L´ adaptation au temps chez l´ animal

Abstract

This paper discusses the temporal regulation of performance in animals subjected to operant schedules of reinforcement (mostly PI, DRL, DRRD). A few data from human temporal conditioning experiments will also be cornmented upon. A brief introduction defines temporal regulations of behavior with regard to chronobiology. It is followed by a brief description of pavlovian temporal conditioning, FI, DRL and duration discrimination procedures. The relationship between performance and the temporal schedule constraints is commented as well. The next paragraphs concerns inter-species comparisons, with an emphasis on the role of species-specific factors, the anagenetical perspective in comparative psychology and the quest for "pure timing" with the peak procedure, leading to data in agreement with scalar timing theory. A few other recent data congruent with the model are also discussed. The next paragraphs briefly review several hypothesis concerning the nature or structure of the mechanism(s) underlying response timing. Besides classical hypotheses such as those involving external temporal indices (external clock, media ting behavior), the paper also briefly mentions' neuronal and biochemical correlates, as well as formal models based on information processing theory. After briefly commeting behavioral inhibition indispensable to the temporal regulation of behavior, the paper comments a few data bearing on the relationship between acquired response timing and chronobiology, especially the similarity and differences between meal anticipation in the restricted feeding paradigm and behavior in the FI schedule. The next paragraphs concern the developmental factors in the temporal regulation of behavior. The conclusion of the paper pleads for the development of an integrative theory of turning, taking into account comparative and developmental data too often neglected, in our view, by contemporary research mainly concerned by the development of formal models so far tested exclusively with pigeons, rats or humans. The generality of such speculations, some of them very seducive and extending Weber's law to response timing (the scalar timing theory), has to be investigated, using other species, age and duration ranges. The hypothesis of a precisely located central timer has been rejected since long, in favor of' a view involving biochemical parameters and the nexibility of neural connexions within networks located in different areas of the brain. Such hypotheses, most of them still speculative and deriving from computer simulations, open a new and challenging path in the quest for the elusive internal clock mechanisms.