A research group led by Professor Yuji Ikegaya of the Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, the University of Tokyo, found that learning was established quickly in rats, which had many failures after careful consideration by having them perform a two-choice task.
In order for animals to survive in the ever-changing natural environment, it is important to make flexible decisions.For that purpose, two factors, quickness of decision (quickness) and appropriateness of decision (accuracy), are indispensable, but in the real world, the two factors are not always compatible, such as the wrong conclusion made quickly. Not always.
Therefore, in order to investigate which of the two elements is more important for the establishment of learning, the group asked the rat to solve the two-choice task of selecting the correct one from the two options by referring to the clue stimulus by the presentation of light, and for each rat. The learning performance and the time to selection during the task were measured.As a result, it was found that the faster the rat jumps to the conclusion, the slower the learning of the task is completed, and the rat with long latency and repeated misselection (that is, failure after contemplation) leaves good results.In addition, the number of correct answers (accidental success) at the stage where learning was not established was irrelevant to the speed at which learning was established.
The results show that it is more important for learning to be successful if it takes time to consider and fail rather than the successful experience itself.It is expected that the results of this research will not only be a fundamental finding in considering the survival strategy of living organisms, but will also help elucidate the mechanism of the brain that creates the individuality of animals.
Paper information:[PLOS ONE] Answering Hastily Retards Learning
