Animal Research

The animal laboratory includes both a rat and a mouse colony. I have been working with rats for a number of years, mostly investigating performances under ratio schedules of reinforcement. I'm particularly interested in the postreinforcement (or preratio) pause on fixed-ratio schedules. The pause has been described as an apparent exception to the Law of Effect, and as an animal analogue of human procrastination. I've published several papers on pausing and additional research is in the works.

Currently I am also colloborating with Holly Brown-Borg and (recently) Van Doze of the UND Department of Pharmacology, Physiology, & Therapeutics to examine mouse models of the aging process. The goals of this research are to 1) characterize behavioral aging in the mouse models, 2) help validate that the mouse strain models processes observed in humans, and 3) better understand physiological processes occurring in these mice through behavioral observations. Ultimately I would like to use behavioral tests to assess the efficacy of treatments designed to promote successful aging in these mice.

In addition to studying animals, I do some research with human participants. My main interest has been stimulus discrimination and peak shift. I believe peak shift is an important phenomenon which affects how we perceive and respond to many types of stimuli. It is even possible that peak shift is related to the perceptual distortions that accompany the disorder anorexia nervosa (a point discussed in my recent paper with Mike Breitstein and Rebecca Cicha). Other research that I have been doing has involved collaborating with Jeff Weatherly to study gambling and April Bradley to study self-control.