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Author Zentall, T.R. doi  openurl
  Title Imitation: definitions, evidence, and mechanisms Type Journal Article
  Year 2006 Publication Animal cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 9 Issue 4 Pages 335-353  
  Keywords Adaptation, Psychological; Animals; *Behavior, Animal; *Imitative Behavior; *Learning; Motivation; *Social Environment; Transfer (Psychology)  
  Abstract Imitation can be defined as the copying of behavior. To a biologist, interest in imitation is focused on its adaptive value for the survival of the organism, but to a psychologist, the mechanisms responsible for imitation are the most interesting. For psychologists, the most important cases of imitation are those that involve demonstrated behavior that the imitator cannot see when it performs the behavior (e.g., scratching one's head). Such examples of imitation are sometimes referred to as opaque imitation because they are difficult to account for without positing cognitive mechanisms, such as perspective taking, that most animals have not been acknowledged to have. The present review first identifies various forms of social influence and social learning that do not qualify as opaque imitation, including species-typical mechanisms (e.g., mimicry and contagion), motivational mechanisms (e.g., social facilitation, incentive motivation, transfer of fear), attentional mechanisms (e.g., local enhancement, stimulus enhancement), imprinting, following, observational conditioning, and learning how the environment works (affordance learning). It then presents evidence for different forms of opaque imitation in animals, and identifies characteristics of human imitation that have been proposed to distinguish it from animal imitation. Finally, it examines the role played in opaque imitation by demonstrator reinforcement and observer motivation. Although accounts of imitation have been proposed that vary in their level of analysis from neural to cognitive, at present no theory of imitation appears to be adequate to account for the varied results that have been found.  
  Address Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 40506-0044, USA. Zentall@uky.edu  
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  Notes PMID:17024510 Approved no  
  Call Number refbase @ user @ Serial 217  
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Author Call, J. doi  openurl
  Title Inferences by exclusion in the great apes: the effect of age and species Type Journal Article
  Year 2006 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 9 Issue 4 Pages 393-403  
  Keywords Age Factors; Animals; Association Learning; *Cognition; *Concept Formation; *Discrimination Learning; Female; Gorilla gorilla; Hominidae/classification/*psychology; Male; Pan paniscus; Pan troglodytes; Pongo pygmaeus; *Problem Solving; Species Specificity  
  Abstract This study investigated the ability of chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, and bonobos to make inferences by exclusion using the procedure pioneered by Premack and Premack (Cognition 50:347-362, 1994) with chimpanzees. Thirty apes were presented with two different food items (banana vs. grape) on a platform and covered with identical containers. One of the items was removed from the container and placed between the two containers so that subjects could see it. After discarding this item, subjects could select between the two containers. In Experiment 1, apes preferentially selected the container that held the item that the experimenter had not discarded, especially if subjects saw the experimenter remove the item from the container (but without seeing the container empty). Experiment 3 in which the food was removed from one of the containers behind a barrier confirmed these results. In contrast, subjects performed at chance levels when a stimulus (colored plastic chip: Exp. 1; food item: Exp. 2 and Exp. 3) designated the item that had been removed. These results indicated that apes made inferences, not just learned to use a discriminative cue to avoid the empty container. Apes perceived and treated the item discarded by the experimenter as if it were the very one that had been hidden under the container. Results suggested a positive relationship between age and inferential ability independent of memory ability but no species differences.  
