| Records |
| Author |
Visser, E.K.; van Reenen, C.G.; Hopster, H.; Schilder, M.B.H.; Knaap, J.H.; Barneveld, A.; Blokhuis, H.J. |
| Title |
Quantifying aspects of young horses' temperament: consistency of behavioural variables |
Type |
Journal Article |
| Year |
2001 |
Publication |
Applied Animal Behaviour Science |
Abbreviated Journal |
Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci. |
| Volume |
74 |
Issue |
4 |
Pages |
241-258 |
| Keywords |
Horses; Temperament; Individual differences; Behavioural variables; Pca |
| Abstract |
Performance of horses, whether in sports or in leisure, depends on both physical abilities as well as temperament. The aim of the present work was to measure individual variation and consistency of behavioural variables, related to temperament, in young horses of the same breed and age, and reared under controlled housing conditions and management. A total of 41 Dutch Warmblood horses were tested at 9, 10, 21 and 22 months of age in two behavioural tests, i.e. the novel object test and the handling test. In the novel object test horses were confronted with an open umbrella that was lowered from the ceiling. In the handling test horses were led by a human to cross a bridge. Per test, behavioural variables in the following behavioural classes were observed: locomotor activity, latency times, postural expressions and vocalisations. Within years, all behavioural variables in the handling test, and all but two in the novel object test were positively correlated (0.36<Rs<0.81, P<0.05). For both tests, at 9, 10, 21 and 22 months of age, a principal component analysis (PCA) was carried out to examine whether there were indications for underlying components of these individual behavioural variables that could possibly serve as measures for temperamental traits. The first component in the novel object test could be regarded as `flightiness' and the second as `sensitiveness'. In the handling test, the first component was suggested to relate to `patience', the second component to `willingness to perform'. The temperamental trait `flightiness' (novel object test) as well as the temperamental trait `patience' (handling test) were positively correlated within both years (0.36<Rs<0.65, P<0.05). For the traits `sensitiveness' (novel object test) and `willingness to perform' (handling test) a positive correlation was only found within the first year (0.44<Rs<0.57, P<0.01). A few individual behavioural variables showed consistency over years. Additionally, just one out of four temperamental traits, namely `flightiness', proved to be consistent over years (Rs=0.49, P<0.01). The temperamental trait `patience' showed a trend between years (Rs=0.31, 0.05<P<0.1). It is concluded that the behavioural tests employed in the present study can be used to reliably identify individual behavioural variables and temperamental traits in young horses. Long-term consistency, i.e. between subsequent years, could not be demonstrated convincingly. Nevertheless, future work may indicate that employing the same approach and considering an even longer time period or different phases of the horse's life, long-term consistency does exist. |
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324 |
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| Author |
Visser, E.K.; Van Reenen, C.G.; Engel, B.; Schilder, M.B.H.; Barneveld, A.; Blokhuis, H.J. |
| Title |
The association between performance in show-jumping and personality traits earlier in life |
Type |
Journal Article |
| Year |
2003 |
Publication |
Applied Animal Behaviour Science |
Abbreviated Journal |
Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci. |
| Volume |
82 |
Issue |
4 |
Pages |
279-295 |
| Keywords |
Personality; Performance; Horses; Prediction; Individual differences; Behavioural tests |
| Abstract |
For a horse to succeed in a show-jumping career, the individual has to possess both excellent physical abilities as well as a suitable personality to perform under challenging conditions. Forty-one Dutch Warmblood horses were used to develop personality tests and correlations between test variables and early training performances in jumping were studied. In behavioural tests, during the first 2 years of the horses' lives, personality aspects like emotionality, reactivity to human and learning abilities were quantified. At the age of 3, horses were broken and received early training in show-jumping. The inter-relationship between several performance variables measured during this early training phase were studied using principal component analysis (PCA). Variables measured in the different personality tests (novel-object test, handling test, avoidance-learning test and a reward-learning test) showed no correlations, suggesting that these tests all triggered different aspects of a horse's personality. This study indicates that it is possible to predict a substantial part of the show-jumping performance of an individual horse later in life by personality traits earlier in life. |
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326 |
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| Author |
Hausberger, M.; Muller, C. |
| Title |
A brief note on some possible factors involved in the reactions of horses to humans |
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Journal Article |
| Year |
2002 |
Publication |
