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Author Zentall, T.R.; Riley, D.A.
Title Selective attention in animal discrimination learning Type Journal Article
Year 2000 Publication The Journal of general psychology Abbreviated Journal J Gen Psychol
Volume 127 Issue 1 Pages 45-66
Keywords Animals; Attention/*physiology; Behavior, Animal/physiology; Conditioning (Psychology)/physiology; Cues; Discrimination Learning/*physiology; Generalization, Response; Rats
Abstract (up) The traditional approach to the study of selective attention in animal discrimination learning has been to ask if animals are capable of the central selective processing of stimuli, such that certain aspects of the discriminative stimuli are partially or wholly ignored while their relationships to each other, or other relevant stimuli, are processed. A notable characteristic of this research has been that procedures involve the acquisition of discriminations, and the issue of concern is whether learning is selectively determined by the stimulus dimension defined by the discriminative stimuli. Although there is support for this kind of selective attention, in many cases, simpler nonattentional accounts are sufficient to explain the results. An alternative approach involves procedures more similar to those used in human information-processing research. When selective attention is studied in humans, it generally involves the steady state performance of tasks for which there is limited time allowed for stimulus input and a relatively large amount of relevant information to be processed; thus, attention must be selective or divided. When this approach is applied to animals and alternative accounts have been ruled out, stronger evidence for selective or divided attention in animals has been found. Similar processes are thought to be involved when animals search more natural environments for targets. Finally, an attempt is made to distinguish these top-down attentional processes from more automatic preattentional processes that have been studied in humans and other animals.
Address Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky, Lexington 40506, USA. Zentall@pop.uky.edu
Corporate Author Thesis
Publisher Place of Publication Editor
Language English Summary Language Original Title
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title
Series Volume Series Issue Edition
ISSN 0022-1309 ISBN Medium
Area Expedition Conference
Notes PMID:10695951 Approved no
Call Number refbase @ user @ Serial 250
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Author Zentall, T.R.
Title Timing, memory for intervals, and memory for untimed stimuli: The role of instructional ambiguity Type Journal Article
Year 2006 Publication Behavioural processes Abbreviated Journal Behav. Process.
Volume 71 Issue 2-3 Pages 88-97
Keywords
Abstract (up) Theories of animal timing have had to account for findings that the memory for the duration of a timed interval appears to be dramatically shorted within a short time of its termination. This finding has led to the subjective shortening hypothesis and it has been proposed to account for the poor memory that animals appear to have for the initial portion of a timed interval when a gap is inserted in the to-be-timed signal. It has also been proposed to account for the poor memory for a relatively long interval that has been discriminated from a shorter interval. I suggest here a simpler account in which ambiguity between the gap or retention interval and the intertrial interval results in resetting the clock, rather than forgetting the interval. The ambiguity hypothesis, together with a signal salience mechanism that determines how quickly the clock is reset at the start of the intertrial interval can account for the results of the reported timing experiments that have used the peak procedure. Furthermore, instructional ambiguity rather than memory loss may account for the results of many animal memory experiments that do not involve memory for time.
Address Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky, 202B Kastle Hall, Lexington, KY 40506-0044, USA. zentall@uky.edu
Corporate Author Thesis
Publisher Place of Publication Editor
Language English Summary Language Original Title
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title
Series Volume Series Issue Edition
ISSN 0376-6357 ISBN Medium
Area Expedition Conference
Notes PMID:16406373 Approved no
Call Number refbase @ user @ Serial 219
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Author Zentall, T.R.
Title Timing, memory for intervals, and memory for untimed stimuli: the role of instructional ambiguity Type Journal Article
Year 2005 Publication Behavioural processes Abbreviated Journal Behav. Process.
Volume 70 Issue 3 Pages 209-222
Keywords Animals; *Attention; Columbidae; *Discrimination Learning; *Memory, Short-Term; Practice (Psychology); Reinforcement Schedule; *Retention (Psychology); *Time Perception
Abstract (up) Theories of animal timing have had to account for findings that the memory for the duration of a timed interval appears to be dramatically shorted within a short time of its termination. This finding has led to the subjective shortening hypothesis and it has been proposed to account for the poor memory that animals appear to have for the initial portion of a timed interval when a gap is inserted in the to-be-timed signal. It has also been proposed to account for the poor memory for a relatively long interval that has been discriminated from a shorter interval. I suggest here a simpler account in which ambiguity between the gap or retention interval and the intertrial interval results in resetting the clock, rather than forgetting the interval. The ambiguity hypothesis, together with a signal salience mechanism that determines how quickly the clock is reset at the start of the intertrial interval can account for the results of the reported timing experiments that have used the peak procedure. Furthermore, instructional ambiguity rather than memory loss may account for the results of many animal memory experiments that do not involve memory for time.
Address Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky, 202B Kastle Hall, Lexington, KY 40506-0044, USA. zentall@uky.edu
Corporate Author Thesis
Publisher Place of Publication Editor
Language English Summary Language Original Title
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title
Series Volume Series Issue Edition
ISSN 0376-6357 ISBN Medium
Area Expedition Conference
Notes PMID:16095851 Approved no
Call Number refbase @ user @ Serial 222
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Author Zentall, T.R.
Title Selective and divided attention in animals Type Journal Article
Year 2005 Publication Behavioural processes Abbreviated Journal Behav. Process.
Volume 69 Issue 1 Pages 1-15
Keywords Animals; *Attention; *Behavior, Animal; *Discrimination (Psychology); *Field Dependence-Independence; *Psychological Theory
Abstract (up) This article reviews some of the research on attentional processes in animals. In the traditional approach to selective attention, it is proposed that in addition to specific response attachments, animals also learn something about the dimension along which the stimuli fall (e.g., hue, brightness, or line orientation). More recently, there has been an attempt to find animal analogs to methodologies originally applied to research with humans. One line of research has been directed to the question of whether animals can locate a target among distracters faster if they are prepared for the presentation of the target (search image and priming). In the study of search image, the target is typically a food item and the cue consists of previous trials on which the same target is presented. In research on priming effects, the cue is typically different from the target but is a good predictor of its occurrence. The study of preattentive processes shows that perceptually, certain stimuli stand out from distracters better than others, depending not only on characteristics of the target relative to the distracters, but also on relations among the distracters. Research on divided attention is examined with the goal of determining whether an animal can process two elements of a compound sample with the same efficiency as one. Taken together, the reviewed research indicates that animals are capable of centrally (not just peripherally) attending to selective aspects of a stimulus display.
Address Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky, 202B Kastle Hall, Lexington, KY 40506-0044, USA. Zentall@uky.edu
Corporate Author Thesis
Publisher Place of Publication Editor
Language English Summary Language Original Title
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title
Series Volume Series Issue Edition
ISSN 0376-6357 ISBN Medium
Area Expedition Conference
Notes PMID:15795066 Approved no
Call Number refbase @ user @ Serial 224
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Author Zentall, T.R.
Title A cognitive behaviorist approach to the study of animal behavior Type Journal Article
Year 2002 Publication The Journal of general psychology Abbreviated Journal J Gen Psychol
Volume 129 Issue 4 Pages 328-363
Keywords Animals; *Attention; *Behavior, Animal; *Cognition; Learning; *Memory; Social Behavior
Abstract (up) Traditional psychological approaches to animal learning and behavior have involved either the atheoretical behaviorist approach proposed by B. F. Skinner (1938), in which input-output relations are described in response to environmental manipulations, or the theoretical behaviorist approach offered by C. L Hull (1943), in which associations mediated by several hypothetical constructs and intervening variables are formed between stimuli and responses. Recently, the application of a cognitive behaviorist approach to animal learning and behavior has been found to have considerable value as a research tool. This perspective has grown out of E. C. Tolman's cognitive approach to learning in which behavior is mediated by mechanisms that are not directly observable but can be inferred from the results of critical experiments. In the present article, the author presents several examples of the successful application of the cognitive behaviorist approach. In each case, the experiments have been designed to distinguish between more traditional mechanisms and those mediated by hypothesized internal representations. These examples were selected because the evidence suggests that some form of active cognitive organization is needed to account for the behavioral results.
Address Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky, Lexington 40506, USA. Zentall@uky.edu
Corporate Author Thesis
Publisher Place of Publication Editor
Language English Summary Language Original Title
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title
Series Volume Series Issue Edition
ISSN 0022-1309 ISBN Medium
Area Expedition Conference
Notes PMID:12494989 Approved no
Call Number refbase @ user @ Serial 214
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Author Nallan, G.B.; Pace, G.M.; McCoy, D.F.; Zentall, T.R.
