title: Mnemonics for variability: remembering food delay.
abstract: Three experiments with White Carneaux pigeons (Columba livia) investigated memory and decision processes under fixed and variable reinforcement intervals. Response rate was measured during the unreinforced trials in the discrete-trial peak procedure in which reinforced trials were mixed with long unreinforced trials. Two decision models differing in assumptions about memory constraints are reviewed. In the complete-memory model (J. Gibbon, R.M. Church, S. Fairhurst, & A. Kacelnik, 1988), all interreinforcement intervals were remembered, whereas in the minimax model (D. Brunner, A. Kacelnik, & J. Gibbon, 1996), only estimates of the shortest and longest possible reinforcement times were remembered. Both models accommodated some features of response rate as a function of trial time, but only the second was compatible with the observed cessation of responding.
authors.affiliation: Division of Biopsychology, New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York 10032, USA. dani@paradox.psych.columbia.edu
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Brunner
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Fairhurst
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Stolovitzky
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gibbon
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D010856:Columbidae; D005502:Food; D008568:Memory / Q000502:physiology*; D008959:Models, Neurological; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012054:Reinforcement, Psychology