Applied Animal Behaviour Science |
Abbreviated Journal |
Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci. |
| Volume |
76 |
Issue |
4 |
Pages |
339-344 |
| Keywords |
Horses; Aggressiveness; Behavioural reactions; Human-animal relationship |
| Abstract |
In order to investigate relationships of adult horses to humans, we developed a simple evaluation test and scores based on observations. The first reactions of 224 adult horses to the presence of an experimenter were observed and scored. All these horses belonged to the same riding school, had the same general housing conditions and were all geldings. The evaluation was based on the horse's posture. Individual differences that could be related to some extent to the breed but also to human factors emerged clearly. French saddlebreds showed more often friendly behaviour than Angloarabs, whereas thoroughbreds were more indifferent. Clear variations occurred between groups of horses that depended on different caretakers. In this school, one caretaker is responsible for the whole daily management of a group of horses and is probably a very important factor in their well-being. The effects of this daily relation to a human seemed to be involved in the reactions to a strange person. Further studies are required to investigate what, in practice, may be determinant. |
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329 |
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Agrillo, C.; Dadda, M.; Bisazza, A. |
| Title |
Quantity discrimination in female mosquitofish |
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Journal Article |
| Year |
2007 |
Publication |
Animal cognition |
Abbreviated Journal |
Anim. Cogn. |
| Volume |
10 |
Issue |
1 |
Pages |
63-70 |
| Keywords |
Animals; Cognition; *Cyprinodontiformes; *Discrimination Learning; Female; Male; Mathematics; *Pattern Recognition, Visual |
| Abstract |
The ability in animals to count and represent different numbers of objects has received a great deal of attention in the past few decades. Cumulative evidence from comparative studies on number discriminations report obvious analogies among human babies, non-human primates and birds and are consistent with the hypothesis of two distinct and widespread mechanisms, one for counting small numbers (<4) precisely, and one for quantifying large numbers approximately. We investigated the ability to discriminate among different numerosities, in a distantly related species, the mosquitofish, by using the spontaneous choice of a gravid female to join large groups of females as protection from a sexually harassing male. In one experiment, we found that females were able to discriminate between two shoals with a 1:2 numerosity ratio (2 vs. 4, 4 vs. 8 and 8 vs. 16 fish) but failed to discriminate a 2:3 ratio (8 vs. 12 fish). In the second experiment, we studied the ability to discriminate between shoals that differed by one element; females were able to select the larger shoal when the paired numbers were 2 vs. 3 or 3 vs. 4 but not 4 vs. 5 or 5 vs. 6. Our study indicates that numerical abilities in fish are comparable with those of other non-verbal creatures studied; results are in agreement with the hypothesis of the existence of two distinct systems for quantity discrimination in vertebrates. |
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Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, via Venezia 8, 35131, Padova, Italy. christian.agrillo@unipd.it |
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1435-9448 |
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PMID:16868736 |
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no |
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refbase @ user @ |
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339 |
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Paz-y-Miño C. G.; Bond, A.B.; Kamil, A.C.; Balda, R.P. |
| Title |
Pinyon jays use transitive inference to predict social dominance |
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Journal Article |
| Year |
2004 |
Publication |
Nature |
Abbreviated Journal |
Nature |
| Volume |
430 |
Issue |
7001 |
Pages |
778-781 |
| Keywords |
Animals; Cognition/*physiology; Group Structure; Male; *Social Dominance; Songbirds/*physiology |
| Abstract |
Living in large, stable social groups is often considered to favour the evolution of enhanced cognitive abilities, such as recognizing group members, tracking their social status and inferring relationships among them. An individual's place in the social order can be learned through direct interactions with others, but conflicts can be time-consuming and even injurious. Because the number of possible pairwise interactions increases rapidly with group size, members of large social groups will benefit if they can make judgments about relationships on the basis of indirect evidence. Transitive reasoning should therefore be particularly important for social individuals, allowing assessment of relationships from observations of interactions among others. Although a variety of studies have suggested that transitive inference may be used in social settings, the phenomenon has not been demonstrated under controlled conditions in animals. Here we show that highly social pinyon jays (Gymnorhinus cyanocephalus) draw sophisticated inferences about their own dominance status relative to that of strangers that they have observed interacting with known individuals. These results directly demonstrate that animals use transitive inference in social settings and imply that such cognitive capabilities are widespread among social species. |