Title Temporal parameters of the feature positive effect Type Journal Article
Year 1979 Publication The American journal of psychology Abbreviated Journal Am J Psychol
Volume 92 Issue 4 Pages 703-710
Keywords Animals; Columbidae; Conditioning, Operant; *Discrimination Learning; Form Perception; Male; *Time Perception
Abstract (up) Trial duration and intertrial interval duration were parametrically varied between groups of pigeons exposed to a discrimination involving the presence vs. the absence of a dot. Half the groups received the dot as the positive stimulus (feature positive groups) and half the groups received the dot as the negative stimulus (feature negative groups). Faster learning by the feature positive birds (feature positive effect) was found when the trial duration was short (5 sec) regardless of whether the intertrial interval was short (5 sec) or long (30 sec). No evidence for a feature positive effect was found when the trial duration was long (30 sec) regardless of the length of the intertrial interval (30 sec or 180 sec). The results suggest that short trial duration is a necessary condition for the occurrence of the feature positive effect, and neither intertrial interval nor trial duration/intertrial interval ratio are important for its occurrence. The suggestion that mechanisms underlying the feature positive effect and autoshaping might be similar was not supported by the present experiment since the trial duration/intertrial interval ration parameter appears to play an important role in autoshaping but not the feature positive effect.
Address
Corporate Author Thesis
Publisher Place of Publication Editor
Language English Summary Language Original Title
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title
Series Volume Series Issue Edition
ISSN 0002-9556 ISBN Medium
Area Expedition Conference
Notes PMID:532834 Approved no
Call Number refbase @ user @ Serial 269
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Author Zentall, T.R.; Sherburne, L.M.
Title Transfer of value from S+ to S- in a simultaneous discrimination Type Journal Article
Year 1994 Publication Journal of experimental psychology. Animal behavior processes Abbreviated Journal J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process
Volume 20 Issue 2 Pages 176-183
Keywords Animals; *Appetitive Behavior; Attention; Color Perception; Columbidae; *Discrimination Learning; Female; Male; Motivation; Orientation; Pattern Recognition, Visual; *Problem Solving; *Reinforcement Schedule; *Transfer (Psychology)
Abstract (up) Value transfer theory has been proposed to account for transitive inference effects (L. V. Fersen, C. D. L. Wynne, J. D. Delius, & J. E. R. Staddon, 1991), in which following training on 4 simultaneous discriminations (A+B-, B+C-, C+D-, D+E-) pigeons show a preference for B over D. According to this theory, some of the value of reinforcement acquired by each S+ transfers to the S-. In the transitive inference experiment, C (associated with both reward and nonreward) can transfer less value to D than A (associated only with reward) can transfer to B. Support for value transfer theory was demonstrated in 2 experiments in which an S- presented in the context of a stimulus to which responses were always reinforced (S+) was preferred over an S- presented in the context of a stimulus to which responses were sometimes reinforced (S +/-).
Address Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky, Lexington 40506
Corporate Author Thesis
Publisher Place of Publication Editor
Language English Summary Language Original Title
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title
Series Volume Series Issue Edition
ISSN 0097-7403 ISBN Medium
Area Expedition Conference
Notes PMID:8189186 Approved no
Call Number refbase @ user @ Serial 258
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Author Clement, T.S.; Zentall, T.R.
Title Development of a single-code/default coding strategy in pigeons Type Journal Article
Year 2000 Publication Psychological science : a journal of the American Psychological Society / APS Abbreviated Journal Psychol Sci
Volume 11 Issue 3 Pages 261-264
Keywords Animals; Attention; Columbidae; *Discrimination Learning; Female; Male; *Pattern Recognition, Visual; *Problem Solving; Retention (Psychology)
Abstract (up) We tested the hypothesis that pigeons could use a cognitively efficient coding strategy by training them on a conditional discrimination (delayed symbolic matching) in which one alternative was correct following the presentation of one sample (one-to-one), whereas the other alternative was correct following the presentation of any one of four other samples (many-to-one). When retention intervals of different durations were inserted between the offset of the sample and the onset of the choice stimuli, divergent retention functions were found. With increasing retention interval, matching accuracy on trials involving any of the many-to-one samples was increasingly better than matching accuracy on trials involving the one-to-one sample. Furthermore, following this test, pigeons treated a novel sample as if it had been one of the many-to-one samples. The data suggest that rather than learning each of the five sample-comparison associations independently, the pigeons developed a cognitively efficient single-code/default coding strategy.
