Delay-specific stimuli and genotype interact to determine temporal discounting in a rapid-acquisition procedure

Abstract

The importance of delay discounting to many socially important behavior problems has stimulated investigations of biological and environmental mechanisms responsible for variations in the form of the discount function. The extant experimental research, however, has yielded disparate results, raising important questions regarding Gene X Environment interactions. The present study determined the influence of stimuli that uniquely signal delays to reinforcement on delay discounting in two inbred mouse strains using a rapid-acquisition procedure. BALB/c and C57BL/6 mice responded under a six-component, concurrent-chained schedule in which the terminal-link delays preceding the larger-reinforcer were presented randomly across components of an individual session. Across conditions, components were presented either with or without delay-specific auditory stimuli, i.e., as multiple or mixed schedules. A generalized matching-based model was used to incorporate the impact of current and previous component reinforcer-delay ratios on current component response allocation. Sensitivity to reinforcer magnitude and delay were higher for BALB/c mice, but within-component preference reached final levels faster for C57Bl/6 mice. For BALB/c mice, acquisition of preference across blocks of a component was faster under the multiple than the mixed schedule, but final levels of sensitivity to reinforcement were unaffected by schedule. The speed of acquisition of preference was not different across schedules for C57Bl/6 mice, but sensitivity to reinforcement was higher under the multiple than the mixed schedule. Overall, differences in the acquisition and final form of the discount function were determined by a Gene X Environment interaction, but the presence of delay-specific stimuli attenuated genotype-dependent differences in magnitude and delay sensitivity.

Keywords: delay discounting; generalized matching law; mouse strain; pseudorandom delay presentation; rapid acquisition; signaled delay.