  Address Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103, Leipzig, Germany. call@eva.mpg.de  
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  Notes PMID:16924458 Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 2444  
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Author Virányi, Z.; Topál, J.; Miklósi, Á.; Csányi, V. doi  openurl
  Title A nonverbal test of knowledge attribution: a comparative study on dogs and children Type Journal Article
  Year 2006 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 9 Issue 1 Pages 13-26  
  Keywords Animals; *Child Psychology; Child, Preschool; Cues; Dogs/*psychology; Female; Humans; Male; Nonverbal Communication; *Problem Solving; Species Specificity  
  Abstract The sensitivity of eleven pet dogs and eleven 2.5-year-old children to others' past perceptual access was tested for object-specificity in a playful, nonverbal task in which a human Helper's knowledge state regarding the whereabouts of a hidden toy and a stick (a tool necessary for getting the out-of-reach toy) was systematically manipulated. In the four experimental conditions the Helper either participated or was absent during hiding of the toy and the stick and therefore she knew the place(s) of (1) both the toy and the stick, (2) only the toy, (3) only the stick or (4) neither of them. The subjects observed the hiding processes, but they could not reach the objects, so they had to involve the Helper to retrieve the toy. The dogs were more inclined to signal the place of the toy in each condition and indicated the location of the stick only sporadically. However the children signalled both the location of the toy and that of the stick in those situations when the Helper had similar knowledge regarding the whereabouts of them (i.e. knew or ignored both of them), and in those conditions in which the Helper was ignorant of the whereabouts of only one object the children indicated the place of this object more often than that of the known one. At the same time however, both dogs and children signalled the place of the toy more frequently if the Helper had been absent during toy-hiding compared to those conditions when she had participated in the hiding. Although this behaviour appears to correspond with the Helper's knowledge state, even the subtle distinction made by the children can be interpreted without a casual understanding of knowledge-formation in others.  
  Address Department of Ethology, ELTE University Budapest, Pazmany P. setany 1/C H-1117, Hungary. zsofi.viranyi@freemail.hu  
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  Notes PMID:15895261 Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 2486  
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Author Palmer, M.E.; Calve, M.R.; Adamo, S.A. doi  openurl
  Title Response of female cuttlefish Sepia officinalis (Cephalopoda) to mirrors and conspecifics: evidence for signaling in female cuttlefish Type Journal Article
  Year 2006 Publication Animal cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 9 Issue 2 Pages 151-155  
  Keywords Analysis of Variance; *Animal Communication; Animals; Bias (Epidemiology); Female; Male; Pigmentation/*physiology; Recognition (Psychology)/*physiology; Sepia/*physiology; Visual Perception/*physiology  
  Abstract Cuttlefish have a large repertoire of body patterns that are used for camouflage and interspecific signaling. Intraspecific signaling by male cuttlefish has been well documented but studies on signaling by females are lacking. We found that females displayed a newly described body pattern termed Splotch toward their mirror image and female conspecifics, but not to males, prey or inanimate objects. Female cuttlefish may use the Splotch body pattern as an intraspecific signal, possibly to reduce agonistic interactions. The ability of females to produce a consistent body pattern in response to conspecifics and mirrors suggests that they can recognize same-sex conspecifics using visual cues, despite the lack of sexual dimorphism visible to human observers.  
  Address Dorset Environmental Science Centre, Dorset, ON, Canada, P0A 1E0  
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  Notes PMID:16408230 Approved no  
  Call Number Admin @ knut @ Serial 16  
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Author Miklósi, Á.; Soproni, K. doi  openurl
  Title A comparative analysis of animals' understanding of the human pointing gesture Type Journal Article
  Year 2006 Publication Animal cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 9 Issue 2 Pages 81-93  
  Keywords *Animal Communication; Animals; *Behavior, Animal; Child; Child, Preschool; Dogs; Fixation, Ocular; *Gestures; Hand; Humans; *Nonverbal Communication; Pinnipedia; Primates; Problem Solving; *Recognition (Psychology); Species Specificity  
  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.  
