Sensitivity of pigeons to prereinforcer and postreinforcer delay

Logue, A. W.; Smith, Michael E.; Rachlin, Howard

doi:10.3758/bf03199271

Cited by 69 publications

(38 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…8C). The idea that animals suboptimally incorporate postreward delays into their strategies is supported by other studies, as well (Lea, 1979;Logue et al, 1985;Smethells & Reilly, 2014;Stephens & Dunlap, 2009). …”

Section: The Problematic Postreward Buffermentioning

confidence: 74%

“…As was noted above, Ainslie did consider the possibility, but reasoned that this was unlikely because of the large amount of training they received (Ainslie, 1975). Despite this, many studies have confirmed that even well-trained animals are either less attentive or completely inattentive to any delays occurring after the reward, as compared to delays occurring before it (Bateson & Kacelnik, 1996;Blanchard et al, 2013;Goldschmidt, Lattal, & Fantino, 1998;Green, Fisher, Perlow, & Sherman, 1981;Lea, 1979;Logue, Smith, & Rachlin, 1985;Mazur, 1987Mazur, , 1989Mazur & Logue, 1978;Mazur & Romano, 1992;Mazur, Snyderman, & Coe, 1985;Pearson et al, 2010;Snyderman, 1983; see also Gallistel & Gibbon 2000). These data suggest that animals do not fully consider the postreward delay in their choices, and thus it does not fulfill its purpose.…”

Section: The Problematic Postreward Buffermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Inattention to the postreward delay may itself be a symptom of poor self-control, but it may also reflect a failure to understand the task (Logue et al, 1985). Several pieces of evidence suggest that a failure to understand the task-what Stephens calls informational constraint-is what actually accounts for a good deal of the effect (Blanchard et al, 2013;Kacelnik, 2003;Stephens, 2002;Stephens & Anderson, 2001; for a slightly different view, see Namboodiri, Mihalas, Marton, & Hussain Shuler, 2014;Namboodiri, Mihalas, & Shuler, 2014).…”

Section: The Problematic Postreward Buffermentioning

confidence: 99%

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Time discounting and time preference in animals: A critical review

2015

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Animals are an important model for studies of impulsivity and self-control. Many studies have made use of the intertemporal choice task, which pits small rewards available sooner against larger rewards available later (typically several seconds), repeated over many trials. Preference for the sooner reward is often taken to indicate impulsivity and/or a failure of self-control. This review shows that very little evidence supports this assumption; on the contrary, ostensible discounting behavior may reflect a boundedly rational but not necessarily impulsive reward-maximizing strategy. Specifically, animals may discount weakly, or even adopt a long-term rate-maximizing strategy, but fail to fully incorporate postreward delays into their choices. This failure may reflect learning biases. Consequently, tasks that measure animal discounting may greatly overestimate the true discounting and may be confounded by processes unrelated to time preferences. If so, animals may be much more patient than is widely believed; human and animal intertemporal choices may reflect unrelated mental operations; and the shared hyperbolic shape of the human and animal discount curves, which is used to justify cross-species comparisons, may be coincidental. The discussion concludes with a consideration of alternative ways to measure self-control in animals.

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Section: The Problematic Postreward Buffermentioning

confidence: 74%

Section: The Problematic Postreward Buffermentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Problematic Postreward Buffermentioning

confidence: 99%

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Time discounting and time preference in animals: A critical review

2015

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“…Note that reinforcement rate has been omitted from the right side of Equation 2, because many self-control experiments have used interdependent scheduling arrangements (Stubbs & Pliskoff, 1969) that equate exposure to both alternatives (e.g., Rodriguez & Logue, 1986). In addition, reinforcement rate has been shown to have virtually no effects on choice separate from delay for terminal links that deliver single reinforcers (Logue, Smith, & Rachlin, 1985;Mazur, Snyderman, & Coe, 1985). Two assumptions must be valid if the extended matching law is to provide an adequate account of self-control: (a) Delay and magnitude are independent dimensions of reinforcer value (Killeen, 1972), and (b) relative, not absolute, delays and magnitudes control preference.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Matching Law and Amount‐dependent Exponential Discounting as Accounts of Self‐control Choice

Grace

1999

J Exper Analysis Behavior

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Studies with humans have found evidence for amount-dependent temporal discounting, that is, that the sensitivity of choice to reinforcer delay varies inversely with reinforcer magnitude. To test whether similar results could be obtained with nonhumans, pigeons were trained on a two-component concurrent-chains procedure in which the durations of food reinforcement in the terminal links were equal within components but unequal between components. Terminal-link schedules were varied over four conditions to allow separate estimates of sensitivity to delay to be obtained for the large and small reinforcer-magnitude components. Although sensitivity to delay was greater in the smallmagnitude component for all subjects, the effect was quite small. The difference in sensitivity was generally less than one standard error, and t tests on parameter differences failed to reach significance. Several models for temporal discounting, including an amount-dependent exponential function, were fitted to the data from the first four conditions. The resulting parameter estimates were used to make predictions for a self-control condition in which one terminal link arranged a smaller, less delayed reinforcer and the other arranged a larger, more delayed reinforcer. For all models, predictions were considerably more accurate when sensitivity to delay was the same regardless of reinforcer magnitude. The results support the independence of delay and magnitude as required by a version of the matching law, and provide strong evidence against amount-dependent exponential discounting as an account of self-control choice. A new two-parameter discounting function, consistent with the matching law, is proposed that has wide empirical generality for both human and nonhuman data.

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“…With this procedure, prebut not postreinforcer delays were fixed. However, previous research has found that subjects are relatively insensitive to variations in postreinforcer delays (see, e.g., Logue, Smith, & Rachlin, 1985).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Effects of response effort on self-control in rats

Chelonis

Logue

Sheehy

et al. 1998

Animal Learning & Behavior

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Five rats served as subjects in an experiment that examined the effect of increasing response effort on self-control (choice of a larger, more delayed reinforcer over a smaller, less delayed reinforcer). The rats made significantly more self-control choices as the force required to respond on each lever increased from 0.1 to 0.8 N. As the force required to press the levers increased to 1 N and then began to decrease, some of the rats stopped responding. For those rats that continued to respond, self-control tended to decrease. The results suggest that increasing the required response force can increase selfcontrol choices, as long as the required response force is low enough that some responding occurs.

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Sensitivity of pigeons to prereinforcer and postreinforcer delay

Cited by 69 publications

References 17 publications

Time discounting and time preference in animals: A critical review

Time discounting and time preference in animals: A critical review

The Matching Law and Amount‐dependent Exponential Discounting as Accounts of Self‐control Choice

Effects of response effort on self-control in rats

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