About Skinner and Time: Behavior‐analytic Contributions to Research on Animal Timing

Lejeune, Helga; Richelle, Marc; Wearden, J. H.

doi:10.1901/jeab.2006.85.04

Cited by 29 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 79 publications

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“…Skinner developed the FI schedule in his book The Behavior of Organisms (Skinner, 1938), and properties of performance on FI schedules were further explored in Ferster and Skinner (1957). However, for largely ideological reasons, discussed in Lejeune, Richelle, and Wearden (2006), he was not concerned with theoretical analyses of temporal control. Another schedule invented by Skinner which has attracted considerable interest in the animal timing literature is the so-called differential reinforcement of low rate (DRL).…”

Section: Timing In Early Animal Research: Pavlov and Skinnermentioning

confidence: 99%

The Psychology of Time Perception

Wearden

2016

125

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Section: Timing In Early Animal Research: Pavlov and Skinnermentioning

confidence: 99%

The Psychology of Time Perception

Wearden

2016

125

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“…There are multiple paradigms for assessing timing function in humans and other nonhuman animals [24]. Two of the most common are time discriminations (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Frontal brain injury chronically impairs timing behavior in rats

Scott

Haar

2019

Behavioural Brain Research

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Traumatic brain injury (TBI) affects over 2.8 million people annually, and has been shown to increase motor impulsivity in both humans and animals. However, the root cause of this behavioral disinhibition is not fully understood. The goal of the current study was to evaluate whether timing behavior is disrupted after TBI, which could potentially explain increases in impulsive responding. Twenty-one male three-month old Long-Evans rats were trained on a fixed interval-18 s schedule. Following training, rats were placed on the Peak Interval Procedure, with intermittent peak trials. On peak trials, no behaviors were reinforced and response rates were recorded to determine timing ability. After reaching a stable baseline, rats received bilateral frontal TBI (n = 12) using controlled cortical impact or sham procedures (n = 9). After one week recovery, rats were re-assessed on the Peak Procedure for six weeks. An amphetamine challenge was carried out after behavior reached stable post-injury performance. TBI caused a chronic decrease/acceleration in peak time, increase in response variability, and reduction in response rate. The shifted peak time suggests that altered perception of time may contribute to impairments in response inhibition after TBI. Amphetamine significantly increased response variability, with TBI animals demonstrating greater sensitivity, but did not affect peak time in either group. These data suggest that timing may not be the sole factor explaining impulsive action after TBI given that amphetamine reduced motor impulsivity in prior studies. Further investigations will be needed to dissociate the effects of amphetamine on TBI with regard to timing behavior.

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“…A review published by Lejeune, Richelle, and Wearden (2006) calls our attention to the importance of the work with the fixed-interval (FI) schedules of Ferster and Skinner (1957) for the study of interval timing in animals (e.g., Staddon & Cerutti, 2003). Timing behavior or the temporal control of behavior is the capacity to adjust behavior to temporal regularities in the environment in the range of seconds to minutes (Machado, Malheiro, & Erlhagen, 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Fixed-interval pause duration in chained fixed-ratio, fixed-interval schedules.

Todorov¹,

Carvalho²,

Couto³

et al. 2012

Psychology & Neuroscience

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Ten rats were submitted to chained fixed-ratio (FR), fixed-interval (FI) schedules of reinforcement. A FR schedule at one lever produced a discriminative stimulus associated with a FI 60-s schedule of primary reinforcement (water) at the second response lever. In Experiment 1, the FI schedule was kept constant while the FR requirement was changed from one to seven responses under five different experimental conditions for five rats. Increases in the FR requirement resulted in increases in postreinforcement pauses but also decreases in pauses in the FI schedule. Using another five rats, Experiment 2 tested the hypothesis that short pauses in the FI schedule result from the use of the chained schedules procedure. Baseline was a FI 80-s schedule. In the second condition, chained FR 1 FI 80-s schedules were programmed. The third condition was a return to baseline. In baselines 1 and 2, the FI pause was compatible with the literature but decreased considerably when a chained schedule was used. The present results support the hypothesis that the time between primary reinforcement presentations dominates the control of FI pauses over control by the onset of a discriminative stimulus.

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About Skinner and Time: Behavior‐analytic Contributions to Research on Animal Timing

Cited by 29 publications

References 79 publications

The Psychology of Time Perception

The Psychology of Time Perception

Frontal brain injury chronically impairs timing behavior in rats

Fixed-interval pause duration in chained fixed-ratio, fixed-interval schedules.

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