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Active and passive waiting in impulsive choice: Effects of fixed-interval and fixed-time delays

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Abstract

Behavioral interventions to improve self-control, preference for a larger-later (LL) reward over a smaller-sooner (SS) reward, involve experience with delayed rewards. Whether they involve timing processes remains controversial. In rats, there have been inconsistent results on whether timing processes may be involved in intervention-induced improvements in self-control. Interventions that improved self-control with corresponding timing improvements used fixed-interval (FI) delays, whereas interventions that failed to find corresponding timing improvements used fixed-time (FT) delays. The FI schedule includes a response contingency (active waiting), whereas the FT schedule delivers reward automatically (passive waiting). The present study compared the effects of FI and FT schedules in interventions and impulsive choice tasks to evaluate effects on self-control and timing behavior. The impulsive choice task evaluated preference for an SS option (one pellet after 10-, 15-, 20-, 25-, and 30-s delays) versus an LL option (two pellets after a 30-s delay). The intervention task included forced-choice SS (one pellet after 10 s) and LL (two pellets after 30 s) sessions under FI or FT schedules. FI schedules produced greater sensitivity to SS delay in the impulsive choice task. Both FI and FT interventions increased LL choices. Following choice testing, temporal bisection and peak interval tasks revealed better timing precision for rats with an FI delay experience. Overall, the FI choice contingency was associated with improved temporal attention and timing precision.

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Acknowledgements

We thank current and former members of the Reward, Timing, and Decision Laboratory who contributed to data collection.

Funding

Some of the research described in this review was supported by National Institutes of Health grants R01MH085739 and P20GM113109 to Dr. Kimberly Kirkpatrick and Kansas State University. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

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  1. Department of Psychological Sciences, Kansas State University, 492 Bluemont Hall, 1114 Mid-Campus Drive N., Manhattan, KS, 66506, USA

    Travis Smith, Anderson Fitch, Aubrey Deavours & Kimberly Kirkpatrick

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TS, AF, AD, and KK conceived and drafted parts of the manuscript and edited the other parts. Relative author contribution is based on the relative proportion of the review that was conceived and/or drafted by each individual.

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Correspondence to Travis Smith.

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Smith, T., Fitch, A., Deavours, A. et al. Active and passive waiting in impulsive choice: Effects of fixed-interval and fixed-time delays. Learn Behav (2024). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13420-023-00622-z

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