Scalar Expectancy Theory

Podcast: Human Factors Minute · Human Factors Cast

Opublikowano: 2026-04-10

...and now for another Human Factors Minute! Scalar Expectancy Theory, or SET, is an important model of animal timing behavior credited to John Gibbon in the late 1900s. The idea of SET is that animals have an internal clock and particular memory and decision-making processes, which explains why their behavior can be temporally controlled using fixed-interval reinforcement. The scalar part of SET comes from how animals compare the current time (held in their working memory) to the expected time (held in their reference memory). When the ratio is small enough, the animal performs the behavior. When the ratio is big...