Papachristos, E. B. & Gallistel, C. R.. (2006).
Autoshaped head poking in the mouse: A quantitative analysis of the learning curve.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 85, 293-308.
In autoshaping experiments, we quantified the acquisition of anticipatory head poking
in individual mice, using an algorithm that finds changes in the slope of a
cumulative record. In most mice, upward changes in the amount of anticipatory
poking per trial were abrupt, and tended to occur at session boundaries,
suggesting that the session is as significant a unit of experience as the
trial. There were large individual differences in the latency to the onset
of vigorous responding. “Asymptotic” performance was unstable; large,
bidirectional, and relatively enduring changes were common. Given the
characteristics of the individual learning curves, it is unlikely that
physiologically meaningful estimates of rate of learning can be extracted
from group-average learning curves.
Key words: acquisition, rate of learning, autoshaping, hopper conditioning,
head poke, mouse