Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes This is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader or to display this data on your own website or blog.

The representation of stimulus conjunction in theories of associative learning: A context-dependent added-elements model.
This article briefly reviews 3 theories concerning elemental and configural approaches to stimulus representation in associative learning and presents a new context-dependent added-elements model (C-AEM). This model takes an elemental approach to stimulus representation where individual stimuli are represented by single units and stimulus compounds activate both those units and configurational units corresponding to each conjunction of 2 or more stimuli. Activity across these units is scaled such that each stimulus always contributes the same amount of activity to the system whether it is presented in isolation or in compo...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - July 30, 2020 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Elaboration of a model of Pavlovian learning and performance: HeiDI.
The model elaborated here adapts the influential pooled error term, first described by Wagner and Rescorla (Rescorla & Wagner, 1972; Wagner & Rescorla, 1972), to govern the formation of reciprocal associations between any pair of stimuli that are presented on a given trial. In the context of Pavlovian conditioning, these stimuli include various conditioned and unconditioned stimuli. This elaboration enables the model to deal with cue competition phenomena, including the relative validity effect, and evidence implicating separate error terms and attentional processes in association formation. The model also includes a perfo...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - July 30, 2020 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Special issue to commemorate the intellectual contributions of Allan R. Wagner.
This is an introduction to the special issue “Wagner Tribute.” Allan R. Wagner was the first editor in chief of this journal. It is difficult to quantitatively measure the impact that a single individual has on an entire discipline, but a brief consideration of Wagner’s research output provides some insight into both the breadth of his interests and depth of his influence. Furthermore, in one way or another the many contributions to this special issue will highlight the powerful role that Wagner’s empirical and theoretical work has played and continues to play in driving research into the nature of simple associati...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - July 30, 2020 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Correction of response error versus stimulus error in the extinction of discriminated operant learning.
Two experiments with rat subjects separated learning about the discriminative stimulus versus the operant response in the extinction of discriminated operant learning. Each was designed to separate 2 forms of error that could generate extinction learning from an error-correction perspective: Stimulus error, where the discriminative stimulus overpredicts the reinforcer in extinction, and response error, where the response is higher than what the current reinforcer supports. Stimulus error would cause correction of the Pavlovian stimulus-reinforcer association, whereas response error could cause correction of the instrumenta...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - July 27, 2020 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Experimentally revealed stochastic preferences for multicomponent choice options.
Realistic, everyday rewards contain multiple components. An apple has taste and size. However, we choose in single dimensions, simply preferring some apples to others. How can such single-dimensional preference relationships refer to multicomponent choice options? Here, we measured how stochastic choices revealed preferences for 2-component milkshakes. The preferences were intuitively graphed as indifference curves that represented the orderly integration of the 2 components as trade-off: parts of 1 component were given up for obtaining 1 additional unit of the other component without a change in preference. The well-order...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - July 27, 2020 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Geometry learning while navigating: The importance of task difficulty and sex differences.
Cheng (1986) trained male rats to search for food in a rectangular arena that also contained distinctive visual patterns. He found that the rats used mainly the geometric framework of the box itself to find the food and claimed that geometrical information is processed in a specialized module, which is independent of feature information. The aim of the present set of experiments was to check if the previous results with male rats and an appetitive task could be extended to an aversive task while using both male and female rats and three-dimensional landmarks. In Experiments 1 and 2, rats were trained in a rectangular-shape...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - May 14, 2020 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Context and renewal of habits and goal-directed actions after extinction.
Instrumental behaviors that are goal-directed actions after moderate amounts of training can become habits after more extended training. Little research has asked how actions and habits are affected by retroactive interference treatments like extinction. The present experiments begin to fill this gap in the literature. In Experiments 1a and 1b, lever pressing in rats was minimally trained (1a) or extensively trained (1b) in one context (Context A), extinguished in a second context (Context B), and then tested in the acquisition context (Context A). Exposure to both contexts was equated and controlled throughout, and the st...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - May 7, 2020 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Delays to food-predictive stimuli do not affect suboptimal choice in rats.
