Timing and Counting Psychology 3906

Introduction Just like spatial stuff in a sense Time passes Would make sense to be able to encode this Would make sense to respond to this Both long and short intervals have been studied

Circadian timing Much of what happens on this planet depends on the time of day From fungi to humans, our baheviour is rhythmic Studied through entrainment –Synchronizing the external and the internal –Endogenous rhythms are a tad more or less than 24 hr

What makes entrainment special? Agent acts in absence of other cues Rhythms adjusted Stable phase relationship Removal changes pattern

genes Tau in hamsters Per in drosophila Genetic structure almost the same which is fracking cool

Interval timing Seconds or minutes rather than hours Train the animal to an FI Peak procedure with empty trials Weber’s Law Resetting

Other theories Connectionist modeling and oscillators BeT BeT not so good on trial by trial data Connectionist model may be the best

Counting Seems unlikely to some, but why not? Many - few discriminations Olthoff, Iden and Roberts (1997)

Conclusions Animals have abilities that may surprise us However, we should not be surprised, keeping track of time and number is really important for things like foraging