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The paradoxical effect of low reward probabilities in suboptimal choice
- Source :
- Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal, Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (RCAAP), instacron:RCAAP
- Publication Year :
- 2018
- Publisher :
- American Psychological Association, 2018.
-
Abstract
- When offered a choice between 2 alternatives, animals sometimes prefer the option yielding less food. For instance, pigeons and starlings prefer an option that on 20% of the trials presents a stimulus always followed by food, and on the remaining 80% of the trials presents a stimulus never followed by food (the Informative Option), over an option that provides food on 50% of the trials regardless of the stimulus presented (the Noninformative Option). To explain this suboptimal behavior, it has been hypothesized that animals ignore (or do not engage with) the stimulus that is never followed by food in the Informative Option. To assess when pigeons attend to the stimulus usually not followed by food, we increased the probability of reinforcement, p, in the presence of that stimulus. Across 2 experiments, we found that the value of the Informative Option decreased with p. To account for the results, we added to the Reinforcement Rate Model (and also to the Hyperbolic Discounting Model) an engagement function, f(p), that specified the likelihood the animal attends to a stimulus followed by reward with probability p, and then derived the model predictions for 2 forms of f(p), a linear function, and an all-or-none threshold function. Both models predicted the observed findings with a linear engagement function: The higher the probability of reinforcement after a stimulus, the higher the probability of engaging the stimulus, and, surprisingly, the less the value of the option comprising the stimulus.<br />This study was conducted at the Psychology Research Centre (UID/PSI/01662/2013) of the University of Minho, and supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and the Portuguese Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education through national funds and cofinanced by FEDER through COMPETE2020 under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007653). This work was also supported by an FCT Grant (PTDC/MHC-PCN/3540/2012) to AM. IF and CP were supported by FCT Doctoral Grants (SFRH/BD/77061/2011 and SFRH/BD/78566/2011, respectively).
- Subjects :
- genetic structures
Reinforcement Rate Model
Library science
Social Sciences
Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Models, Psychological
Choice Behavior
03 medical and health sciences
0302 clinical medicine
Reward
Animals
Psicologia [Ciências Sociais]
0501 psychology and cognitive sciences
050102 behavioral science & comparative psychology
Columbidae
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Engagement
Science & Technology
Behavior, Animal
4. Education
05 social sciences
language.human_language
Reinforcement
language
Ciências Sociais::Psicologia
Pigeons
Christian ministry
Portuguese
Psychology
Reinforcement, Psychology
Suboptimal choice
030217 neurology & neurosurgery
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal, Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (RCAAP), instacron:RCAAP
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....f874a06f1f975a59f7ca30de47c790f4