BEHAVIORS TIME

This chapter reviews some of the effects of giving food to hungry animals according to different temporal regimens. The dependent variable is some change in the stance of the organism-around the chamber, toward a switch, between two switches. It is either a direct effect of the passage of time, measured by analysis of what animals do while waiting for food or after receiving it, or an indirect effect, measured by their accuracy in discriminating intervals of time. In the latter case, the animal is rewarded only if it can correctly indicate whether the shorter or the longer of two intervals had just elapsed; or it might receive food after a short delay if it responds to one switch, after a longer delay if it responds to another switch. It is the thesis of the present analysis that the discrimination of temporal intervals is based on the discrimination of behaviors that are elicited by the direct effects of reinforcement, and that the latter comprise behavior's time. The chapter discusses that time is the dimension along which structure expands into function, attitude into action, stance into behavior. Changes are understood in time only through changes in the events that evolve through time. It has been a habit to identify events that seem to evolve or recur regularly-in early days the return of the sun or the progress of its shadow, in later days the vibrations of atoms-and to use these as the criteria for the passage of time. Changes in such criterion events serve as the denominator in differential equations to which changes in all other events are referenced. © 1991, Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.