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AUTOSHAPED HEAD POKING IN THE MOUSE: A QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE LEARNING CURVE
Author(s) -
Papachristos Efstathios B.,
Gallistel C. R.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
journal of the experimental analysis of behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.75
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1938-3711
pISSN - 0022-5002
DOI - 10.1901/jeab.2006.71-05
Subject(s) - session (web analytics) , scopolamine , latency (audio) , learning curve , head (geology) , psychology , computer science , audiology , cognitive psychology , artificial intelligence , medicine , anesthesia , biology , telecommunications , paleontology , world wide web , operating system
In autoshaping experiments, we quantified the acquisition of anticipatory head poking in individual mice, using an algorithm that finds changes in the slope of a cumulative record. In most mice, upward changes in the amount of anticipatory poking per trial were abrupt, and tended to occur at session boundaries, suggesting that the session is as significant a unit of experience as the trial. There were large individual differences in the latency to the onset of vigorous responding. “Asymptotic” performance was unstable; large, bidirectional, and relatively enduring changes were common. Given the characteristics of the individual learning curves, it is unlikely that physiologically meaningful estimates of rate of learning can be extracted from group‐average learning curves.