Rats' optimal choice behavior in a gambling-like task

Orduña, Vladimir; Alba, Rodrigo

doi:10.1016/j.beproc.2019.02.002

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…Support for this idea comes from an analysis that highlights that in most of the studies that have reported suboptimality in rats, the perceptual salience of the predictor of reinforcement has been higher than that of the blackout used as a predictor of nonreinforcement (Chow et al, 2017; Cunningham & Shahan, 2019, 2020). However, it is worth noting also that most of the studies that report optimal behavior in rats have been performed with Wistar rats (Alba et al, 2018; Martínez et al, 2017; Orduña & Alba, 2019; Trujano & Orduña, 2015), whereas most of the studies that report suboptimal behavior have been performed with other strains (Chow et al, 2017; Cunningham & Shahan, 2019, 2020; Ojeda et al, 2018). Further research is needed in order to know whether the relative salience of the predictors of reinforcement and of no reinforcement, the strain of rat employed, or an interaction between them is the main variable that determines suboptimal choice in rats.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For testing this hypothesis, they employed levers as discriminative stimuli (which generate sign-tracking behavior and therefore, have higher incentive salience than lights [Beckmann & Chow, 2015]) and reported that suboptimal choice emerged under these circumstances. Despite this demonstration, later work did not replicate this result and rats were optimal despite the use of levers as discriminative stimuli López et al, 2018;Martínez et al, 2017;Orduña & Alba, 2019; these results indicate that the incentive salience of the discriminative stimuli is not sufficient to generate suboptimal choice in rats.…”

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confidence: 85%

“…Suboptimal choice is the term that describes the preference of pigeons and other birds for an alternative that provides stimuli that reliably predict either the future delivery of a reinforcer or its absence, over another alternative associated with a higher probability of reinforcement, but that does not provide such stimuli (Kendall, 1974;Stagner & Zentall, 2010;Vasconcelos et al, 2015;Zentall & Stagner, 2011). The strong and consistent preference of pigeons for the suboptimal alternative (for reviews, see McDevitt et al, 2016;Zentall, 2016) contrasts markedly with the growing evidence that rats have the opposite preference, that is, they prefer the alternative associated with the higher probability of reinforcement (Alba et al, 2018;Martínez et al, 2017;Orduña & Alba, 2019;Trujano & Orduña, 2015cf. Chow et al, 2017.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Rats maintain optimal choice when facing long terminal links in a “suboptimal choice” procedure.

Alba¹,

González-Torres²,

Orduña³

2021

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cogniti

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It has been recently reported that rats' optimal behavior in the "suboptimal choice" procedure is eliminated when the duration of the terminal links is increased to 30 s or more (Cunningham & Shahan, 2019). The main goal of the present study is to analyze the generality of such results, via a procedure that has been extensively used in the study of rats' performance in this task. In Experiment 1, nine rats were exposed to a procedure that presented levers as discriminative stimuli, varying the duration of their presentation from 10 s to 50 s across conditions. The results showed that rats preferred the optimal alternative in all conditions. To further analyze the relationship between rats' preferences and the duration of the terminal links, in Experiment 2 we contrasted the performance of two groups that differed in the configuration of the stimuli associated to the terminal links. For one of them, the stimuli were the same as in the Cunningham and Shahan's ( 2019) experiment (Tone þ Light); for the other, the stimulus was light only. The results show that rats were suboptimal in the former group, and optimal in the latter. We discuss our results in terms of the prevalence of rats' optimal behavior when confronted with the manipulation of different variables and the necessity of improving the knowledge about the relationship between optimal/suboptimal choice and the salience of the discriminative stimuli.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 85%

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confidence: 99%

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Rats maintain optimal choice when facing long terminal links in a “suboptimal choice” procedure.

Alba¹,

González-Torres²,

Orduña³

2021

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cogniti

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“…In contrast to pigeons, rodents are widely used to study the neurobiology of decision-making and are often considered great optimizers, thus they may be less prone to suboptimal decisions. Under an adaptation of the suboptimal choice procedure described above, rats generally tracked overall reinforcement rates [5]. Despite such evidence, there is individual variability in the risky decision-making of rats, and poor decisions can be reliably induced using a variety of environmental or neural manipulations (see more below).…”

Section: Animal Models Of Gambling-like Behaviormentioning

confidence: 99%

Challenges and opportunities in animal models of gambling-like behavior

Haar

2020

Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences

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In the past several years, there has been an explosion of interest in animal models of risk-based decision-making, a fundamental process associated with gambling disorder. While early work focused on establishing various tasks for assaying decision-making, current studies are determining the (subtle and not-so-subtle) influence of cues in driving risky decisions to better understand problem gambling. In addition, these decision-making paradigms are now being used to investigate comorbid conditions such as substance dependence or brain injury and replicating observations from human patients. These animal models have now developed to a point where therapeutic interventions may be assessed for not just gambling disorder, but also a number of other conditions which engender risky decision-making.

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“…Although suboptimal choice is well documented in pigeons, its species-generality was questioned given numerous failed attempts to find suboptimal choice in rats under the same conditions that reliably generate suboptimal choice in pigeons (Alba, Rodríguez, Martínez, & Orduña, 2018; López, Alba, & Orduña, 2018; Martínez, Alba, Rodríguez, & Orduña, 2017; Ojeda, Murphy, & Kacelnik, 2018; Orduña & Alba, 2019; Trujano, López, Rojas-Leguizamón, & Orduña, 2016; Trujano & Orduña, 2015). Nevertheless, Cunningham and Shahan (2019) showed that rats engage in suboptimal choice once the delay to food is sufficiently long.…”

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Delays to food-predictive stimuli do not affect suboptimal choice in rats.

Cunningham¹,

Shahan²

2020

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cogniti

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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 (D f ) and the delay to food-predictive stimuli (D s ) at the choice point (i.e., D f /D s ). Research with both rats and pigeons suggests that temporal information outcompetes the rate of food delivery, thereby generating suboptimal choice, when the delay to food (D f ) is sufficiently long. Limited data with pigeons, and none with rats, suggests that the rate of food delivery outcompetes temporal information, thereby generating optimal choice, when the delay to food-predictive stimuli (D s ) is sufficiently long. The present experiment sought to clarify whether longer delays to food-predictive stimuli decrease suboptimal choice in rats. We found that while longer delays to food (Df) increased suboptimal choice in rats, longer delays to food-predictive stimuli (D s ) did not decrease suboptimal choice. These results suggest a potential difference between rats and pigeons in the manner in which food-predictive stimuli and food itself compete to control choice. In terms of the temporal information-theoretic model, competition between temporal information and the rate of food delivery in rats appears to be influenced only by the delay to food at the choice point.

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Rats' optimal choice behavior in a gambling-like task

Cited by 8 publications

References 57 publications

Rats maintain optimal choice when facing long terminal links in a “suboptimal choice” procedure.

Rats maintain optimal choice when facing long terminal links in a “suboptimal choice” procedure.

Challenges and opportunities in animal models of gambling-like behavior

Delays to food-predictive stimuli do not affect suboptimal choice in rats.

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