Conflict Resolution and the Process of Temporal Integration

Abstract

Four experiments using rats as Ss are reported. First, delay of reward and delay of punishment gradients were determined empirically for a similar right-left position-discrimination response, using the same apparatus. Second, this empirical information was used to describe how a double approach-avoidance conflict would be resolved when the rewards and punishments for both the right- and left-choice were unevenly distributed in time. The purposes of the experiments were: (a) to demonstrate that the process of resolving such temporal conflicts requires S to integrate over a delay interval the relative value of both the reward and the punishment for each of the two choices, and (b) to show that this value was, in turn, jointly determined by the separate delay of reward and delay of punishment gradients. Further, it was shown that the height and duration of these two types of delay of reinforcement gradients were determined by other variables, and when the height or duration of one of the gradients was altered, so was the underlying value of the reinforcement and the resolution of a temporal conflict. The relation of this process, and of delay of reinforcement in general, to neurotic or self-defeating behavior was noted.