Rats’ preferences in the suboptimal choice procedure: Evaluating the impact of reinforcement probability and conditioned inhibitors

Alba, Rodrigo; Rodríguez, William; Martínez, Montserrat; Orduña, Vladimir

doi:10.1016/j.beproc.2018.04.013

Cited by 15 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Our results rule out the possible confounding effect of the number of terminal stimuli and support the notion that at least pigeons do not have specific preferences for stimulus variety per se (e.g., Catania 1975;Catania and Sagvolden 1980). Alba et al (2018) had somewhat suggested the equivalence of procedures. Their second and third experiments correspond to the standard and original procedures reported here except that (a) the overall probabilities of reinforcement were 0.5 for the suboptimal option and 0.75 for the optimal, and that (b) they used rats, not pigeons.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 80%

The functional equivalence of two variants of the suboptimal choice task: choice proportion and response latency as measures of value

et al. 2020

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In the suboptimal-choice task, birds systematically choose the leaner but informative option (suboptimal) over the richer but non-informative option (optimal). The task has two variations. In the standard task, the optimal option includes two terminal link stimuli. In the original task, it includes a single terminal link stimulus. Two models, the temporal information account (Cunningham and Shahan,

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 80%

The functional equivalence of two variants of the suboptimal choice task: choice proportion and response latency as measures of value

et al. 2020

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“…A blackout was used for the TL stimulus never followed by food (i.e., S-) for the suboptimal alternative. Alba et al (2018) found that neither the stimulus-modality of the S-(i.e., lever vs. blackout) nor the number of TL stimuli for the optimal alternative (i.e., one vs. two TL stimuli) affects suboptimal choice in rats.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 90%

“…Previous failures to find suboptimal choice in rats might simply have resulted from the fact that TL stimuli used in previous experiments did not provide the right stimulus-support for rats to attribute incentive salience to the TL stimuli (i.e., the LED lights used in Trujano & Orduña, 2015). However, numerous experiments since Chow et al (2017) have failed to find acquisition of suboptimal choice in rats when lever-insertions were used as TL stimuli (e.g., Alba et al, 2018; Martínez et al, 2017). Further, López et al (2018) explored the possibility that rats that are more likely to assign incentive salience to food-predictive stimuli, as measured by sign-tracking, are more likely to engage in suboptimal choice.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, it is important to note that Chow et al (2017) did not find acquisition of suboptimal choice in rats. Numerous experiments have subsequently failed to find acquisition of suboptimal choice in rats when levers were used as TL stimuli (Alba, Rodríguez, Martínez, & Orduña, 2018; López, Alba, & Orduña, 2018; Martínez et al, 2017). Thus, the current body of evidence suggests that rats do not engage in suboptimal choice even when TL stimuli acquire incentive salience and elicit sign-tracking (as when levers are used for TL stimuli).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Rats engage in suboptimal choice when the delay to food is sufficiently long.

Cunningham¹,

Shahan²

2019

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cogniti

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Numerous examples in the decision-making literature demonstrate that animals sometimes make choices that are not in their long-term best interest. One particular example finds pigeons preferring a lowprobability alternative in lieu of a high-probability alternative, referred to as suboptimal choice. Although there is ample evidence that pigeons engage in such suboptimal choice, there is currently weak evidence (at best) that rats also do so. Cunningham and Shahan's (2018) temporal information-theoretic model suggests that suboptimal choice in pigeons arises when (1) the low-probability alternative provides stimuli that convey more temporal information than stimuli associated with the high-probability alternative and (2) when the delay to food is much longer relative to the delay to temporally informative signals at the choice point. The latter condition plays the important role of biasing decision making to be governed by the relative temporal information conveyed by stimuli rather than the relative rate of food delivery. The present experiment explored the possibility that rats will engage in suboptimal choice if the delay to food at the choice point is sufficiently long, as the temporal information-theoretic model suggests. Rats were given a choice between a suboptimal alternative providing food 20% of the time and an optimal alternative providing food 50% of the time. The suboptimal alternative provided stimuli that differentially signaled choice outcomes whereas the optimal alternative did not. The postchoice delay was manipulated across conditions and ranged from 10 s to 50 s. As with previous research, rats did not engage in suboptimal choice when the postchoice delay was 10 s. However, once the delay was at least 30 s, rats engaged in suboptimal choice. These results are consistent with the temporal informationtheoretic model of suboptimal choice and suggest that rats and pigeons likely do not differ in the decision-making processes involved in the suboptimal choice procedure.

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“…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.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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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Rats’ preferences in the suboptimal choice procedure: Evaluating the impact of reinforcement probability and conditioned inhibitors

Cited by 15 publications

References 19 publications

The functional equivalence of two variants of the suboptimal choice task: choice proportion and response latency as measures of value

The functional equivalence of two variants of the suboptimal choice task: choice proportion and response latency as measures of value

Rats engage in suboptimal choice when the delay to food is sufficiently long.

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

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