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Thorndike, E. L. (1898). Review of Animal Intelligence: An Experimental Study of the Associative Processes in Animals. Psychol. Rev., 5(5), 551–553.
Abstract: Reviews the article “Animal Intelligence: An Experimental Study of the Associative Processes in Animals” by E. L. Thorndike. In this monograph are presented the results of some experiments which the author has been carrying on during two years, and some theories which these results seem to support. The subjects of the experiments were dogs, cats and chicks, and the method was to put them, when hungry, in boxes from which they could escape and so get food by manipulating some simple mechanism (e. g., by pulling down a loop of wire, depressing a lever, turning a button). The author reports on the behavior of the animals. The author's conception of mental evolution is briefly explained, and applications of his results to education, anthropology and theoretical psychology are made. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
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Reader, S. M., Kendal, J. R., & Laland, K. N. (2003). Social learning of foraging sites and escape routes in wild Trinidadian guppies. Anim. Behav., 66(4), 729–739.
Abstract: We describe two field experiments with wild guppies, Poecilia reticulata, in Trinidad that demonstrated that guppies can acquire foraging and predator escape-response information from conspecifics. In the foraging experiment, subjects were presented with two distinctly marked feeders in their home rivers. One feeder contained a conspecific shoal in a transparent container. Guppies preferred to enter the feeder containing this artificial shoal over the other feeder. In a test phase, the artificial shoal was removed and the feeders replaced at the testing site after a 5-min delay. More guppies entered the feeder that had contained the artificial shoal over the other feeder, a difference that can be explained only by the fish learning the characteristics or location of the feeder during the training phase. We suggest that subjects acquired a foraging patch preference through a propensity to approach feeding conspecifics, a local enhancement process. In the predator escape-response experiment, naive 'observer' guppies could avoid an approaching trawl net by escaping through either a hole to which 'demonstrator' guppies had been trained or through an alternative hole. When the demonstrators were present, the naive observers escaped more often and more rapidly by the demonstrated route than the alternative route. When the demonstrators were removed, observers maintained a route preference according to the training of their demonstrators, which suggests that the observers had learned an escape route through following or observing their more knowledgeable conspecifics. Thus, both experiments reveal that guppies can socially learn in the wild. Copyright 2003 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.
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Smith, S. F., Appleby, M. C., & Hughes, B. O. (1990). Problem solving by domestic hens: opening doors to reach nest sites. Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci., 28(3), 287–292.
Abstract: In a trial of cage designs for laying hens, eggs were discovered in dust baths where access was restricted by a closed door during the normal laying period (08:00-13:00 h). Observations showed that the hens in these dust bath treatments had developed methods of opening the doors in order to lay in the baths. Three different methods of opening were observed. An average time of 34.4 min was spent attempting to open the doors before access was finally achieved. This implies a strong nesting motivation in these hens. The proportion of eggs laid in the dust baths increased (with occasional fluctuations) over a 24-week period. Door opening is likely to have initially developed in one individual in each cage through a trial and error basis, and then have been learned by cage mates through imitation. The speed and efficiency of door opening was not found to increase with experience or time.
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Petherick, J. C., & Rutter, S. M. (1990). Quantifying motivation using a computer-controlled push-door. Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci., 27(1), 159–167.
Abstract: A computer-controlled push-door system was designed and tested as a method for measuring motivation. Eleven domestic hens were trained to use the push-door to gain access to food. They were deprived of food for 12 h or 43 h on 12 occasions and the push-door was used to measure the amount of “work” (measured as force × time) that they performed to gain access to a food reward. When deprived of food for 12 h the hens took significantly longer (P<0.01) to reach the required threshold of work, than when deprived for 43 h. This difference arose from the amount of time that the hens spent not pushing at the door. The problems encountered with this system and such an approach to measuring motivation are discussed.
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Koistinen, T., Korhonen, H. T., Hämäläinen, E., & Mononen, J. (2016). Blue foxes' (Vulpes lagopus) motivation to gain access and interact with various resources. Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci., 176, 105–111.
