| Records |
| Author |
Toro, J.M.; Trobalon, J.B.; Sebastian-Galles, N. |
| Title |
The use of prosodic cues in language discrimination tasks by rats |
Type |
Journal Article |
| Year |
2003 |
Publication |
Animal Cognition |
Abbreviated Journal |
Anim. Cogn. |
| Volume |
6 |
Issue |
2 |
Pages |
131-136 |
| Keywords |
*Animal Communication; Animals; *Discrimination Learning; Female; *Language; Male; Periodicity; Rats; Rats, Long-Evans; Speech Perception |
| Abstract |
Recent research with cotton-top tamarin monkeys has revealed language discrimination abilities similar to those found in human infants, demonstrating that these perceptual abilities are not unique to humans but are also present in non-human primates. Specifically, tamarins could discriminate forward but not backward sentences of Dutch from Japanese, using both natural and synthesized utterances. The present study was designed as a conceptual replication of the work on tamarins. Results show that rats trained in a discrimination learning task readily discriminate forward, but not backward sentences of Dutch from Japanese; the results are particularly robust for synthetic utterances, a pattern that shows greater parallels with newborns than with tamarins. Our results extend the claims made in the research with tamarins that the capacity to discriminate languages from different rhythmic classes depends on general perceptual abilities that evolved at least as far back as the rodents. |
| Address |
SPPB, Departament de Psicologia Basica, Universitat de Barcelona, Passeig de la Vall d'Hebron, 171, 08035 Barcelona, Spain. jmtoro@psi.ub.es |
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English |
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1435-9448 |
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Notes  |
PMID:12728358 |
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no |
| Call Number |
Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
Serial |
2571 |
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| Author |
Cohen, J.; Pardy, S.; Solway, H.; Graham, H. |
| Title |
Chunking versus foraging search patterns by rats in the hierarchically baited radial maze |
Type |
Journal Article |
| Year |
2003 |
Publication |
Animal Cognition |
Abbreviated Journal |
Anim. Cogn. |
| Volume |
6 |
Issue |
2 |
Pages |
93-104 |
| Keywords |
Animals; Exploratory Behavior; *Feeding Behavior; Male; *Maze Learning; Rats; Rats, Long-Evans |
| Abstract |
Rats were exposed to a radial maze containing six black smooth arms and six wire-grid-covered arms and a striped 'exit arm' in experiment 1. The probability of a black or grid arm being baited (5/6 vs 1/6) with sunflower seeds was associated with its proximal cue for some rats (the Relevant Arm Cue group) but not for others (the Irrelevant Arm Cue group). All rats could terminate a trial and receive a highly preferred morsel of apple by entering the exit arm only after having sampled all six seed-baited arms. Relevant Arm Cue rats usually chose some arms from the more densely baited set before choosing an arm from the less densely baited set and made fewer reentries than Irrelevant Arm Cue rats. Although such clustered, higher choice accuracy in the Relevant Arm Cue group corresponds to human clustered, better recall of verbal items from lists hierarchically organized by categories, these rats did not similarly exhaustively retrieve items (arm locations). That is, when required to terminate a trial by entering the 'exit' arm for an apple morsel after having sampled all seed-baited arms, both groups were equally unable to withhold making nonrewarded premature exits. This nonexhaustive foraging search pattern was maintained in the next two experiments in which the radial maze was reduced to three black and three grid arms along with the striped 'exit' arm and in which black and grid arm cues were paired with number of seeds (eight or one) in an arm for Relevant Arm Cue rats. Although Relevant Arm Cue rats displayed perfect clustering by entering all eight-seeded arms before a one-seeded arm, they made more premature exits and reentries into eight-seeded arms in experiment 2 or when forced to enter all eight-seeded arms in experiment 3 than did Irrelevant Arm Cue rats. These foraging tendencies prevent accurate estimations of the amount of information (i.e., arm locations) rats can 'chunk'. |
| Address |
Department of Psychology, University of Windsor, Windsor, Ontario N9B 3P4, Canada. jcohen@uwindsor.ca |
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English |
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1435-9448 |
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| Notes |
PMID:12720109 |
Approved |
no |
| Call Number |
Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
Serial |
2574 |
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| Author |
Weatherly, J.N.; Arthur, E.I.L.; Tischart, L.M. |
| Title |
Altering “motivational” variables alters induction produced by upcoming food-pellet reinforcement |
Type |
Journal Article |
| Year |
2003 |
Publication |
Animal Cognition |
Abbreviated Journal |
Anim. Cogn. |
| Volume |
6 |
Issue |
1 |
Pages |
17-26 |
| Keywords |
Animals; *Conditioning, Operant; Food Deprivation; Male; *Motivation; Rats; Rats, Sprague-Dawley |
| Abstract |
