Typical delay determines waiting time on periodic-food schedules: Static and dynamic tests.
| dc.contributor.author | Wynne, CD | |
| dc.contributor.author | Staddon, JE | |
| dc.coverage.spatial | United States | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2011-03-23T20:08:47Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 1988-09 | |
| dc.description.abstract | Pigeons and other animals soon learn to wait (pause) after food delivery on periodic-food schedules before resuming the food-rewarded response. Under most conditions the steady-state duration of the average waiting time, t, is a linear function of the typical interfood interval. We describe three experiments designed to explore the limits of this process. In all experiments, t was associated with one key color and the subsequent food delay, T, with another. In the first experiment, we compared the relation between t (waiting time) and T (food delay) under two conditions: when T was held constant, and when T was an inverse function of t. The pigeons could maximize the rate of food delivery under the first condition by setting t to a consistently short value; optimal behavior under the second condition required a linear relation with unit slope between t and T. Despite this difference in optimal policy, the pigeons in both cases showed the same linear relation, with slope less than one, between t and T. This result was confirmed in a second parametric experiment that added a third condition, in which T + t was held constant. Linear waiting appears to be an obligatory rule for pigeons. In a third experiment we arranged for a multiplicative relation between t and T (positive feedback), and produced either very short or very long waiting times as predicted by a quasi-dynamic model in which waiting time is strongly determined by the just-preceding food delay. | |
| dc.description.sponsorship | Research was supported by grants to Duke University from the National Science Foundation and to J. D. Delius from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. C. D. L. Wynne gratefully acknowledges support from a NATO postdoctoral fellowship, and J. E. R. Staddon thanks the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung for support during the sabbatical leave when the experimental work was done. | |
| dc.identifier | ||
| dc.identifier.issn | 0022-5002 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | ||
| dc.language | eng | |
| dc.publisher | Wiley | |
| dc.relation.ispartof | J Exp Anal Behav | |
| dc.title | Typical delay determines waiting time on periodic-food schedules: Static and dynamic tests. | |
| dc.type | Journal article | |
| duke.contributor.orcid | Staddon, JE|0000-0003-0205-5083 | |
| pubs.author-url | ||
| pubs.begin-page | 197 | |
| pubs.end-page | 210 | |
| pubs.issue | 2 | |
| pubs.organisational-group | Duke | |
| pubs.organisational-group | Psychology and Neuroscience | |
| pubs.organisational-group | Trinity College of Arts & Sciences | |
| pubs.publication-status | Published | |
| pubs.volume | 50 |