Lejeune H, Ferrara A, Soffíe M, Bronchart M, Wearden J H
Psychobiology of Temporal Processes Unit (PTPU), University of Liège, Faculty of Psychology, Belgium.
Q J Exp Psychol B. 1998 Aug;51(3):193-217. doi: 10.1080/713932681.
Twenty-four-month-old and 4-month-old rats were trained on a peak-interval procedure, where the time of reinforcement was varied twice between 20 and 40 sec. Peak times from the old rats were consistently longer than the reinforcement time, whereas those from younger animals tracked the 20- and 40-sec durations more closely. Different measures of performance suggested that the old rats were either (1) systematically misremembering the time of reinforcement or (2) using an internal clock with a substantially greater latency to start and stop timing than the younger animals. Old rats also adjusted more slowly to the first transition from 20 to 40 sec than did the younger ones, but not to later transitions. Correlations between measures derived from within-trial patterns of responding conformed in general to detailed predictions derived from scalar expectancy theory. However, some correlation values more closely resembled those derived from a study of peak-interval performance in humans and a theoretical model developed by Cheng and Westwood (1993), than those obtained in previous work with animals, for reasons that are at present unclear.
对24月龄和4月龄的大鼠进行了峰值间隔程序训练，强化时间在20秒至40秒之间变化了两次。老年大鼠的峰值时间始终长于强化时间，而年轻动物的峰值时间更接近20秒和40秒的时长。不同的性能测量表明，老年大鼠要么（1）系统性地记错强化时间，要么（2）使用的内部时钟启动和停止计时的延迟比年轻动物长得多。老年大鼠从20秒到40秒的首次转换比年轻大鼠调整得更慢，但对后来的转换则不然。从试验内反应模式得出的测量值之间的相关性总体上符合标量期望理论得出的详细预测。然而，一些相关值与人类峰值间隔性能研究以及Cheng和Westwood（1993）开发的理论模型得出的值更相似，而不是先前动物研究中获得的值，原因目前尚不清楚。
