Time, uncertainty, and suboptimal choice

Abstract

Under certain conditions, pigeons prefer information about whether food will be forthcoming at the end of an interval to a higher chance of obtaining the food. In the typical protocol, choosing one option (Informative) is followed by one of two 10-s long terminal-link stimuli: S^G always ending in food or S^R never ending in food, with S^G occurring only 20% of the trials. The other option (Non-informative) is also followed by one of two 10-s long terminal-link stimuli: S^B or S^Y, both ending in food 50% of the trials. Although the Informative option yields food with a lower probability than the Non-informative (0.2 vs. 0.5), pigeons prefer it. To determine whether such preference occurs because S^G and S^R disambiguate the trial outcome immediately upon choice, we delayed the moment the disambiguation took place in two experiments. In Experiment 1, when the Informative option was chosen, S^G always ensued for t seconds of the terminal-link, and then the standard contingencies followed. Experiment 2 was similar, except that S^R always ensued for t seconds. Across conditions, t varied from 0 to 10 s. In both experiments, preference for the Informative option decreased with t, but the effect was stronger in Experiment 1. We discuss the implication of these findings for functional and mechanistic models of suboptimal choice.