  Address Department of Ethology, Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest, Pazmany P 1/c, H-1117, Budapest, Hungary. miklosa@ludens.elte.hu  
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  Notes PMID:16235075 Approved no  
  Call Number refbase @ user @ Serial 463  
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Author Ottoni, E.B.; de Resende, B.D.; Izar, P. doi  openurl
  Title Watching the best nutcrackers: what capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) know about others' tool-using skills Type Journal Article
  Year 2005 Publication Animal cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 8 Issue 4 Pages 215-219  
  Keywords Animals; *Association Learning; Cebus/*psychology; *Feeding Behavior; Female; Male; Nuts; *Problem Solving  
  Abstract The present work is part of a decade-long study on the spontaneous use of stones for cracking hard-shelled nuts by a semi-free-ranging group of brown capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella). Nutcracking events are frequently watched by other individuals--usually younger, less proficient, and that are well tolerated to the point of some scrounging being allowed by the nutcracker. Here we report findings showing that the choice of observational targets is an active, non-random process, and that observers seem to have some understanding of the relative proficiency of their group mates, preferentially watching the more skilled nutcrackers, which enhances not only scrounging payoffs, but also social learning opportunities.  
  Address Laboratory of Cognitive Ethology, Department of Experimental Psychology, Institute of Psychology, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. ebottoni@usp.br  
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  Notes PMID:15719240 Approved no  
  Call Number refbase @ user @ Serial 355  
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Author Fripp, D.; Owen, C.; Quintana-Rizzo, E.; Shapiro, A.; Buckstaff, K.; Jankowski, K.; Wells, R.; Tyack, P. doi  openurl
  Title Bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) calves appear to model their signature whistles on the signature whistles of community members Type Journal Article
  Year 2005 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 8 Issue 1 Pages 17-26  
  Keywords Acoustic Stimulation; Animals; Dolphins/*psychology; Female; *Imitative Behavior; Individuality; *Learning; *Social Environment; *Vocalization, Animal  
  Abstract Bottlenose dolphins are unusual among non-human mammals in their ability to learn new sounds. This study investigates the importance of vocal learning in the development of dolphin signature whistles and the influence of social interactions on that process. We used focal animal behavioral follows to observe six calves in Sarasota Bay, Fla., recording their social associations during their first summer, and their signature whistles during their second. The signature whistles of five calves were determined. Using dynamic time warping (DTW) of frequency contours, the calves' signature whistles were compared to the signature whistles of several sets of dolphins: their own associates, the other calves' associates, Tampa Bay dolphins, and captive dolphins. Whistles were considered similar if their DTW similarity score was greater than those of 95% of the whistle comparisons. Association was defined primarily in terms of time within 50 m of the mother/calf pair. On average, there were six dolphins with signature whistles similar to the signature whistles of each of the calves. These were significantly more likely to be Sarasota Bay resident dolphins than non-Sarasota dolphins, and (though not significantly) more likely to be dolphins that were within 50 m of the mother and calf less than 5% of the time. These results suggest that calves may model their signature whistles on the signature whistles of members of their community, possibly community members with whom they associate only rarely.  
  Address Biology Department, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, Massachusetts, USA. deborah.fripp@verizon.net  
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  Notes PMID:15221637 Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 2520  
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Author Xitco, M.J.J.; Gory, J.D.; Kuczaj, S.A. 2nd doi  openurl
  Title Dolphin pointing is linked to the attentional behavior of a receiver Type Journal Article
  Year 2004 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 7 Issue 4 Pages 231-238  
  Keywords *Animal Communication; Animals; *Association Learning; *Attention; Dolphins/*psychology; *Gestures; Humans; Imitative Behavior; Male; Orientation; Posture; Species Specificity  
  Abstract In 2001, Xitco et al. (Anim Cogn 4:115-123) described spontaneous behaviors in two bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) that resembled pointing and gaze alternation. The dolphins' spontaneous behavior was influenced by the presence of a potential receiver, and the distance between the dolphin and the receiver. The present study adapted the technique of Call and Tomasello [(1994) J Comp Psychol 108:307-317], used with orangutans to test the effect of the receiver's orientation on pointing in these same dolphins. The dolphins directed more points and monitoring behavior at receivers whose orientation was consistent with attending to the dolphins. The results demonstrated that the dolphins' pointing and monitoring behavior, like that of apes and infants, was linked to the attentional behavior of the receiver.  
