Animal timing: a synthetic approach

Carvalho, Marilia Pinheiro de; Machado, Armando; Vasconcelos, Marco

doi:10.1007/s10071-016-0977-2

Cited by 16 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 107 publications

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“…One of the main differences between the original and the hybrid LeT model is that in the latter only one state is active at a time. Although the essence of the model remained the same, this and other minor changes broadened the scope of the model (see Carvalho, Machado & Vasconcelos, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of reinforcement probability on time discrimination in the midsession reversal task

Santos

Soares

Vasconcelos

et al. 2019

J Exper Analysis Behavior

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We examined how biasing time perception affects choice in a midsession reversal task. Given a simultaneous discrimination between stimuli S1 and S2, with choices of S1 reinforced during the first, but not the second half of the trials, and choices of S2 reinforced during the second, but not the first half of the trials, pigeons show anticipation errors (premature choices of S2) and perseveration errors (belated choices of S1). This suggests that choice depends on timing processes, on predicting when the contingency reverses based on session duration. We exposed 7 pigeons to a midsession reversal task and manipulated the reinforcement rate on each half of the session. Compared to equal reinforcement rates on both halves of the session, when the reinforcement rate on the first half was lower than on the second half, performance showed more anticipation and less perseveration errors, and when the reinforcement rate on the first half was higher than on the second half, performance showed a remarkable reduction of both types of errors. These results suggest that choice depends on both time into the session and the outcome of previous trials. They also challenge current models of timing to integrate local effects.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of reinforcement probability on time discrimination in the midsession reversal task

Santos

Soares

Vasconcelos

et al. 2019

J Exper Analysis Behavior

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“…Next we turned to an old, and largely unexplained observation [23] of "psychometric reversals" for probe durations longer than the "long" reference [32,33,35] . The data led authors of these studies to propose, as we do, that non-human subjects do not classify durations simply based on the traditionally assumed perceptual similarity strategy.…”

Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The probe duration they report with equal probability as being most similar to "long" or "short" is referred to as the point of subjective equality, or bisection point. The position of this categorization boundary offers clues as to how time is represented and how durations are compared mentally [14,16,22,23] .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Controlling for temporal discounting shifts rats from geometric to human-like arithmetic bisection

Kopec

Brody

2018

Preprint

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How our brains measure the passage of time is still largely open for debate. One behavioral task commonly used to study how durations are perceived is the Temporal Bisection Task, in which subjects categorize time durations as either "short" or "long." The duration equally likely to be categorized as short or long is known as the bisection point. It has been consistently demonstrated that for humans, the bisection point is near the arithmetic mean of the longest and shortest durations the subject was trained on. In contrast, for non-human subjects it has been consistently found near the geometric mean. This difference implies that humans may process or represent temporal durations differently than other species. Here we present a behavioral model that reconciles the differences by demonstrating that rats' performance on this task is driven not only by their noisy estimates of duration, but also by the temporally-discounted value of future rewards. The model correctly predicts shifts in the bisection point induced by unequal rewards and explains otherwise-paradoxical psychometric reversals documented three decades ago. Furthermore, as predicted by the model, we found that modifying the Temporal Bisection Task to eliminate the temporally-discounted reward component shifted the rats' bisection point from the geometric mean to the arithmetic mean, thus bringing the rat results into line with the human results. We therefore propose that humans and rats (and perhaps other non-human subjects as well) process temporal information similarly, and that the difference between them in the Temporal Bisection Task may be simply due to rats weighing temporal discounting of future rewards more strongly than humans.

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“…Important to note, because time is based on the diffusion of activation across many states, this model does not experience the same problems as standard behavioral timing theory when faced with variable behavior as subjects time. The learning-to-time model has been applied recently to understanding how temporal generalization gradients can explain a wealth of behavioral data (de Carvalho, Machado, & Vasconcelos, 2016).…”

Section: What's Time Without a Clock? Models Of Interval Timingmentioning

confidence: 99%