Journal
PLOS ONE
Volume 8, Issue 5, Pages -Publisher
PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0064934
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) [BB/G007144/1]
- Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT)
- BBSRC [BB/G007144/1] Funding Source: UKRI
- Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council [BB/G007144/1] Funding Source: researchfish
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Foraging animals typically encounter opportunities that they either pursue or skip, but occasionally meet several alternatives simultaneously. Behavioural ecologists predict preferences using absolute properties of each option, while decision theorists focus on relative evaluations at the time of choice. We use European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) to integrate ecological reasoning with decision models, linking and testing hypotheses for value acquisition and choice mechanism. We hypothesise that options' values depend jointly on absolute attributes, learning context, and subject's state. In simultaneous choices, preference could result either from comparing subjective values using deliberation time, or from processing each alternative independently, without relative comparisons. The combination of the value acquisition hypothesis and independent processing at choice time has been called the Sequential Choice Model. We test this model with options equated in absolute properties to exclude the possibility of preference being built at the time of choice. Starlings learned to obtain food by responding to four stimuli in two contexts. In context [AB], they encountered options A(5) or B-10 in random alternation; in context [CD], they met C-10 or D-20. Delay to food is denoted, in seconds, by the suffixes. Observed latency to respond (L-i) to each option alone (our measure of value) ranked thus: L-A approximate to L-C<
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available