Van Allsburg Jack, Shahan Timothy A
Department of Psychology, Utah State University, Logan, UT, USA.
Anim Cogn. 2025 Jul 30;28(1):74. doi: 10.1007/s10071-025-01982-x.
Spontaneous recovery of choice is a behavioral phenomenon where a delay period (without new experience) elicits the recovery of a preference consistent with a previous distribution of rewards, rather than the most recently experienced distribution of rewards. On short timescales (< 48 h), the occurrence of spontaneous recovery of choice has been effectively predicted by the Temporal Weighting Rule. However, previous study of this phenomenon over longer timescales (> 48 h) has found results inconsistent with model predictions. The present experiments investigated three potential explanations for these results: (1.) whether time's passage alone causes animals to revert to random exploratory behavior; (2.) whether time's effect on behavior is moderated by experience of volatility in rewards during training; and (3.) whether a drift toward random exploratory behavior produced by time's passage can be distinguished from the effect of spontaneous recovery of choice. Subjects experienced varied reward conditions in a concurrent choice procedure before preference between options was evaluated at various test delays. Obtained results ruled out these first two explanations, but were inconclusive in distinguishing the effects of a drift toward random exploratory behavior from the effect of spontaneous recovery of choice. Limitations and directions for further investigation are discussed.
选择的自发恢复是一种行为现象，即在一段延迟期（无新经验）后，会引发与先前奖励分布一致的偏好恢复，而非最近经历的奖励分布。在短时间尺度（<48小时）上，选择的自发恢复的发生已通过时间加权规则得到有效预测。然而，此前在更长时间尺度（>48小时）上对该现象的研究发现结果与模型预测不一致。本实验探究了对这些结果的三种潜在解释：（1）时间的流逝本身是否会导致动物恢复到随机探索行为；（2）时间对行为的影响是否会受到训练期间奖励波动性经验的调节；（3）时间流逝产生的向随机探索行为的漂移是否能与选择的自发恢复的影响区分开来。在并行选择程序中，受试者经历了不同的奖励条件，然后在不同的测试延迟下评估选项之间的偏好。所得结果排除了前两种解释，但在区分向随机探索行为的漂移的影响与选择的自发恢复的影响方面尚无定论。讨论了局限性和进一步研究的方向。