Abstract: We analysed the willingness of blue foxes (Vulpes lagopus) to work for and utilise five resources: a platform, wooden block, sand floor, nest box and empty space. Ten juvenile blue fox males were housed singly in apparatus consisting of three cages connected with one-way doors through the walls in between the cages and subjected to work for each of the five resources, one at a time. The resource was placed in one of the outermost cages of the apparatus. Force needed to open the door leading to the resource cage was increased daily by 0.25 or 0.5kg. The number of daily entries, visit durations and interaction with the resource were recorded on workloads of 0, 0.5, 1.5, 2.5, 3.5, 5, 6.5, and 8kg of extra weight. The latency to start interacting with the resource after entering the resource cage was measured on a workload of 3.5kg. The mean number of daily entries in the resource and the other outermost, i.e. control cage varied from 7 to 28 and from 17 to 44, respectively. The increasing workload decreased the number of entries in the resource cage, increased those in the control cage (Linear Mixed Model: F1,638=79.5, P<0.001) and lengthened the visit durations in both cages (F1,642=7.2, P<0.01). The foxes made most (F4,643=9.0, P<0.001) and shortest (F4,641=2.8, P<0.05) visits to the outermost cages when the available resource was either a platform or empty space. The visit durations were longest when the available resource was a nest box. The foxes interacted regularly with the wooden block, but five foxes were not observed interacting with the platform. The nest box was utilised approximately 50% of the time spent in the resource cage, while the platform was utilised only 1-6% and wooden block 2-17% of the time. The mean latency to start interacting with the resource after entering the resource cage was shortest for the sand floor (8s) and longest for the platform (113s, F3,335=26.3, P<0.001). The results show that the foxes re-scheduled their activities on increasing workloads in the apparatus. Based on the number of entries and visit durations, blue foxes valued the wooden block, nest box and sand floor more than the platform or an empty cage. After entering the resource cage, the foxes started interacting fastest with the sand floor, showing high motivation to interact. After entering the resource cage, the foxes make use of the roof of the nest box more urgently than the interior of the nest box. Long bouts in the cage with nest box indicate resting behaviour.
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Rogers, L. J. (2017). A Matter of Degree: Strength of Brain Asymmetry and Behaviour. Symmetry, 9(4).
Abstract: Research on a growing number of vertebrate species has shown that the left and right sides of the brain process information in different ways and that lateralized brain function is expressed in both specific and broad aspects of behaviour. This paper reviews the available evidence relating strength of lateralization to behavioural/cognitive performance. It begins by considering the relationship between limb preference and behaviour in humans and primates from the perspectives of direction and strength of lateralization. In birds, eye preference is used as a reflection of brain asymmetry and the strength of this asymmetry is associated with behaviour important for survival (e.g., visual discrimination of food from non-food and performance of two tasks in parallel). The same applies to studies on aquatic species, mainly fish but also tadpoles, in which strength of lateralization has been assessed as eye preferences or turning biases. Overall, the empirical evidence across vertebrate species points to the conclusion that stronger lateralization is advantageous in a wide range of contexts. Brief discussion of interhemispheric communication follows together with discussion of experiments that examined the effects of sectioning pathways connecting the left and right sides of the brain, or of preventing the development of these left-right connections. The conclusion reached is that degree of functional lateralization affects behaviour in quite similar ways across vertebrate species. Although the direction of lateralization is also important, in many situations strength of lateralization matters more. Finally, possible interactions between asymmetry in different sensory modalities is considered.
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KOIZUMI, R., MITANI, T., UEDA, K., & KONDO, S. (2017). Skill reading of human social cues by horses (Equus caballus) reared under year-round grazing conditions. Animal Behaviour and Management, 53(2), 69–78.
