Abstract: We investigated the effects of the introduction of foreign adults on the behavior of young horses. First, we observed the behavior of 1- and 2-year-old domestic horses housed in same-age and same-sex groups (a standard housing system, but different from a natural situation). Then, two same-sex adults were introduced into each experimental group. Observations made before, during and after an introduction indicated that young horses reared in homogeneous groups of young had different behaviors compared to other domestic horses reared under more socially natural conditions. After the introduction of adults, young horses expressed new behaviors, preferential social associations emerged, positive social behavior increased and agonistic interactions decreased. These results have important implications both for understanding the influence that adults may have on the behavior of young horses, and in terms of husbandry, indicating the importance of keeping young horses with adults, although further studies are still necessary. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Dev Psychobiol 50: 408-417, 2008.

Abstract: After describing horse-riding as a facility in managing mentally ill patients, a program for chronic schizophrenic in-patients is presented. Clinical experience with this program and also results of a controlled study are reported. The therapeutic value and slope for horse-riding are discussed in relation to different diagnoses.

Abstract: A dynamic 3-D virtual environment was constructed for humans as an open-field analogue of Blaisdell and Cook's (2005) pigeon foraging task to determine if humans, like pigeons, were capable of integrating separate spatial maps. Participants used keyboard keys and a mouse to search for a hidden goal in a 4x4 grid of raised cups. During Phase 1 training, a goal was consistently located between two landmarks (Map 1: blue T and red L). During Phase 2 training, a goal was consistently located down and left of a single landmark (Map 2: blue T). Transfer trials were then conducted in which participants were required to make choices in the presence of the red L alone. Cup choices during transfer assessed participants' strategies: association (from Map 1), generalization (from Map 2), or integration (combining Map 1 and 2). During transfer, cup choices increased to a location which suggested an integration strategy and was consistent with results obtained with pigeons. However, additional analyses of the human data suggested participants initially used a generalization strategy followed by a progressive shift in search behavior away from the red L. This shift in search behavior during transfer was responsible for the changes in cup choices across transfer trials and was confirmed by a control condition. These new analyses offer an alternative explanation to the spatial integration account proposed for pigeons.

Abstract: Individual differences in the way persons respond to stimulation can have important consequences for their ability to learn and their choice of vocation. Temperament is the study of such individual differences, being thought of as the behavioral style of an individual. Common to all approaches in the study of temperament are the notions that it can be identified in infancy, is fairly stable across development, and influences adult personality. We have identified a specific temperament type in infancy that involves heightened distress to novel and unfamiliar stimuli. Infants who exhibit this temperament are likely, as they get older, to display behavioral inhibition-wariness and heightened vigilance of the unfamiliar-particularly in social situations. Our work has also described the underlying biology of this temperament and has linked it to neural systems supporting fear responses in animals. Children displaying behavioral inhibition are at-risk for behavioral problems related to anxiety and social withdrawal.

Abstract: This study tests whether the face-processing system of humans and a nonhuman primate species share characteristics that would allow for early and quick processing of socially salient stimuli: a sensitivity toward conspecific faces, a sensitivity toward highly practiced face stimuli, and an ability to generalize changes in the face that do not suggest a new identity, such as a face differently oriented. The look rates by adult tamarins and humans toward conspecific and other primate faces were examined to determine if these characteristics are shared. A visual paired comparison (VPC) task presented subjects with either a human face, chimpanzee face, tamarin face, or an object as a sample, and then a pair containing the previous stimulus and a novel stimulus was presented. The stimuli were either presented all in an upright orientation, or all in an inverted orientation. The novel stimulus in the pair was either an orientation change of the same face/object or a new example of the same type of face/object, and the stimuli were shown either in an upright orientation or in an inverted orientation. Preference to novelty scores revealed that humans attended most to novel individual human faces, and this effect decreased significantly if the stimuli were inverted. Tamarins showed preferential looking toward novel orientations of previously seen tamarin faces in the upright orientation, but not in an inverted orientation. Similarly, their preference to look longer at novel tamarin and human faces within the pair was reduced significantly with inverted stimuli. The results confirmed prior findings in humans that novel human faces generate more attention in the upright than in the inverted orientation. The monkeys also attended more to faces of conspecifics, but showed an inversion effect to orientation change in tamarin faces and to identity changes in tamarin and human faces. The results indicate configural processing restricted to particular kinds of primate faces by a New World monkey species, with configural processing influenced by life experience (human faces and tamarin faces) and specialized to process orientation changes specific to conspecific faces.