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Center for Avian Cognition, School of Biological Sciences, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska 68588, USA |
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1476-4687 |
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PMID:15306809 |
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refbase @ user @; Equine Behaviour @ team @ room B 3.029 |
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352 |
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Gentner, T.Q.; Fenn, K.M.; Margoliash, D.; Nusbaum, H.C. |
| Title |
Recursive syntactic pattern learning by songbirds |
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Journal Article |
| Year |
2006 |
Publication |
Nature |
Abbreviated Journal |
Nature |
| Volume |
440 |
Issue |
7088 |
Pages |
1204-1207 |
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Acoustic Stimulation; *Animal Communication; Animals; Auditory Perception/*physiology; Humans; *Language; Learning/*physiology; Linguistics; Models, Neurological; Semantics; Starlings/*physiology; Stochastic Processes |
| Abstract |
Humans regularly produce new utterances that are understood by other members of the same language community. Linguistic theories account for this ability through the use of syntactic rules (or generative grammars) that describe the acceptable structure of utterances. The recursive, hierarchical embedding of language units (for example, words or phrases within shorter sentences) that is part of the ability to construct new utterances minimally requires a 'context-free' grammar that is more complex than the 'finite-state' grammars thought sufficient to specify the structure of all non-human communication signals. Recent hypotheses make the central claim that the capacity for syntactic recursion forms the computational core of a uniquely human language faculty. Here we show that European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) accurately recognize acoustic patterns defined by a recursive, self-embedding, context-free grammar. They are also able to classify new patterns defined by the grammar and reliably exclude agrammatical patterns. Thus, the capacity to classify sequences from recursive, centre-embedded grammars is not uniquely human. This finding opens a new range of complex syntactic processing mechanisms to physiological investigation. |
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Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA. tgentner@ucsd.edu |
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1476-4687 |
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PMID:16641998 |
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353 |
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Hampton, R.R.; Healy, S.D.; Shettleworth, S.J.; Kamil, A.C. |
| Title |
Neuroecologists' are not made of straw |
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Journal Article |
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2002 |
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Trends in Cognitive Sciences |
Abbreviated Journal |
Trends. Cognit. Sci. |
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6 |
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1 |
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6-7 |
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Laboratory of Neuropsychology, NIH--NIMH, Building 49, Room 1B-80, 20892-4415, Bethesda, MD, USA |
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1364-6613 |
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PMID:11849608 |
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371 |
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Anderson , M.C.; Shettleworth, S.J. |
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Behavioral adaptation to fixed-interval and fixed-time food delivery in golden hamsters |
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Journal Article |
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1977 |
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Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (JEAB) |
Abbreviated Journal |
J Exp Anal Behav |
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27 |
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1 |
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33-49 |
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Food-deprived golden hamsters in a large enclosure received food every 30 sec contingent on lever pressing, or free while their behavior was continuously recorded in terms of an exhaustive classification of motor patterns. As with other species in other situations, behavior became organized into two main classes. One (terminal behaviors) increased in probability throughout interfood intervals; the other (interim behaviors) peaked earlier in interfood intervals. Which class an activity belonged to was independent of whether food was contingent on lever pressing. When food was omitted on some of the intervals (thwarting), the terminal activities began sooner in the next interval, and different interim activities changed in different ways. The interim activities did not appear to be schedule-induced in the usual sense. Rather, the hamsters left the area of the feeder when food was not due and engaged in activities they would normally perform in the experimental environment. |
