This research explores factors influencing choice between reward outcomes. Delay-reduction theory, developed with NSF funding, states that the value of a chosen outcome is best assessed by calculating the degree of improvement the outcome represents when compared with the average value of the situation. This quantitative theory of choice has implications for decisions made by animals foraging for food and for people making economic decisions. It will be further evaluated and extended in experiments using controlled behavioral choice methodology with pigeons as subjects. These experiments should: help clarify the precise role of time constraints (temporal context) in decision making, for example, the impact of specified degrees of moving closer in time to reward ("delay-reduction"); further assess the finding that choice between two outcomes depends on the difference in their delays to reward and not on the ratio of their delays, a finding not predicted by most theories of how we respond to reward delays; and explore the effects of economic context, for example wealth and income flow, on "risky choice" (choice between a certain modest payoff versus an uncertain larger one).
Why and how organisms choose is a fundamental problem in comparative animal psychology. Delay-reduction theory has proven a fruitful approach to learning how choices are determined for both human and non-human subjects. The present research should further illuminate the roles played by time and economics in decisions animals make, including those involving risk.
