| Budget Amount *help |
¥2,100,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,100,000)
Fiscal Year 1997: ¥600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥600,000)
Fiscal Year 1996: ¥1,500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,500,000)
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| Research Abstract |
A "meta" choice is a choice between two choice situations, each of which are consisted of some alternatives. The "free" versus "forced" choice experiment is one of appropriate examples of the meta choice. In such an experiment, subjects choose one of two situations in the first stage, then they choose one of multiple alternatives in the free choice situation or choose forcefully single alternative in the forced choice situation in the second stage. Responses to any alternatives result to the same outcomes. In Project 1, we used the concurrent-chains schedule for testing this type of the meta choice in four pigeons in 1996. Although previous results predicted that pigeons preferred the free to the forced side in the usual settings but not preferred the free side in some settings under delayd reinforcement, we could not find such consistent preference even in the delayd reinforcement condition and in the condition which added the extinction schedule to one of alternatives in the free choice situation. We elaborated our procedures in 1997, such as application of Stubbs & Pliskoff method, and used probabilistic reinforcement instead of delayd reinforcement. Seven pigeons preferred the free side a little if the reinforcement probability (Pr) was one, but showed no consistent preference if Pr was not one. They showed risk averse when Pr of one alternative in the free choice situation partly decreased. In Project 2, we tried to evaluate "resistance to change" as a new measure of preference between alternatives. Compared the concurrent-chains schedule to the multiple-chains schedule, both were consisted of FI and VI with same interval values, we observed higher response rate and stronger resistance to change in VI only in the latter schedule.
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