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0022-5002 |
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PMID:16811980 |
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388 |
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Cooper, J.J.; Ashton, C.; Bishop, S.; West, R.; Mills, D.S.; Young, R.J. |
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Clever hounds: social cognition in the domestic dog (Canis familiaris) |
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Journal Article |
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2003 |
Publication |
Applied Animal Behaviour Science |
Abbreviated Journal |
Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci. |
| Volume |
81 |
Issue |
3 |
Pages |
229-244 |
| Keywords |
Domestic dog; Canine; Social cognition; Counting; Theory of mind; Perspective taking |
| Abstract |
This paper reviews the reasons why domestic dogs make good models to investigate cognitive processes related to social living and describes experimental approaches that can be adopted to investigate such processes in dogs. Domestic dogs are suitable models for investigating social cognition skills for three broad reasons. First, dogs originated from wolves, social animals that engage in a number of co-operative behaviours, such as hunting and that may have evolved cognitive abilities that help them predict and interpret the actions of other animals. Second, during domestication dogs are likely to have been selected for mental adaptations for their roles in human society such as herding or companionship. Third, domestic dogs live in a human world and “enculturation” may facilitate the development of relevant mental skills in dogs. Studies of social cognition in animals commonly use experimental paradigms originally developed for pre-verbal human infants. Preferential gaze, for example, can be used as a measure of attention or “surprise” in studies using expectancy violation. This approach has been used to demonstrate simple numerical competence in dogs. Dogs also readily use both conspecific and human social signals (e.g. looking or pointing) as information sources to locate hidden rewards such as food or favourite toys. Such abilities make dogs particularly good models for investigating perspective-taking tasks, where animals are required to discriminate between apparently knowledgeable and apparently ignorant informants. |
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Hogue, M.-E.; Beaugrand, J.P.; Lague, P.C. |
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Coherent use of information by hens observing their former dominant defeating or being defeated by a stranger |
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Journal Article |
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1996 |
Publication |
Behavioural Processes |
Abbreviated Journal |
Behav. Process. |
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38 |
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3 |
Pages |
241-252 |
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Domestic fowl; Dominance; Hierarchy formation; Observation; Transitive inference |
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This study examines the role of observation during the formation of triads in female domestic hens. Results indicate that during hierarchy formation, a hen observing agonistic interactions and conflict settlement between its former dominant and a stranger uses this information when in turn confronted by the latter. Under a first condition (E, N = 15 triads), bystanders witnessed their prior dominant being defeated by a stranger before being introduced to them. In a second condition (C1, N = 16 triads), bystanders witnessed the victory of their prior dominant over a stranger. In a third condition (C2, N = 15 triads), bystanders witnessed two strangers establishing a dominance relationship before being introduced to their prior dominant and to a stranger the former had just defeated. The behavioural strategies of bystanders depended on the issue of the conflict they had witnessed. Bystanders of the E condition behaved as having no chance of defeating the stranger. They never initiated an attack against it, and upon being attacked, readily submitted in turn to the stranger. On the contrary, bystanders of the C1 condition behaved as having some chances against the stranger. They initiated attacks in 50% of cases, and won 50% of conflicts against the stranger. Under condition C2, bystanders first initiated contact with the strangers in only 27% of cases, which approximates the average of their chances for defeating the stranger. However, bystanders finally defeated the strangers in 40% of cases. These results suggest that bystanders of conditions E and C1 gained some information on the relationship existing between their prior dominant and the stranger and that they used it coherently, perhaps through transitive inference, thus contributing to the existence of transitive relationships within the triads. Alternate explanations are examined. |
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