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RAPID ACQUISITION IN CONCURRENT CHAINS: EVIDENCE FOR A DECISION MODEL
Author(s) -
Grace Randolph C.,
McLean Anthony P.
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.2006.72-04
Subject(s) - immediacy , interval (graph theory) , session (web analytics) , categorical variable , statistics , terminal (telecommunication) , psychology , computer science , mathematics , telecommunications , philosophy , epistemology , combinatorics , world wide web
Pigeons' choice in concurrent chains can adapt to rapidly changing contingencies. Grace, Bragason, and McLean (2003) found that relative initial‐link response rate was sensitive to the immediacy ratio in the current session when one of the terminal‐link fixed‐interval schedules was changed daily according to a pseudorandom binary sequence (e.g., Schofield & Davison, 1997). The present experiment tested whether the degree of variation in delays across sessions had any effect on acquisition rate in Grace et al.‘s (2003) rapid‐acquisition procedure. In one condition (“minimal variation”), the left terminal link was always fixed‐interval 8 s and the right terminal link was either fixed‐interval 4 s or fixed‐interval 16 s. In the other condition (“maximal variation”), a unique pair of fixed‐interval values was used in each session. Responding was sensitive to the current‐session immediacy ratio in both conditions, but across subjects there was no systematic difference in sensitivity. These results challenge the view that initial‐link responding in the rapid‐acquisition procedure is determined by changes in the learned value of the terminal‐link stimuli, and suggests instead that a process resembling categorical discrimination may control performance. A decision model based on the assumption that delays are categorized as short or long relative to the history of delays provided a good account of the data and shows promise in being able to explain other choice phenomena.