Previous research has demonstrated that rats will increase their rates of lever pressing for sucrose rewards in the first half of an experimental session when food pellets, rather than the same sucrose, continually serve as the reward in the second half of the session. This effect has been coined induction, and the present study investigated whether it could be altered by altering “motivational” variables. Experiment 1 manipulated subjects' motivation by altering, across conditions, their level of food deprivation. Predictably, the size of induction varied directly with level of deprivation. Experiments 2 and 3 manipulated subjects' motivation by feeding them food pellets and sucrose, respectively, prior to their responding in the experimental session. These pre-session feedings decreased the size of the observed induction in both experiments. The results from the present study indicate that the size of induction is correlated with subjects' motivation to respond for the available reinforcers. They are also consistent with the idea that operant processes underlie the effect. The notion that induction might encompass the concept of “anticipation” is also discussed. |
| Address |
Department of Psychology, University of North Dakota, ND 58202-8380, Grand Forks, USA. jeffrey_weatherly@und.nodak.edu |
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English |
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| ISSN |
1435-9448 |
ISBN |
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| Notes |
PMID:12658532 |
Approved |
no |
| Call Number |
Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
Serial |
2584 |
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| Author |
Domjan, M. |
| Title |
Determinants of the enhancement of flavored-water intake by prior exposure |
Type |
Journal Article |
| Year |
1976 |
Publication |
Journal of Experimental Psychology. Animal Behavior Processes |
Abbreviated Journal |
J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process |
| Volume |
2 |
Issue |
1 |
Pages |
17-27 |
| Keywords |
Animals; Arousal; *Awareness; Behavior, Animal; *Cognition; *Drinking Behavior; Environment; Escape Reaction; Fear; Male; Rats; Saccharin/administration & dosage; *Taste; Thirst; Time Factors; Water Deprivation |
| Abstract |
The intake of a 2.0% sodium saccharin solution in rats was observed to increase as a function of both the number (Experiment 1) and the duration (Experiment 3) of prior periods of access to the saccharin flavor, but did not increase when subjects were maintained on a fluid deprivation procedure in the absence of saccharin exposure (Experiment 2). The enhancement of intake was further influenced by the schedule of saccharin preexposures in the absence of variations in the amount of solution tasted (Experiment 4). The effect was not a function of the opportunity for subjects to determine their own pattern of contact with the saccharin flavor, the opportunity for association of the flavor with hunger and thirst reduction, or the amount of saccharin swallowed during preexposure (Experiment 5). These results suggest that mere exposure to a flavored solution is sufficient to increase subsequent intakes. The phenomenon is discussed in terms of the attenuation of neophobia elicited by the novelty of flavored solutions. |
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English |
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Series Title |
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Abbreviated Series Title |
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Series Issue |
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Edition |
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| ISSN |
0097-7403 |
ISBN |
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Medium |
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Conference |
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| Notes |
PMID:1249524 |
Approved |
no |
| Call Number |
Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
Serial |
2790 |
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| Author |
Ray, E.D.; Heyes, C.M. |
| Title |
Do rats in a two-action test encode movement egocentrically or allocentrically? |
Type |
Journal Article |
| Year |
2002 |
Publication |
Animal Cognition |
Abbreviated Journal |
Anim. Cogn. |
| Volume |
5 |
Issue |
4 |
Pages |
245-252 |
| Keywords |
Animals; *Behavior, Animal; *Discrimination Learning; *Imitative Behavior; Male; Random Allocation; Rats/physiology/*psychology; Smell |
| Abstract |
Two-action tests of imitation compare groups that observe topographically different responses to a common manipulandum. The general aim of the two experiments reported here was to find a demonstrator-consistent responding effect in a procedure that could be elaborated to investigate aspects of what was learned about the demonstrated lever response. Experiment 1 was a pilot study with rats of a variant of the two-action method of investigating social learning about observed responses. Groups of observer rats ( Rattus norvegicus) saw a demonstrator push a lever up or down for a food reward. When these observers were subsequently given access to the lever and rewarded for responses in both directions, their directional preferences were compared with two 'screen control' groups that were unable to see their demonstrators' behaviour. Demonstrator-consistent responding was found to be restricted