ReviewTiming, memory for intervals, and memory for untimed stimuli: The role of instructional ambiguity
Section snippets
Interval timing: the peak procedure
Fixed interval schedules of reinforcement have been used to study the ability of animals to judge the passage of time. With these schedules, the first response that occurs after a fixed time results in reinforcement. In the free-operant version of this schedule, the interval begins with the prior reinforcement. In the discrete-trials version of this schedule used most often to study the timing ability of animals, the interval begins with the onset of a stimulus (e.g., a light or a tone).
Interval discrimination
The typical interval discrimination procedure involves a variation of matching-to-sample or a conditional discrimination. Each trial generally starts with a sample stimulus that is presented either for a short interval or a long interval (e.g., at the start of the trial the houselight comes on for either 2 or 10 s). Following the offset of the houselight two comparison stimuli appear (e.g., a red light and green light, one on the left the other on the right). Responses to the red light will be
General support for the ambiguity hypothesis
The focus of this article has been animal timing but as suggested in the introduction, the issues raised have implications for a broader area of study. In general, one must be careful in interpreting the results of any manipulation that involves the transfer of training or the assessment of memory some time after training. Any decrement in performance found may be attributable not only to the variable under study (e.g., memory) but also to the failure of instructions (i.e., a generalization
Conclusions
Much of the research that has attempted to assess memory for time intervals in animals has suffered from what can be called instructional ambiguity. Most often that ambiguity has come from the similarity between the retention interval and the intertrial interval during training. However, other sources of ambiguity may also produce confounds that may obscure temporal memory assessment. Among those are dissimilarity in behavior during the interval to be timed and the retention interval, and the
Acknowledgement
Preparation of this article was facilitated by Grant MH 63726 from the National Institute of Mental Health.
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The effect of asymmetrical sample training on retention functions for hedonic samples in rats
2012, Learning and MotivationCitation Excerpt :The differential effects of ITI and delay interval illumination on the retention functions were surprising and appear to be the result of somewhat different processes. The instructional ambiguity hypothesis (Zentall, 1997, 2005) may be applicable to these results, although from a different perspective than that outlined in the introduction to this paper. Kaiser, Zentall, and Neiman (2002) considered the effects of similarity between the ITI and a gap in a signal on pigeons’ timing of that signal in the peak procedure.
Learning to stop or reset the internal clock
2011, Behavioural ProcessesCitation Excerpt :As a final example, Mattell and Meck (1999) demonstrated that the presentation of reinforcers during FI performance provokes a partial reset of the clock, which is reasonable to expect because the reinforcer is the stimulus that normally signals the end of a trial (see also Staddon and Innis, 1966). All these results are related to an alternative hypothesis of the performance on the gap procedure, the instructional ambiguity hypothesis (Zentall, 2005; Zentall and Kaiser, 2005; Staddon and Cerutti, 2003). The basic idea of this theory is that during instrumental training, the subjects implicitly receive instructions about the adequate behavior in each experimental context.
Rats exhibit asymmetrical retention functions for hedonic samples
2011, Behavioural ProcessesCitation Excerpt :On the other hand, perhaps ambiguity only occurs when the delay interval is novel. Zentall (2005, 2007) have noted that even when the ITI and delay interval are differentiated, ambiguity can arise from the novelty of delay intervals and that degree of novelty may be directly proportional to the duration of the delay. For example in some studies of event duration memory (Spetch, 1987; Spetch and Rusak, 1992) pigeons are trained with a long delay interval (e.g., 10 s) and subsequently tested at short and longer delays.
Performance of spontaneously hypertensive rats in a peak-interval procedure with gaps
2008, Behavioural Brain Research