Borgstede Matthias
University of Bamberg, Markusplatz 3, D-96047 Bamberg, Germany.
Behav Processes. 2020 Jun;175:104109. doi: 10.1016/j.beproc.2020.104109. Epub 2020 Mar 21.
Within the field of evolutionary biology, natural selection is often thought to favor traits that lead to individuals behaving as if they were maximizing their evolutionary fitness. The concept of the individual as a maximizer is also popular in behavioral psychology, especially when it comes to theories of operant learning. Here, the individual is taken to adapt its behavior to the local environment, such that the expected amount of reinforcer value is maximized. Whereas there is a considerable consensus concerning the formal properties of an evolutionary maximand ('fitness'), there is no generally accepted conceptualization of a corresponding behavioral maximand ('reinforcer value'). However, such theoretical clarification is crucial to the development and empirical testing of learning theories, since it is impossible to decide whether the concept of reinforcer maximization is adequate, as long as the maximand is not well defined. This paper presents a formal model of reinforcer value that is consistent with existing work on the nature of reinforcement and provides an explicit link between behavioral psychology and evolutionary biology. The main result is that the reinforcer value of an additional time unit spent at a behavior equals its expected marginal effects on evolutionary fitness. Applying the model to matching behavior, it is further demonstrated how the established link between reinforcer value and evolutionary fitness can be used to derive new hypotheses.
在进化生物学领域，自然选择通常被认为有利于那些使个体表现得仿佛在最大化其进化适应性的性状。个体作为最大化者的概念在行为心理学中也很流行，尤其是在操作性学习理论方面。在这里，个体被认为会使其行为适应当地环境，从而使强化物价值的预期量最大化。虽然对于进化最大化目标（“适应性”）的形式属性存在相当大的共识，但对于相应的行为最大化目标（“强化物价值”）却没有普遍接受的概念化。然而，这种理论澄清对于学习理论的发展和实证检验至关重要，因为只要最大化目标没有得到很好的定义，就不可能确定强化物最大化的概念是否恰当。本文提出了一个强化物价值的形式模型，该模型与现有的关于强化本质的研究一致，并在行为心理学和进化生物学之间提供了明确的联系。主要结果是，在一种行为上额外花费的一个时间单位的强化物价值等于其对进化适应性的预期边际效应。将该模型应用于匹配行为，进一步证明了如何利用强化物价值与进化适应性之间已建立的联系来推导新的假设。