to observers that were able to see demonstrator performance, suggesting that scent cues alone were insufficient to cue a preference for the demonstrators' response direction and thereby that the rats learned by observation about body movements (imitation) or lever movement (emulation). Experiment 2 assessed responding on two levers, one that had been manipulated by the demonstrator, and a second, transposed lever positioned some distance away. Demonstrator-consistent responding was abolished when actions were observed and performed in different parts of the apparatus, suggesting that observed movement was encoded allocentrically with respect to the apparatus rather than egocentrically with respect to the actor's body. With particular reference to the influence of scent cues, the results are discussed in relation to the strengths and weaknesses of this and other varieties of the two-action procedure as tests of imitation in animals and human infants. |
| Address |
Department of Psychology, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, UK. e.ray@ucl.ac.uk |
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English |
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1435-9448 |
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| Notes |
PMID:12461602 |
Approved |
no |
| Call Number |
Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
Serial |
2588 |
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| Author |
Dudchenko, P.A.; Davidson, M. |
| Title |
Rats use a sense of direction to alternate on T-mazes located in adjacent rooms |
Type |
Journal Article |
| Year |
2002 |
Publication |
Animal Cognition |
Abbreviated Journal |
Anim. Cogn. |
| Volume |
5 |
Issue |
2 |
Pages |
115-118 |
| Keywords |
Animals; *Cognition; Male; *Maze Learning; Rats; Rats, Inbred Strains; Space Perception |
| Abstract |
Lister hooded rats were trained on a forced-sample T-maze alternation task in an environment lacking spatial landmarks. An early study of spontaneous alternation on the T-maze had shown that rats use a “spatial sense” to select alternate maze arms across mazes. As this phenomenon may provide a useful tool for studying the neural substrates of a directional sense, we wished to confirm this finding on a different version of the T-maze task, with well-trained animals. We found that rats successfully selected the appropriate maze arm when the choice phase of the task was presented on a second maze, oriented in the same direction, and located in an adjacent room. However, choice performance fell to chance level when the second maze was oriented 90 degrees relative to the first. This result suggests that the rats do not simply alternate turns across the two environments, but rather that they rely on a sense of direction that is carried across environments. |
| Address |
Department of Psychology, University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, UK. p.a.dudchenko@stir.ac.uk |
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English |
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1435-9448 |
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| Notes |
PMID:12150036 |
Approved |
no |
| Call Number |
Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
Serial |
2608 |
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| Author |
Mitchell, D.; Kirschbaum, E.H.; Perry, R.L. |
| Title |
Effects of neophobia and habituation on the poison-induced avoidance of exteroceptive stimuli in the rat |
Type |
Journal Article |
| Year |
1975 |
Publication |
Journal of Experimental Psychology. Animal Behavior Processes |
Abbreviated Journal |
J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process |
| Volume |
1 |
Issue |
1 |
Pages |
47-55 |
| Keywords |
Animals; Avoidance Learning/*drug effects; *Awareness; *Cognition; Conditioning, Operant; Feeding Behavior/drug effects; *Habituation, Psychophysiologic; Injections, Intraperitoneal; Lithium/administration & dosage/poisoning; Male; Rats; *Taste; Time Factors; *Visual Perception |
| Abstract |
Two experiments on the role of neophobia in poison-induced aversions to exteroceptive stimuli are reported. In Experiment 1, rats were given either 10 or 25 days of habituation to the test situation prior to conditioning. Those animals with the longer habituation period avoided a complex of novel exteroceptive stimuli while those with the shorter habituation period did not. In Experiment 2 rats initially avoided the more novel of two containers, but gradually came to eat equal amounts from both. A single pairing of toxicosis with consumption from either the novel or the familiar container reinstated the avoidance of the novel container in both cases. The results were discussed in terms of an interaction between habituation and conditioning procedures. It was suggested that previously reported differences between interoceptive and exteroceptive conditioning effects may have been influenced by the differential novelty of the two classes of stimuli in the test situation. It was further suggested that non-contingently poisoned control groups should routinely be included in poison avoidance conditioning studies. |
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0097-7403 |
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| Notes |
PMID:1151289 |
Approved |
no |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
