Time does the teaching.

Abstract

Despite the observation that temporal variables (e.g., the time between rewards) modulate the speed of associative learning, dopamine-based learning models have largely treated learning rate as a free parameter, and neither behavioral nor neural theories have quantitatively described this link. Burke et al. (2026) rigorously demonstrated that the rate of behavioral and dopaminergic cue-reward learning scales proportionally, and directly, with the interreward interval, revealing implications for how learning rate is formalized in both behavioral and dopamine-based models. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).