Temporal Averaging in Response to Change

Abstract

We have previously found that when rats are simultaneously presented with two different cues that signify possible reinforcement availability at two different times, they will respond as though they are timing an intermediate duration. We have interpreted this result as indicating that rats deal with conflicting temporal information by averaging these temporal expectations. In the present work, we show that rats update their temporal expectations when temporal cues change during a trial, producing a normally shaped, unimodal peak in responding at a time in between the reinforced times. These peaks are approximately scalar, suggesting that the rats are timing a single expectation. These data are consistent with a timing system that generates a weighted average of conflicting temporal expectancies, with greater weight given to more recent information sources.