RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Two-dimensional reward evaluation in mice
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2020.04.14.040808
DO 10.1101/2020.04.14.040808
A1 Vladislav Nachev
A1 Marion Rivalan
A1 York Winter
YR 2021
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/03/09/2020.04.14.040808.abstract
AB When choosing among multi-attribute options, integrating the full information may be computationally costly and time-consuming. So-called non-compensatory decision rules only rely on partial information, for example when a difference on a single attribute overrides all others. Such rules may be ecologically more advantageous, despite being economically suboptimal. Here we present a study that investigates to what extent animals rely on integrative rules (using the full information) versus non-compensatory rules when choosing where to forage. Groups of mice were trained to obtain water from dispensers varying along two reward dimensions: volume and probability. The mice’s choices over the course of the experiment suggested an initial reliance on integrative rules, later displaced by a sequential rule, in which volume was evaluated before probability. Our results also demonstrate that while the evaluation of probability differences may depend on the reward volumes, the evaluation of volume differences is seemingly unaffected by the reward probabilities.Competing Interest StatementYW owns PhenoSys equity.