Dissociating uncertainty responses and reinforcement signals in the comparative study of uncertainty monitoring.

JD Smith — 2007-11-25T17:18:54-00:00

J Exp Psychol Gen, Vol. 135, No. 2. (May 2006), pp. 282-297.

Although researchers are exploring animals' capacity for monitoring their states of uncertainty, the use of some paradigms allows the criticism that animals map avoidance responses to error-causing stimuli not because of uncertainty monitored but because of feedback signals and stimulus aversion. The authors addressed this criticism with an uncertainty-monitoring task in which participants completed blocks of trials with feedback deferred so that they could not associate reinforcement signals to particular stimuli or stimulus-response pairs. Humans and 1 of 2 monkeys were able to make cognitive, decisional uncertainty responses that were independent of feedback or reinforcement history within a task. This finding unifies the comparative literature on uncertainty monitoring. The dissociation of performance from reinforcement has theoretical implications, and the deferred-feedback technique has many applications.

Delay of gratification and delay maintenance by rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta).

TA Evans — 2008-01-02T16:26:43-00:00

J Gen Psychol, Vol. 134, No. 2. (April 2007), pp. 199-216.

The authors tested the self-control of rhesus macaques by assessing if they could refrain from reaching into a food container to maximize the accumulation of sequentially delivered food items (a delay-maintenance task). Three different versions of the task varied the quantity and quality of available food items. In the first 2 versions, food items accumulated across the length of the trial until a monkey consumed the items. In the 3rd task, a single less-preferred food item preceded a single more-preferred food item. Some monkeys delayed gratification even with relatively long delays between deliveries of items. However, the data suggested that self-control, in the majority of tested individuals, was not significantly different across different task versions and that self-control by macaques was not as prevalent in these tasks as it is in chimpanzees and human children.

CiteULike: dep Beran

Dissociating uncertainty responses and reinforcement signals in the comparative study of uncertainty monitoring.

Delay of gratification and delay maintenance by rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta).