Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 101, Issue 36, Pages 13124-13131Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0404965101
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- NIMH NIH HHS [R01 MH68073, R21 MH63866, R01 MH068073, MH41649] Funding Source: Medline
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The negatively accelerated, gradually increasing learning curve is an artifact of group averaging in several commonly used basic learning paradigms (pigeon autoshaping, delay- and trace-eye-blink conditioning in the rabbit and rat, autoshaped hopper entry in the rat, plus maze performance in the rat, and water maze performance in the mouse). The learning curves for individual subjects show an abrupt, often step-like increase from the untrained level of responding to the level seen in the well trained subject. The rise is at least as abrupt as that commonly seen in psychometric functions in stimulus detection experiments. It may indicate that the appearance of conditioned behavior is mediated by an evidence-based decision process, as in stimulus detection experiments. If the appearance of conditioned behavior is taken instead to reflect the increase in an underlying associative strength, then a negligible portion of the function relating associative strength to amount of experience is behaviorally visible. Consequently, rate of learning cannot be estimated from the group-average curve; the best measure is latency to the onset of responding, determined for each subject individually.
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