Abstract: Animals use communicative signals, such as gesture or gaze, to communicate to someone the intention or expression of the sender, which is called social cue. In the previous studies, it was suggested the skill of reading human social cue in domestic animals are influenced to the domestication, the experience contacting with human and training to obey human. In this present study, we tested the skill for horses (Equus caballus) kept in year-round grazing conditions using 33 horses differed from breed and the degree of the experience with human by object-choice task subjects choosing either of bait boxes located at the end of experimenter. As results, non-socialized horses hardly responded to human social cues. Habituated horses that were both of trained and untrained responded to human social cues, but their accuracy rates were not more than 50% except for two trained subjects. For the skill of reading human social cues, there was high individual variation in responding to human social cues in horses kept in year-round grazing conditions. The individual characteristics influenced to it more than domestication, the experience with human, and training to obey human.
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Klingel, H. (1998). Observations on social organization and behaviour of African and Asiatic Wild Asses (Equus africanus and Equus hemionus). Appl Anim Behav Sci, 60(2), 103–113.
Abstract: 1This paper appears with kind permission of Verlag Paul Parey, Berlin and Hamburg. It was originally published in Z. Tierpsychol., 44, 323-331 (1977), ISSN 0044-3573/ASTM-Coden: ZETIAG.1
Abstract
African and Asiatic Wild Asses (Equus africanus and Equus hemionus) live in unstable groups or herds of variable composition. Some of the adult stallions are territorial in large territories in which they tolerate other ♂♂. The territorial ♂♂ are dominant over all their conspecifics
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Gabor, V., & Gerken, M. (2014). Shetland ponies (Equus caballus) show quantity discrimination in a matching-to-sample design. Anim. Cogn., 17(6), 1233–1243.
Abstract: Numerical competence is one of the aspects of animal cognition with a long history of research interest, but few results are available for the horse. In the present study, we investigated the ability of three Shetland ponies to discriminate between different quantities of geometric symbols presented on a computer screen in a matching-to-sample arrangement. In Experiment 1, the ponies had to relate two similar quantities to another, paired in contrasts (1 vs. 2, 3 vs. 4 and 4 vs. 5) of the same stimulus (dot). Specific pairs of quantities (all differing by one) of up to five different geometrical symbols were displayed in Experiment 2. In each session, both quantities (more and less) were used as sample in such a way that each of the two quantities presented in one test served as positive and as negative stimulus, respectively. The three Shetland ponies were able to discriminate between the given quantities of dots by showing more than 80 % correct responses in two consecutive sessions. Only one of the ponies distinguished different shapes of geometric symbols at a level of 4 versus 5 items. The results show that all ponies were capable of visual quantity discrimination in the present matching-to-sample design, but task solving seemed more difficult when quantities were composed of heterogeneous stimuli. The present results confirm our hypothesis that the ponies based their decision on the matching concept of sameness and were not biased by a spontaneous preference for higher quantities.
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A. Lanata, A. Guidi, G. Valenza, P. Baragli, & E. P. Scilingo. (2016). Quantitative heartbeat coupling measures in human-horse interaction. In 2016 38th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC) (pp. 2696–2699). 2016 38th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (E.
Abstract: Abstract— We present a study focused on a quantitative estimation of a human-horse dynamic interaction. A set of measures based on magnitude and phase coupling between heartbeat dynamics of both humans and horses in three different conditions is reported: no interaction, visual/olfactory interaction and grooming. Specifically, Magnitude Squared Coherence (MSC), Mean Phase Coherence (MPC) and Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) have been used as estimators of the amount of coupling between human and horse through the analysis of their heart rate variability (HRV) time series in a group of eleven human subjects, and one horse. The rationale behind this study is that the interaction of two complex biological systems go towards a coupling process whose dynamical evolution is modulated by the kind and time duration of the interaction itself. We achieved a congruent and consistent
statistical significant difference for all of the three indices. Moreover, a Nearest Mean Classifier was able to recognize the three classes of interaction with an accuracy greater than 70%. Although preliminary, these encouraging results allow a discrimination of three distinct phases in a real human-animal interaction opening to the characterization of the empirically proven relationship between human and horse.
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