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Clement, T. S., Feltus, J. R., Kaiser, D. H., & Zentall, T. R. (2000). “Work ethic” in pigeons: reward value is directly related to the effort or time required to obtain the reward. Psychon Bull Rev, 7(1), 100–106.
Abstract: Stimuli associated with less effort or with shorter delays to reinforcement are generally preferred over those associated with greater effort or longer delays to reinforcement. However, the opposite appears to be true of stimuli that follow greater effort or longer delays. In training, a simple simultaneous discrimination followed a single peck to an initial stimulus (S+FR1 S-FR1) and a different simple simultaneous discrimination followed 20 pecks to the initial stimulus (S+FR20 S-FR20). On test trials, pigeons preferred S+FR20 over S+FR1 and S-FR20 over S-FR1. These data support the view that the state of the animal immediately prior to presentation of the discrimination affects the value of the reinforcement that follows it. This contrast effect is analogous to effects that when they occur in humans have been attributed to more complex cognitive and social factors.
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Nakagawa, S., & Waas, J. R. (2004). 'O sibling, where art thou?' – A review of avian sibling recognition with respect to the mammalian literature. Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 79(1), 101–119.
Abstract: Avian literature on sibling recognition is rare compared to that developed by mammalian researchers. We compare avian and mammalian research on sibling recognition to identify why avian work is rare, how approaches differ and what avian and mammalian researchers can learn from each other. Three factors: (1) biological differences between birds and mammals, (2) conceptual biases and (3) practical constraints, appear to influence our current understanding. Avian research focuses on colonial species because sibling recognition is considered adaptive where 'mixing potential' of dependent young is high; research on a wider range of species, breeding systems and ecological conditions is now needed. Studies of acoustic recognition cues dominate avian literature; other types of cues (e.g. visual, olfactory) deserve further attention. The effect of gender on avian sibling recognition has yet to be investigated; mammalian work shows that gender can have important influences. Most importantly, many researchers assume that birds recognise siblings through 'direct familiarisation' (commonly known as associative learning or familiarity); future experiments should also incorporate tests for 'indirect familiarisation' (commonly known as phenotype matching). If direct familiarisation proves crucial, avian research should investigate how periods of separation influence sibling discrimination. Mammalian researchers typically interpret sibling recognition in broad functional terms (nepotism, optimal outbreeding); some avian researchers more successfully identify specific and testable adaptive explanations, with greater relevance to natural contexts. We end by reporting exciting discoveries from recent studies of avian sibling recognition that inspire further interest in this topic.
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Zentall, T. R. (2002). A cognitive behaviorist approach to the study of animal behavior. J Gen Psychol, 129(4), 328–363.
Abstract: 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.
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Miklósi, Á., & Soproni, K. (2006). A comparative analysis of animals' understanding of the human pointing gesture. Anim. Cogn., 9(2), 81–93.
Abstract: We review studies demonstrating the ability of some animals to understand the human pointing gesture. We present a 3-step analysis of the topic. (1) We compare and evaluate current experimental methods (2) We compare available experimental results on performance of different species and investigate the interaction of species differences and other independent variables (3) We evaluate how our present understanding of pointing comprehension answers questions about function, evolution and mechanisms. Recently, a number of different hypotheses have been put forward to account for the presence of this ability in some species and for the lack of such comprehension in others. In our view, there is no convincing evidence for the assumption that the competitive lifestyles of apes would inhibit the utilization of this human gesture. Similarly, domestication as a special evolutionary factor in the case of some species falls short in explaining high levels of pointing comprehension in some non-domestic species. We also disagree with the simplistic view of describing the phenomenon as a simple form of conditioning. We suggest that a more systematic comparative research is needed to understand the emerging communicative representational abilities in animals that provide the background for comprehending the human pointing gesture.
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Ernst, K., Puppe, B., Schon, P. C., & Manteuffel, G. (2005). A complex automatic feeding system for pigs aimed to induce successful behavioural coping by cognitive adaptation. Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci., 91(3-4), 205–218.
Abstract: In modern intensive husbandry systems there is an increasing tendency for animals to interact with technical equipment. If the animal-technology interface is well-designed this may improve animal welfare by offering challenges for cognitive adaptation. Here a system and its application is presented that acoustically calls individual pigs out of a group (n = 8) to a feeding station. In three different learning phases, the computer-controlled “call-feeding-station” (CFS) trained the animals to recognize a specific acoustic signal as a summons for food, using a combination of classical and operant conditioning techniques. The experimental group's stall contained four CFSs, at each of which one animal at a time was able to feed. When an animal had learned to discriminate and recognize its individual acoustic signal it had to localize the particular CFS that was calling and to enter inside it. Then, it received a portion of feed, the amount of which was adapted to the respective age of the animals. Each animal was called at several, unpredictable times each day and the computer programme ensured that the total feed supply was sufficient for each animal. In the last phase of the experiment the animals, in addition, had to press a button with an increasing fixed ratio for the delivery of feed. It was demonstrated that the pigs were able to adapt quickly to the CFSs. Although they were challenged over 12 h daily by requirements of attention, sensory localization and motor efforts to gain comparatively low amounts of feed, they performed well and reached fairly constant success rates between 90 and 95% and short delays between 14 and 16 s between a summons and the food release in the last phase of the experiment. The weight gain during the experiment was the same as in a conventionally fed control group (n = 8). We therefore conclude that CFSs present a positive challenge to the animals with no negative effects on performance but with a potentially beneficial role for welfare and against boredom. The system is also a suitable experimental platform for research on the effects of successful adaptation by rewarded cognitive processes in pigs.
