[From Bruce Nevin (2000.11.29.1933 EDT)]
Bruce Abbott (2000.11.28.1750 EST)--
>It looks to me as though Ockam's razor shaves the rate and leaves the
>interval, since the former is built upon the latter. A steady rate of
>discrete events is necessarily a succession of like intervals between
>events; an interval between events bears no necessary relation to a rate.
To average rate.
The notion that a rat is computing an average rate is extremely implausible to me. But there is an easy way to test whether your experiment is measuring control of a rate (constant interval between events) or an average rate. If the rat is controlling a rate, when a disturbance lengthens an interval or two and then is removed, the rat will simply resume at the controlled rate. If in order to accomplish the desired result the rat has to diminish successive intervals (press faster) to compensate for the delay and then revert to something like the average pace, the rat is not controlling a rate (constant interval between events) and might be controlling an average rate. Which do you see?
Wouldn't that depend on how long an interval the average rate is being
integrated over? And the subject's ability to discriminate the short-run
changes?
Are you saying that with sufficiently long an interval the degree of slop in your averaging would be so great that there would be no need for the rat to catch up after being impeded? I think we have to limit your experiment to one where you might hope to demonstrate *something*.
>The rats are getting shocked less. The rate is how you are measuring it,
>but you have no idea how they perceive that.
No, but it is significant that they can tell that they are getting shocked less.
If my muscle aches less I can tell I have got punched less. That does not mean I am perceiving or controlling an average rate of punches.
>>I believe that such performances require the ability to integrate over time.
>
>They might be feeling less shocked because they integrate an average rate
>over time, or because there is less accumulated error in control of some
>metabolic state or states.
Accumulated error is error integrated over time.
The ache in my muscle is an equally sophisticated mechanism for integrating error over time. In neither case is there a control process calculating the integration of error over time. But in any case, now we are talking about integration of error, not integration of an average rate. This has no bearing on your claim that the rat is perceiving and controlling average rates and then controlling a relationship between one average rate and another.
>The question was formed by the debate, which was
>formed by theoretic presuppositions, and the results are interpreted as
>answers to the question.
[...] I have no idea what that means.
Sorry, I'll unpack it. It has four parts.
1. The debate: "This issue has been at the core of a continuing debate in EAB referred to as the "molar" versus "molecular" views. The molar view says that the subjects are able to integrate events over time, the other says that the are sensitive only to relatively immediate experiences, such as the interval between two events." (your 2000.11.28.1420 EST)
2. The question: the experiments were designed to answer the "molar or molecular" question posed in this debate.
3. The debate itself was in accord with presuppositions about what behavior is. In particular, the debate was uninformed by any notion of controlled perceptions, or any recognition that behavior is significant to an organism (and therefore to a psychologist) only insofar as it helps to make the organism's perceptions be as it wants them to be. An investigator who is so informed would never consider administering shocks as a sensible research technique. It overwhelms control and very likely induces reorganization.
4. The results are interpreted as answering the question. Alternative interpretations are not considered, and indeed cannot arise within the unquestioned conceptual presuppositions about what behavior is.
What is the controlled variable? If you have played the coin game, or if you have witnessed expert practitioners of experimental psychology postulating what is going on in the rubber band demos, you know that presuppositions about the controlled variable are not very likely to be correct, and each guess has to be tested by applying disturbances to the putative controlled variable and seeing if they are resisted.
I still think that your answer to my first question was "no": Is the interval between actions regular? In the manner in which when we say that a motor is turning at 3600 rpm we expect that to mean that it is turning 360 times every 6 seconds, 60 times every second, throughout the time, perhaps several minutes, that it is running at that speed. Or does the interval between presses vary irregularly, so that a statement of a "rate" is possible only by averaging over an extended period of time? As if we were to rev the motor between idling and 5000 rpm several times over the course of a minute and then calculate that it was running at a "rate" of 3600 rpm.
If the rat is controlling a rate, as in 3600 rpm as we normally understand that, then when a disturbance slows the rat down the rat will counter the disturbance merely by resuming at the controlled rate, much as when a load slows a motor from 3600 rpm and then is removed the motor simply reverts to 3600 rpm (other things being equal). If the rat is controlling an average rate, then the rat will know that it must speed up in order to counter the disturbance and get back on track to meet its quota for the averaging period, and when it is confident of meeting its quota it will reduce the pace to something near the average rate again, rather like a rally driver.
The third possibility, of course, is that the rat is controlling neither. This opens a prospect of testing to find out what the rat in fact is controlling. That may be uncomfortably open-ended. But that's life. Something that we're only beginning to nibble at the near edge.
Bruce
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At 05:53 PM 11/29/2000 -0500, Abbott, Bruce wrote: