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Rumbaugh, D. M., Savage-Rumbaugh, S., & Hegel, M. T. (1987). Summation in the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes). J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process, 13(2), 107–115.
Abstract: In this research, we asked whether 2 chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) subjects could reliably sum across pairs of quantities to select the greater total. Subjects were allowed to choose between two trays of chocolates. Each tray contained two food wells. To select the tray containing the greater number of chocolates, it was necessary to sum the contents of the food wells on each tray. In experiments where food wells contained from zero to four chocolates, the chimpanzees chose the greater value of the summed wells on more than 90% of the trials. In the final experiment, the maximum number of chocolates assigned to a food well was increased to five. Choice of the tray containing the greater sum still remained above 90%. In all experiments, subjects reliably chose the greater sum, even though on many trials a food well on the “incorrect” tray held more chocolates than either single well on the “correct” tray. It was concluded that without any known ability to count, these chimpanzees used some process of summation to combine spatially separated quantities. Speculation regarding the basis for summation includes consideration of perceptual fusion of pairs of quantities and subitization.
Keywords: Animals; Choice Behavior; *Cognition; Male; *Mathematics; *Pan troglodytes; Visual Perception
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Real, L. A. (1991). Animal choice behavior and the evolution of cognitive architecture. Science, 253(5023), 980–986.
Abstract: Animals process sensory information according to specific computational rules and, subsequently, form representations of their environments that form the basis for decisions and choices. The specific computational rules used by organisms will often be evolutionarily adaptive by generating higher probabilities of survival, reproduction, and resource acquisition. Experiments with enclosed colonies of bumblebees constrained to foraging on artificial flowers suggest that the bumblebee's cognitive architecture is designed to efficiently exploit floral resources from spatially structured environments given limits on memory and the neuronal processing of information. A non-linear relationship between the biomechanics of nectar extraction and rates of net energetic gain by individual bees may account for sensitivities to both the arithmetic mean and variance in reward distributions in flowers. Heuristic rules that lead to efficient resource exploitation may also lead to subjective misperception of likelihoods. Subjective probability formation may then be viewed as a problem in pattern recognition subject to specific sampling schemes and memory constraints.
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Prato-Previde, E., Marshall-Pescini, S., & Valsecchi, P. (2008). Is your choice my choice` The owners effect on pet dogs? ( Canis lupus familiaris ) performance in a food choice task. Anim. Cogn., 11(1), 167–174.
Abstract: Abstract This study investigates the influence of owners on their dogs performance in a food choice task using either different or equal quantities of food. Fifty-four pet dogs were tested in three different conditions. In Condition 1 we evaluated their ability to choose between a large and small amount of food (quantity discrimination task). In Condition 2 dogs were again presented with a choice between the large and small food quantity, but only after having witnessed their owner favouring the small quantity. In Condition 3 dogs were given a choice between two equally small quantities of food having witnessed their owner favouring either one or the other. A strong effect of the owner on the dogs`` performance was observed. In Condition 1 dogs as a group chose significantly more often the large food quantity, thus showing their ability to solve the quantity discrimination task. After observing their owner expressing a preference for the small food quantity they chose the large quantity of food significantly less than in the independent choice situation. The tendency to conform to the owner`s choice was higher when the dogs had to choose between equally small quantities of food (Condition 3) rather than between a large and a small one (Condition 2). These results provide evidence that dogs can be influenced by their owners even when their indications are clearly in contrast with direct perceptual information, thus leading dogs to ultimately make counterproductive choices.
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Parker, M., Redhead, E. S., Goodwin, D., & McBride, S. D. (2008). Impaired instrumental choice in crib-biting horses (Equus caballus). Behav. Brain. Res., 191(1), 137–140.
Abstract: Horses displaying an oral stereotypy were tested on an instrumental choice paradigm to examine differences in learning from non-stereotypic counterparts. Stereotypic horses are known to have dysfunction of the dorsomedial striatum, and lesion studies have shown that this region may mediate response-outcome learning. The paradigm was specifically applied in order to examine learning that requires maintenance of response-outcome judgements. The non-stereotypic horses learned, over three sessions, to choose a more immediate reinforcer, whereas the stereotypic horses failed to do so. This suggests an initial behavioural correlate for dorsomedial striatum dysregulation in the stereotypy phenotype.
Keywords: Horse; Stereotypy; Striatum; Dopamine; Concurrent-chain schedules; Choice
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Nyman, S., & Dahlborn, K. (2001). Effect of water supply method and flow rate on drinking behavior and fluid balance in horses. Physiol. Behav., 73(1-2), 1–8.
Abstract: This study investigated three methods of water supply on drinking preference and behavior in six Standardbred geldings (2-9 years, 505+/-9 kg). The water sources were buckets (B), pressure valve (PV), and float valve (FV) bowls. In an initial drinking preference test, PV was tested at three flow rates: 3, 8, and 16 l/min (PV3, PV8, and PV16), and FV at 3 l/min (FV3). Water intake was measured in l and presented as the percentage of the total daily water intake from each of two simultaneously presented alternatives. The intake from PV8 was greater than from both PV3 (72+/-11% vs. 28+/-11%) and PV16 (90+/-4% vs. 10+/-4%). All horses showed a strong preference for B, 98+/-1% of the intake compared to 2+/-1% from PV8. Individual variation in the data gave no significant difference in preference between the two automatic bowls. In the second part of the study, drinking behavior and fluid balance were investigated when the horses drank from FV3, PV8, and B for 7 consecutive days in a changeover design. Despite a tendency for an increase in total daily drinking time from FV3, the daily water intake was significantly lower (43+/-3 ml/kg) than from PV8 (54+/-2 ml/kg) and B (58+/-3 ml/kg). Daily net water gain [intake-(fecal+urinary output)] was only 0.5+/-3 ml/kg with FV3, resulting in a negative fluid balance if insensible losses are included. These results show that the water supply method can affect both drinking behavior and fluid balance in the horse.
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Neuringer, A. (2004). Reinforced variability in animals and people: implications for adaptive action. Am Psychol, 59(9), 891–906.
Abstract: Although reinforcement often leads to repetitive, even stereotyped responding, that is not a necessary outcome. When it depends on variations, reinforcement results in responding that is diverse, novel, indeed unpredictable, with distributions sometimes approaching those of a random process. This article reviews evidence for the powerful and precise control by reinforcement over behavioral variability, evidence obtained from human and animal-model studies, and implications of such control. For example, reinforcement of variability facilitates learning of complex new responses, aids problem solving, and may contribute to creativity. Depression and autism are characterized by abnormally repetitive behaviors, but individuals afflicted with such psychopathologies can learn to vary their behaviors when reinforced for so doing. And reinforced variability may help to solve a basic puzzle concerning the nature of voluntary action.
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Naug, D., & Arathi, H. S. (2007). Sampling and decision rules used by honey bees in a foraging arena. Anim. Cogn., 10(2), 117–124.
Abstract: Animals must continuously choose among various available options to exploit the most profitable resource. They also need to keep themselves updated about the values of all available options, since their relative values can change quickly due to depletion or exploitation by competitors. While the sampling and decision rules by which foragers profitably exploit a flower patch have attracted a great deal of attention in theory and experiments with bumble bees, similar rules for honey bee foragers, which face similar foraging challenges, are not as well studied. By presenting foragers of the honey bee Apis cerana with choice tests in a foraging arena and recording their behavior, we investigate possible sampling and decision rules that the foragers use to choose one option over another and to track other options. We show that a large part of the sampling and decision-making process of a foraging honey bee can be explained by decomposing the choice behavior into dichotomous decision points and incorporating the cost of sampling. The results suggest that a honey bee forager, by using a few simple rules as part of a Bayesian inference process, is able to effectively deal with the complex task of successfully exploiting foraging patches that consist of dynamic and multiple options.
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Napolitano, F., De Rosa, G., Braghieri, A., Grasso, F., Bordi, A., & Wemelsfelder, F. (2008). The qualitative assessment of responsiveness to environmental challenge in horses and ponies. Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci., 109(2-4), 342–354.
Abstract: The responsiveness of 10 horses and 10 ponies to environmental challenge (represented by an open field test) was assessed using a qualitative approach based on free choice profiling methodology (FCP), which gives observers complete freedom to choose their own descriptive terms. Data were analysed with generalised Procrustes analysis (GPA), a multivariate statistical technique associated with FCP. A cross-validation of the outcomes of this approach to data recorded through quantitative behaviour analysis, and through a questionnaire given to the animals' owner/riding instructor, was also performed using principal component analysis (PCA). Twelve undergraduate students generated their own descriptive vocabularies, by watching 20 horse/pony video clips lasting 2.5 min each. GPA showed that the consensus profile explained a high percentage of variation among the 12 observers, and differed significantly from the mean randomised profile (p < 0.001). Two main dimensions of the consensus profile were identified, explaining 60% and 5.2% of the variation between animals, respectively. The 12 observer word charts interpreting these dimensions were semantically consistent, as they all converged towards the same meaning, albeit using different terms. The most used term to describe the positive end of axis 1 was “quiet”, whereas “attentive” was the best positive descriptor of axis 2. The most frequently used descriptors for the negative ends of axes 1 and 2 were “nervous” and “bored”, respectively. Thus, axis 1 was labelled as “quiet/nervous” and axis 2 was named as “attentive/bored”. A marked effect of animal category was observed on the scores of the animals on the first dimension (p < 0.001). Horses received significantly higher scores, and were thus assessed as more quiet and calm, than ponies. Conversely, ponies tended to receive lower scores on the second dimension (p < 0.12), therefore they appeared less curious and attentive. The results of the PCA showed that the variables from different types of measurement clearly had meaningful relationships. For instance, the variables with the highest loading on the positive end of axis 1 were all indicative of tractable and docile animals, whereas axis 2 showed high loadings on the positive end for variables indicating attentive animals. Qualitative behaviour assessment proved to be an appropriate methodology for the study of horse behavioural responsiveness, in that it provided a multifaceted characterisation of horse behavioural expression that was in agreement with other quantitative and subjective assessments of the animals' behaviour.
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Martin, T. I., & Zentall, T. R. (2005). Post-choice information processing by pigeons. Anim. Cogn., 8(4), 273–278.
Abstract: In a conditional discrimination (matching-to-sample), a sample is followed by two comparison stimuli, one of which is correct, depending on the sample. Evidence from previous research suggests that if the stimulus display is maintained following an incorrect response (the so-called penalty-time procedure), acquisition by pigeons is facilitated. The present research tested the hypothesis that the penalty-time procedure allows the pigeons to review and learn from the maintained stimulus display following an incorrect choice. It did so by including a penalty-time group for which, following an incorrect choice, the sample changed to match the incorrect comparison, thus providing the pigeons with post-choice 'misinformation.' This misinformation group acquired the matching task significantly slower than the standard penalty-time group (that had no change in the sample following an error). Furthermore, acquisition of matching by a control group that received no penalty time fell midway between the other two groups, suggesting that the pigeons did not merely take more care in making choices because of the aversiveness of penalty-time. Thus, it appears that in the acquisition of matching-to-sample, when the stimulus display is maintained following an incorrect choice, the pigeons can review or acquire information from the display. This is the first time that such an effect has been reported for a nonhuman species.
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Lee, J., Floyd, T., Erb, H., & Houpt, K. (2011). Preference and demand for exercise in stabled horses. Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci., 130(3-4), 91–100.
Abstract: Operant conditioning and two choice preference tests were used to assess the motivation of horses to be released from straight and from box stalls. The motivations for food, a companion, and release into a paddock were compared when the horses had to work for each commodity at increasing fixed ratios of responses (panel presses) to reward in an equine operant conditioning stall. The motivation for food (mean ± SEM = 258 ± 143) responses was much greater than that for either release (38 ± 32) from a straight stall into a large paddock alone or into a small paddock with another horse (95 ± 41) (P = 0.04). When given a two choice preference test between exercise on a treadmill for 20 min or returning to their box stalls, eight of nine horses chose to return to their stalls. In a two choice preference test six of eight horses in box stalls chose to be released into a paddock alone. Horses were given a series of two choice preference tests to determine how long they preferred to be in a paddock. After 15 min in the paddock the horses were re-tested, but all chose the paddock when released into a paddock with three other horses. They were retested every 15 min until they chose to return to their stalls. They chose to stay out for 35 ± 6 min when other horses were in the paddock but for only 17 ± 2 min when they would be alone. When deprived of stall release for 48 h the horses chose to remain in the paddock with other horses for 54 ± 6 min, but showed no compensatory behavior when they were alone (duration chosen = 16 ± 4 min). These findings indicate that horses are not strongly motivated to exercise alone and will choose not to endure forced exercise on a treadmill. The social context of voluntary exercise is important; horses are willing to stay out of their stalls longer if other horses are present and will show compensatory behavior only if other horses are present. These finding have implications for optimizing turnout time for stalled horses.
Keywords: Horse; Welfare; Exercise; Operant conditioning; Two choice preference; Treadmill
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