Reading the minds of animals through the power of experiments: a talk about learning, time and mice

When animals learn associations between events, one of the main things they learn is the temporal properties of the events. Theories of learning, based on changes in the strength of mnemonic associations, assume that temporal learning is achieved by the balance between increases in learning during reinforcement and decreases in learning during nonreinforcement. In order to explain particular findings, the rate of learning about the occurrence of reinforcement is assumed to be greater than the rate of learning about the absence of reinforcement. I will discuss some recent findings that challenge this idea and my subsequent attempts to disentangle the factors involved. Depending on my mood and the level of festive cheer, I may boldly claim that animals symbolically represent statistical properties of events, such as rate information, or I may cowardly back out and suggest that the mechanisms of associative learning are just more complicated than originally thought. Come along and find out which one I choose. divided contexts.