Address Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506, USA
Corporate Author Thesis
Publisher Place of Publication Editor
Language English Summary Language Original Title
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title
Series Volume Series Issue Edition
ISSN 0956-7976 ISBN Medium
Area Expedition Conference
Notes PMID:11273414 Approved no
Call Number refbase @ user @ Serial 246
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Author Lonon, A.M.; Zentall, T.R.
Title Transfer of value from S+ to S- in simultaneous discriminations in humans Type Journal Article
Year 1999 Publication The American journal of psychology Abbreviated Journal Am J Psychol
Volume 112 Issue 1 Pages 21-39
Keywords Adolescent; Adult; Animals; Color Perception; Columbidae; Conditioning, Classical; *Discrimination Learning; Female; Humans; Male; Middle Aged; *Motivation; Orientation; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Psychomotor Performance; Reaction Time; *Transfer (Psychology)
Abstract (up) When animals learn a simultaneous discrimination, some of the value of the positive stimulus (S+) appears to transfer to the negative stimulus (S-). The present experiments demonstrate that such value transfer can also be found in humans. In Experiment 1 humans were trained on 2 simple simultaneous discriminations, the first between a highly positive stimulus, A (1,000 points); and a negative stimulus, B (0 points); and the second between a less positive stimulus, C (100 points); and a negative stimulus, D (0 points). On test trials, most participants preferred B over D. In Experiments 2 and 3 the value of the 2 original discriminations was equated in training (A[100]B[0] and C[100]D[0]). In Experiment 2 the values of the positive stimuli were then altered (A[1,000]C[0]); again, most participants preferred B over D. In Experiment 3, however, when the values of B and D were altered (B[1,000]D[0]), participants were indifferent to A and C. Thus, the mechanism that underlies value transfer in humans appears to be related to Pavlovian second-order conditioning. Similar mechanisms may be involved in assimilation processes in social contexts.
Address University of Kentucky, USA
Corporate Author Thesis
Publisher Place of Publication Editor
Language English Summary Language Original Title
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title
Series Volume Series Issue Edition
ISSN 0002-9556 ISBN Medium
Area Expedition Conference
Notes PMID:10696277 Approved no
Call Number refbase @ user @ Serial 249
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Author Clement, T.S.; Zentall, T.R.
Title Choice based on exclusion in pigeons Type Journal Article
Year 2003 Publication Psychonomic bulletin & review Abbreviated Journal Psychon Bull Rev
Volume 10 Issue 4 Pages 959-964
Keywords Animals; Appetitive Behavior; *Association Learning; *Choice Behavior; *Color Perception; Columbidae; *Discrimination Learning; Memory, Short-Term; *Problem Solving; Psychomotor Performance; Reaction Time; Transfer (Psychology)
Abstract (up) When humans acquire a conditional discrimination and are given a novel-sample-comparison choice, they often reject a comparison known to be associated with a different sample and choose the alternative comparison by default (or by exclusion). In Experiment 1, we found that if, following matching training, we replaced both of the samples, acquisition took five times longer than if we replaced only one of the samples. Apparently, the opportunity to reject one of the comparisons facilitated the association of the other sample with the remaining comparison. In Experiment 2, we first trained pigeons to treat two samples differently (to associate Sample A with Comparison 1 and Sample B with Comparison 2) and then trained them to associate one of those samples with a new comparison (e.g., Sample A with Comparison 3) and to associate a novel sample (Sample C) with a different, new comparison (Comparison 4). When Sample B then replaced Sample C, the pigeons showed a significant tendency to choose Comparison 4 over Comparison 3. Thus, when given the opportunity, pigeons will choose by exclusion.
Address University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, USA
Corporate Author Thesis
Publisher Place of Publication Editor
Language English Summary Language Original Title
Series Editor Series Title Abbreviated Series Title
Series Volume Series Issue Edition
ISSN 1069-9384 ISBN Medium
Area Expedition Conference
Notes PMID:15000545 Approved no
Call Number refbase @ user @ Serial 233
Permanent link to this record