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Bering, J. M. (2004). A critical review of the “enculturation hypothesis”: the effects of human rearing on great ape social cognition. Anim. Cogn., 7(4), 201–212.
Abstract: Numerous investigators have argued that early ontogenetic immersion in sociocultural environments facilitates cognitive developmental change in human-reared great apes more characteristic of Homo sapiens than of their own species. Such revamping of core, species-typical psychological systems might be manifest, according to this argument, in the emergence of mental representational competencies, a set of social cognitive skills theoretically consigned to humans alone. Human-reared great apes' capacity to engage in “true imitation,” in which both the means and ends of demonstrated actions are reproduced with fairly high rates of fidelity, and laboratory great apes' failure to do so, has frequently been interpreted as reflecting an emergent understanding of intentionality in the former. Although this epigenetic model of the effects of enculturation on social cognitive systems may be well-founded and theoretically justified in the biological literature, alternative models stressing behavioral as opposed to representational change have been largely overlooked. Here I review some of the controversy surrounding enculturation in great apes, and present an alternative nonmentalistic version of the enculturation hypothesis that can also account for enhanced imitative performance on object-oriented problem-solving tasks in human-reared animals.
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Call, J. (2002). A fish-eye lens for comparative studies: broadening the scope of animal cognition. Anim. Cogn., 5(1), 15–16.
Abstract: ? is the article no longer available?
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Shapiro, A. D., Janik, V. M., & Slater, P. J. B. (2003). A gray seal's (Halichoerus grypus) responses to experimenter-given pointing and directional cues. J Comp Psychol, 117(4), 355–362.
Abstract: A gray seal (Halichoerus grypus) was trained to touch a target on its left or right by responding to pointing signals. The authors then tested whether the seal would be able to generalize spontaneously to altered signals. It responded correctly to center pointing and head turning, center upper body turning, and off-center pointing but not to head turning and eye movements alone. The seal also responded correctly to brief ipsilateral and contralateral points from center and lateral positions. Pointing gestures did not cause the seal to select an object placed centrally behind it. Like many animals in similar studies, this gray seal probably did not understand the referential character of these gestures but rather used signal generalization and experience from initial operant conditioning to solve these tasks.
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Ikeda, M., Patterson, K., Graham, K. S., Ralph, M. A. L., & Hodges, J. R. (2006). A horse of a different colour: do patients with semantic dementia recognise different versions of the same object as the same? Neuropsychologia, 44(4), 566–575.
Abstract: Ten patients with semantic dementia resulting from bilateral anterior temporal lobe atrophy, and 10 matched controls, were tested on an object recognition task in which they were invited to choose (from a four-item array) the picture representing “the same thing” as an object picture that they had just inspected and attempted to name. The target in the response array was never physically identical to the studied picture but differed from it – in the various conditions – in size, angle of view, colour or exemplar (e.g. a different breed of dog). In one test block for each patient, the response array was presented immediately after the studied picture was removed; in another block, a 2 min filled delay was inserted between study and test. The patients performed relatively well when the studied object and target response differed only in the size of the picture on the page, but were significantly impaired as a group in the other three type-of-change conditions, even with no delay between study and test. The five patients whose structural brain imaging revealed major right-temporal atrophy were more impaired overall, and also more affected by the 2 min delay, than the five patients with an asymmetric pattern characterised by predominant left-sided atrophy. These results are interpreted in terms of a hypothesis that successful classification of an object token as an object type is not a pre-semantic ability but rather results from interaction of perceptual and conceptual processing.
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Heschl, A., & Burkart, J. (2006). A new mark test for mirror self-recognition in non-human primates. Primates, 47(3), 187–198.
Abstract: For 30 years Gallup's (Science 167:86-87, 1970) mark test, which consists of confronting a mirror-experienced test animal with its own previously altered mirror image, usually a color mark on forehead, eyebrow or ear, has delivered valuable results about the distribution of visual self-recognition in non-human primates. Chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans and, less frequently, gorillas can learn to correctly understand the reflection of their body in a mirror. However, the standard version of the mark test is good only for positively proving the existence of self-recognition. Conclusive statements about the lack of self-recognition are more difficult because of the methodological constraints of the test. This situation has led to a persistent controversy about the power of Gallup's original technique. We devised a new variant of the test which permits more unequivocal decisions about both the presence and absence of self-recognition. This new procedure was tested with marmoset monkeys (Callithrix jacchus), following extensive training with mirror-related tasks to facilitate performance in the standard mark test. The results show that a slightly altered mark test with a new marking substance (chocolate cream) can help to reliably discriminate between true negative results, indicating a real lack of ability to recognize oneself in a mirror, from false negative results that are due to methodological particularities of the standard test. Finally, an evolutionary hypothesis is put forward as to why many primates can use a mirror instrumentally – i.e. know how to use it for grasping at hidden objects – while failing in the decisive mark test.
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