The bandwidth utilization of a single channel-based wireless networks decreases due to congestion and interference from other sources and therefore transmission on multiple channels are needed. In this paper, we propose a distributed dynamic channel allocation scheme for wireless networks using adaptive learning automata whose nodes are equipped with single radio interfaces so that a more suitable channel can be selected. The proposed scheme, adaptive pursuit reward-inaction, runs periodically on the nodes, and adaptively finds the suitable channel allocation in order to attain a desired performance. A novel performance index, which takes into account the throughput and the energy consumption, is considered. The proposed scheme is adaptive in the sense that probabilities in the each step are updated as a function of the error in the performance index. The extensive simulation results in static and mobile environments provide that using the proposed scheme for channel allocation in the multiple channel wireless networks significantly improves the throughput, drop rate, energy consumption per packet and fairness index.