Serial |
2791 |
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| Author |
Gibson, B.M.; Shettleworth, S.J.; McDonald, R.J. |
| Title |
Finding a goal on dry land and in the water: differential effects of disorientation on spatial learning |
Type |
Journal Article |
| Year |
2001 |
Publication |
Behavioural brain research |
Abbreviated Journal |
Behav. Brain. Res. |
| Volume |
123 |
Issue |
1 |
Pages |
103-111 |
| Keywords |
Animals; Cues; Environment; Male; Maze Learning/*physiology; Orientation/*physiology; Rats; Rats, Long-Evans; Spatial Behavior/*physiology; Water |
| Abstract |
Two previous studies, Martin et al. (J. Exp. Psychol. Anim. Behav. Process. 23 (1997) 183) and Dudchenko et al. (J. Exp. Psychol. Anim. Behav. Process. 23 (1997) 194), report that, compared to non-disoriented controls, rats disoriented before testing were disrupted in their ability to learn the location of a goal on a dry radial-arm maze task, but that both groups learned at the same rate in the Morris water maze. However, the radial-arm maze task was much more difficult than the water maze. In the current set of experiments, we examined the performance of control and disoriented rats on more comparable dry land and water maze tasks. Compared to non-disoriented rats, rats that were disoriented before testing were significantly impaired in locating a goal in a circular dry arena, but not a water tank. The results constrain theoretical explanations for the differential effects of disorientation on different spatial tasks. |
| Address |
Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, 100 St. George Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 3G3. gibson@psych.utoronto.ca |
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English |
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Edition |
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0166-4328 |
ISBN |
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Conference |
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| Notes |
PMID:11377733 |
Approved |
no |
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refbase @ user @ |
Serial |
372 |
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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 |
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 |
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English |
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0022-1309 |
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| Notes |
PMID:10695951 |
Approved |
no |
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refbase @ user @ |
Serial |
250 |
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| Author |
Healy, S.D.; Braham, S.R.; Braithwaite, V.A. |
| Title |
Spatial working memory in rats: no differences between the sexes |
Type |
Journal Article |
| Year |
1999 |
Publication |
Proceedings. Biological Sciences / The Royal Society |
Abbreviated Journal |
Proc Biol Sci |
| Volume |
266 |
Issue |
1435 |
Pages |
2303-2308 |
| Keywords |
Animals; Estrus/metabolism; Female; Male; Memory/*physiology; Rats; Sex Factors; Swimming |
| Abstract |
In a number of mammalian species, males appear to have superior spatial abilities to females. The favoured explanations for this cognitive difference are hormonal, with higher testosterone levels in males than females leading to better spatial performance, and evolutionary, where sexual selection has favoured males with increased spatial abilities for either better navigational skills in hunting or to enable an increased territory size. However, an alternative explanation for this sex difference focuses on the role of varying levels of oestrogen in females in spatial cognition (the 'fertility and parental care' hypothesis). One possibility is that varying oestrogen levels result in variation in spatial learning and memory so that, when tested across the oestrous cycle, females perform as well as males on days of low oestrogen but more poorly on days of high oestrogen. If day in the oestrous cycle is not taken into account then, across an experiment, any sex differences found would always produce male superiority. We used a spatial working memory task in a Morris water maze to test the spatial learning and memory abilities of male and female rats. The rats were tested across a number of consecutive days during which the females went through four oestrous cycles. We found no overall sex differences in latencies to reach a submerged platform in a Morris water maze but, on the day of oestrus (low oestrogen), females took an extra swim to learn the platform's location (a 100% increase over the other days in the cycle). Female swim speed also varied across the oestrous cycle but females were no less active on the day of oestrus. These results oppose the predictions of the fertility and parental care hypothesis. |
| Address |
Department of Psychology, University of Newcastle, UK. s.healey@ed.ac.uk |
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English |
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Edition |
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0962-8452 |
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| Notes |
PMID:10629980 |
Approved |
no |
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Equine Behaviour @ team @ |
Serial |
2818 |
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