribution, short CS-US intervals are more frequent than longer intervals, but the momentary probability of the US is constant across time within the trial. We report that, in a magazine approach paradigm, rats' response rates remained stable as time elapses during the CS when the CS-US intervals were uniformly distributed, whereas their response rates declined when the CS-US intervals were exponentially distributed. In other words, the profile of responding during the CS matched the frequency distribution of the US times, not the momentary probability of the US during the CS. These results are inconsistent with real-time associative models, which predict that associative strength tracks the momentary probability of the US, but may provide support for timing models of conditioning in which conditioned responding is tied to remembered times of reinforcement.

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Timed excitatory conditioning under zero and negative contingencies.

Cited by 25 publications

References 47 publications

Changes in the distribution of response rates across the CS-US interval: Evidence that responding switches between two distinct states.

Changes in the distribution of response rates across the CS-US interval: Evidence that responding switches between two distinct states.

Pavlovian conditioning and cumulative reinforcement rate.

Response rates track the history of reinforcement times.

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