  Address Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, Code 235, 53560 Hull Street, CA 92152-5001, San Diego, USA. mark.xitco@navy.mil  
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  Notes PMID:15088149 Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 2526  
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Author Scheumann, M.; Call, J. doi  openurl
  Title The use of experimenter-given cues by South African fur seals (Arctocephalus pusillus) Type Journal Article
  Year 2004 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 7 Issue 4 Pages 224-230  
  Keywords Animal Communication; Animals; *Association Learning; *Cues; Female; Fur Seals/*psychology; *Gestures; Humans; *Imitative Behavior; Nonverbal Communication; Social Behavior; Species Specificity  
  Abstract Dogs can use a variety of experimenter-given cues such as pointing, head direction, and eye direction to locate food hidden under one of several containers. Some authors have proposed that this is a result of the domestication process. In this study we tested four captive fur seals in a two alternative object choice task in which subjects had to use one of the following experimenter-given cues to locate the food: (1) the experimenter pointed and gazed at one of the objects, (2) the experimenter pointed at only one of the objects, (3) the experimenter gazed at only one of the objects, (4) the experimenter glanced at only one of the objects, (5) the experimenter pointed and gazed at one of the objects but was sitting closer to one object than to the other, (6) the experimenter pointed only with the index finger at one of the objects, (7) the experimenter presented a replica of one of the objects. The fur seals were able to use cues which involved a fully exposed arm or a head direction, but failed to use glance only, the index finger pointing and the object replica cues. The results showed that a domestication process was not necessary to develop receptive skills to cues given by an experimenter. Instead, we hypothesize that close interactions with humans prior to testing enabled fur seals to uses ome gestural cues without formal training. We also analyzed the behavior of the seals depending on the level of difficulty of the task. Behavioral signs of hesitation increased with task difficulty. This suggests that the fur seals were sensitive to task difficulty.  
  Address Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Deutscher Platz 6, 04103 Leipzig, Germany. Marina.Scheumann@tiho-hannover.de  
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  Notes PMID:15057598 Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 2536  
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Author Anderson, J.R.; Kuroshima, H.; Kuwahata, H.; Fujita, K. doi  openurl
  Title Do squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus) and capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) predict that looking leads to touching? Type Journal Article
  Year 2004 Publication Animal Cognition Abbreviated Journal Anim. Cogn.  
  Volume 7 Issue 3 Pages 185-192  
  Keywords Animals; Association Learning; *Attention; Cebus/*psychology; Cognition; *Concept Formation; Cues; Fixation, Ocular; Humans; *Nonverbal Communication; Recognition (Psychology); Saimiri/*psychology; Social Behavior; Species Specificity  
  Abstract Squirrel monkeys (Saimiri sciureus) and capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) were tested using an expectancy violation procedure to assess whether they use an actor's gaze direction, signaled by congruent head and eye orientation, to predict subsequent behavior. The monkeys visually habituated to a repeated sequence in which the actor (a familiar human or a puppet) looked at an object and then picked it up, but they did not react strongly when the actor looked at an object but then picked up another object. Capuchin monkeys' responses in the puppet condition were slightly more suggestive of expectancy. There was no differential responding to congruent versus incongruent look-touch sequences when familiarization trials were omitted. The weak findings contrast with a strongly positive result previously reported for tamarin monkeys. Additional evidence is required before concluding that behavior prediction based on gaze cues typifies primates; other approaches for studying how they process attention cues are indicated.  
  Address Department of Psychology, University of Stirling, FK9 4LA, Stirling, Scotland. jra1@stir.ac.uk  
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  ISSN 1435-9448 ISBN Medium  
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  Notes PMID:15022054 Approved no  
  Call Number Equine Behaviour @ team @ Serial 2540  
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