The purpose of the proposed research is to determine conditions that facilitate anticipatory tracking, and to develop a quantitative theory of temporal pattern learning. The data will come from rats in lever boxes. Food will be available at a repeating sequence of 2 - 10 intervals in which it will be delivered following the first lever response after a particular time interval (from 1 and 512 seconds). The research will determine how the characteristics of a series of time intervals influence the ability of rats to anticipate the time when food will next be available.
Most learning of animals has been assumed to be based on recent experience, or a long-term average of experience. But with a repeating series of temporal intervals, rats learn to respond at a time appropriate for the next interval in the series, in anticipation of a reward. Two types of explanations have been proposed for anticipatory tracking: rule learning and associative learning theory. A quantitative associative learning theory may explain the results, even from conditions designed to support rule learning. This would provide an explanation of how animals are able to plan a sequence of behavior.
