2022 Fiscal Year Annual Research Report
Leap before you look: Choice of impulsive strategies for reward maximisation
| Project/Area Number |
20K20142
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| Research Institution | Chiba University |
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Principal Investigator |
渡辺 安里依 千葉大学, 大学院人文科学研究院, 准教授 (90738949)
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| Project Period (FY) |
2020-04-01 – 2023-03-31
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| Keywords | comparative cognition / impulsivity / metacognition |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
The main objective of the current project is to create an animal model of impulsivity by identifying factors and contexts responsible for impulsive behaviours. More specifically, the project aims to investigate whether there is a difference in frequency of exhibited impulsive choice in tasks that vary in nature and difficulty. Furthermore, between-species comparison will be made with pigeons and domestic cats to identify genetic and environmental factors that influence impulsivity.
The third year of the project mainly extended the work conducted in the first and second years of the project.
Firstly, a pigeon study extended the work that started last year on visual discrimination and metacognition. The possibility that pigeons' use of the metacognitive response corresponds to some physical properties of the target stimuli was tested and supported by presenting a modified version of the previous task for comparison.
The second study on pigeons was on attention towards moving targets. While the experiments in the first year focused on simple targets, the experiments during the final year focused on more complex images. The results from this year were presented at an international conference in spring 2022 and at a national conference in autumn 2022.
Another study on human impulsivity was a creative attempt at designing an impulsivity task that can be used across species. The results, in combinations with other pigeon and cat work conducted during the earlier years of the project, suggest future directions for impulsivity research and other areas of comparative cognition.
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