A variety of animals sometimes engage in a form of maladaptive decision-making characterized by repeatedly choosing an option providing food-predictive stimuli even though they earn less food for doing so. The temporal information-theoretic model suggests that such suboptimal choice depends on competition between the bits of temporal information conveyed by food-predictive stimuli (which encourages suboptimal choice) and the rate of food delivery (which encourages optimal choice). The model assumes that competition between these two sources of control is based on the ratio of the delay to food (Df) and the delay to food-pr...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - April 30, 2020 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Effect of pretrial running on running-based taste aversion learning in rats.
Voluntary wheel running works as an effective unconditioned stimulus (US) to establish conditioned taste aversion (CTA) in rats with a preceding taste solution as a conditioned stimulus (CS): repeated CS-US pairings evoke avoidance of the CS in the two-choice (CS vs. tap water) test administered at the end of the training. Experiment 1 demonstrated that exposure to running immediately before each CS-US trial alleviates CTA. Subsequent two experiments explored the characteristics of the proximal US-preexposure effect: the alleviation of CTA by the pretrial running was not affected by changing the background contexts between...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - April 16, 2020 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Effects of conditioned stimulus (CS) duration, intertrial interval, and I/T ratio on appetitive Pavlovian conditioning.
Pavlovian learning is influenced by at least 2 temporal variables: The time between the onset of the conditioned stimulus (CS) and presentation of the unconditioned stimulus (US), and the time between successive conditioning trials (the intertrial interval [ITI]). Wagner's Sometimes Opponent Process (SOP) model (e.g., 1981) provides a rich account of the effects of varying the absolute durations of CS and ITI. However, other theories have contrastingly emphasized the role of the relative durations of CS (T) and ITI (I). Three experiments with rats used an appetitive conditioning preparation to separate the two approaches. ...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - March 16, 2020 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Pavlovian conditioning under partial reinforcement: The effects of nonreinforced trials versus cumulative conditioned stimulus duration.
A core feature of associative models, such as those proposed by Allan Wagner (Rescorla & Wagner, 1972; Wagner, 1981), is that conditioning proceeds in a trial-by-trial fashion, with increments and decrements in associative strength occurring on each occasion that the conditioned stimulus (conditional stimulus, or CS) is present either with or without the unconditioned stimulus (US). A very different approach has been taken by theories that assume animals continuously accumulate information about the total length of time spent waiting for the US both during the CS and in the absence of the CS (e.g., Gallistel & Gibbon, 2000...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - March 12, 2020 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

A computational implementation of a Hebbian learning network and its application to configural forms of acquired equivalence.
We describe and report the results of computer simulations of the three-layer Hebbian network informally described by Honey, Close, and Lin (2010): A general account of discrimination that has been shaped by data from configural acquired equivalence experiments that are beyond the scope of alternative models. Simulations implemented a conditional principle-components analysis Hebbian learning algorithm and were of four published experimental demonstrations of configural acquired equivalence. Experiments involved training rats on appetitive biconditional discriminations in which discrete cues (w and x) signaled food deliver...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - July 8, 2019 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Evidence for motivational enhancement of sign-tracking behavior under reward uncertainty.
Reward uncertainty has been shown to invigorate rather than attenuate cue attraction and responding. For example, a number of findings have shown that partial reinforcement in autoshaping increases response rates to a conditioned stimulus (conditional stimulus) in comparison with continuous reinforcement. However, identifying the nature of this effect remains a topical question. The frustration theory posits that animals are frustrated by reward loss and predicts that enhanced responding results from higher response rates to conditional stimulus presentations that follow nonrewarded trials rather than rewarded trials. In c...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - May 13, 2019 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Crossing boundaries: Global reorientation following transfer from the inside to the outside of an arena.
In 2 spatial navigation experiments, human participants were asked to find a hidden goal (a WiFi signal) that was located in 1 of the right-angled corners of a kite-shaped (Experiment 1) or a cross-shaped (Experiment 2) virtual environment. Goal location was defined solely with respect to the geometry of the environment. Following this training, in a test conducted in extinction, participants were placed onto the outside of the same environments and asked to locate the WiFi signal. The results of both experiments revealed that participants spent more time searching in regions on the outside of the environments that were cl...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - May 9, 2019 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Rats engage in suboptimal choice when the delay to food is sufficiently long.
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 low-probability 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 tha...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - May 9, 2019 Category: Zoology Source Type: research