Grace Randolph C
Department of Psychology, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, New Zealand.
J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process. 2002 Jul;28(3):257-76.
Two experiments were conducted to test predictions of 2 models for acquisition of preference in concurrent chains. Pigeons were trained with pairs of fixed-interval and variable-interval terminal-link schedules in a successive-reversal design. Results showed that acquisition rate was faster when fixed-interval schedules preceded and when variable-interval schedules followed the reversal and was approximately constant when the same pair of schedules was used. These results were predicted by both linear-operator and memory-representational models. However, only the linear-operator model predicted effects of schedule duration. Overall, these results demonstrated that a simple linear-operator model can account for the major features of preference acquisition in concurrent chains and suggest that choice in transition and steady state may provide convergent validation of a single delay-discounting function.
进行了两项实验来检验关于在并发链中获得偏好的两种模型的预测。采用连续反转设计，让鸽子在固定间隔和可变间隔终端链程序对中进行训练。结果表明，当固定间隔程序在反转之前，以及可变间隔程序在反转之后时，习得率更快，而当使用相同的一对程序时，习得率大致恒定。线性算子模型和记忆表征模型都预测了这些结果。然而，只有线性算子模型预测了程序持续时间的影响。总体而言，这些结果表明，一个简单的线性算子模型可以解释并发链中偏好习得的主要特征，并表明过渡状态和稳定状态下的选择可能为单一延迟折扣函数提供趋同验证。
