González-Torres Rodrigo, Flores Julio, Orduña Vladimir
Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México, DF, 04510, Mexico.
Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México, DF, 04510, Mexico.
Behav Processes. 2020 Sep;178:104157. doi: 10.1016/j.beproc.2020.104157. Epub 2020 Jun 1.
In the study of suboptimal choice, a reliable result is that pigeons strongly prefer an alternative that signals whether a reinforcer will be delivered or not over another alternative without that information even if the first provides a lower probability of reinforcement. In the aforementioned research, key pecking has been the operant response and illuminated keys the discriminative stimuli. In the present study we modified both of these aspects of the procedure in order to analyze the generality of suboptimal preferences of pigeons and to investigate the effect of changes in the incentive salience of the discriminative stimuli. To accomplish this, we presented pigeons a choice situation with the same parameters of reinforcement than previous research, but with treadle pressing as the choice response and ambient lights as discriminative stimuli. Under these conditions, most of the pigeons showed optimal behavior and a high degree of discrimination of the stimuli associated with the discriminative alternative. A control condition with key pecking as choice response and keylights as discriminative stimuli showed that the same pigeons turned to be suboptimal, a result that discards the possibility that the optimality found in the main condition was a consequence of a particular characteristic of our sample of subjects or of our procedure. We discuss the influence that the attribution of incentive salience to the discriminative stimuli has on suboptimal choice in both pigeons and rats.
在关于次优选择的研究中，一个可靠的结果是，即使第一种选择提供的强化概率较低，但鸽子强烈偏好能表明强化物是否会被给予的选项，而不是没有该信息的另一个选项。在上述研究中，啄键一直是操作性反应，而亮起的键是辨别性刺激。在本研究中，我们对该程序的这两个方面进行了修改，以便分析鸽子次优偏好的普遍性，并研究辨别性刺激的激励显著性变化的影响。为了实现这一点，我们给鸽子呈现了一个与先前研究具有相同强化参数的选择情境，但以踩踏板作为选择反应，以环境光作为辨别性刺激。在这些条件下，大多数鸽子表现出最优行为，并对与辨别性选项相关的刺激有高度的辨别能力。以啄键作为选择反应、按键灯作为辨别性刺激的对照条件表明，同样的鸽子变得次优，这一结果排除了在主要条件下发现的最优性是我们的受试样本或程序的特定特征所导致的可能性。我们讨论了辨别性刺激的激励显著性归因对鸽子和大鼠次优选择的影响。
