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Drapier, M., Chauvin, C., & Thierry, B. (2002). Tonkean macaques ( Macaca tonkeana) find food sources from cues conveyed by group-mates. Anim. Cogn., 5(3), 159–165.
Abstract: It is possible that non-specialised cues transmitted by conspecifics guide animals' food search provided they have the cognitive abilities needed to read these cues. Macaques often check the mouth of their group-mates by olfactory and/or visual inspection. We investigated whether Tonkean macaques ( Macaca tonkeana) can find the location of distant food on the basis of cues conveyed by group-mates. The subjects of the study were two 6-year-old males, who belonged to a social group of Tonkean macaques raised in semi-free-ranging conditions. In a first experiment, we tested whether the subject can choose between two sites after having sniffed a partner who has just eaten food corresponding to one of the sites. We found that both subjects were able to choose the matching site significantly above the chance level. This demonstrated that Tonkean macaques are capable of delayed olfactory matching. They could associate a food location with an odour conveyed by a partner. In a second experiment, the same subjects were allowed to see their partner through a Plexiglas window. Both subjects were still able to choose the matching site, demonstrating they could rely on visual cues alone. Passive recruitment of partners appears possible in macaques. They can improve their foraging performances by finding the location of environmental resources from olfactory or visual cues conveyed by group-mates.
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Funk, M. S. (2002). Problem solving skills in young yellow-crowned parakeets (Cyanoramphus auriceps). Anim. Cogn., 5(3), 167–176.
Abstract: Despite the long divergent evolutionary history of birds and mammals, early avian and primate cognitive development have many convergent features. Some of these features were investigated with a series of tasks designed to assess human infant development. The tasks were presented to young parakeets to assess their means-end problem solving abilities. Examples of these early skills are: attaining and playing with objects, retrieving rewards through use of a stick or rake, or by pulling in rewards on supports or on the ends of strings. Twelve such tasks were presented to 11 young yellow-crowned parakeets ( Cyanoramphus auriceps) to investigate their natural abilities; there was no attempt to train them to do those tasks that they did not spontaneously perform. Six of the birds were parent-raised and five were hand-raised. The birds completed 9 of the 12 tasks, demonstrating all the Piagetian sensorimotor circular reactions, but they failed to hand-watch (“claw-watch”), to stack objects, or to fill a container. Their ordinality on the tasks differed from that of human infants in that locomotion to obtain objects occurred earlier in the avian sequence of development and the mid-level tasks were performed by the two groups of avian subjects in a mixed order perhaps indicating that these abilities may not emerge in any particular order for these birds as they supposedly do for human infants. The hand-raised group needed fewer sessions to complete these means-end tasks.
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Pepperberg, I. M. (2002). The value of the Piagetian framework for comparative cognitive studies. Anim. Cogn., 5(3), 177–182.
Abstract: Although the Piagetian framework has been used by numerous researchers to compare cognitive abilities of diverse species, the system is often criticized as implemented. I examine the various criticisms, suggest ways in which the system can be improved, and argue for the need for descriptive systems such as the Piagetian framework to complement programs that look for cellular and molecular bases or mathematical models to explain behavior.
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West, R. E., & Young, R. J. (2002). Do domestic dogs show any evidence of being able to count? Anim. Cogn., 5(3), 183–186.
Abstract: Numerical competence has been demonstrated in a wide range of animal species. The level of numerical abilities shown ranges from simple relative numerousness judgements to true counting. In this study we used the preferential looking technique to test whether 11 pet dogs could count. The dogs were presented with three simple calculations: “1+1=2”; “1+1=1”; and “1+1=3”. These calculations were performed by presenting the dogs with treats that were placed behind a screen that allowed manipulation of the outcome of the calculation. When the dogs expected the outcome they spent the same amount of time looking at the result of the calculation as they did on the initial presentation. However, when the result was unexpected dogs spent significantly longer looking at the outcome of the calculation. The results suggest that the dogs were anticipating the outcome of the calculations they observed, thus suggesting that dogs may have a rudimentary ability to count.
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Hare, B., Brown, M., Williamson, C., & Tomasello, M. (2002). The domestication of social cognition in dogs. Science, 298(5598), 1634–1636.
Abstract: Dogs are more skillful than great apes at a number of tasks in which they must read human communicative signals indicating the location of hidden food. In this study, we found that wolves who were raised by humans do not show these same skills, whereas domestic dog puppies only a few weeks old, even those that have had little human contact, do show these skills. These findings suggest that during the process of domestication, dogs have been selected for a set of social-cognitive abilities that enable them to communicate with humans in unique ways.
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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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Domjan, M. (1976). Determinants of the enhancement of flavored-water intake by prior exposure. J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process, 2(1), 17–27.
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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van der Willigen, R. F., Frost, B. J., & Wagner, H. (2003). How owls structure visual information. Anim. Cogn., 6(1), 39–55.
Abstract: Recent studies on perceptual organization in humans claim that the ability to represent a visual scene as a set of coherent surfaces is of central importance for visual cognition. We examined whether this surface representation hypothesis generalizes to a non-mammalian species, the barn owl ( Tyto alba). Discrimination transfer combined with random-dot stimuli provided the appropriate means for a series of two behavioural experiments with the specific aims of (1) obtaining psychophysical measurements of figure-ground segmentation in the owl, and (2) determining the nature of the information involved. In experiment 1, two owls were trained to indicate the presence or absence of a central planar surface (figure) among a larger region of random dots (ground) based on differences in texture. Without additional training, the owls could make the same discrimination when figure and ground had reversed luminance, or were camouflaged by the use of uniformly textured random-dot stereograms. In the latter case, the figure stands out in depth from the ground when positional differences of the figure in two retinal images are combined (binocular disparity). In experiment 2, two new owls were trained to distinguish three-dimensional objects from holes using random-dot kinematograms. These birds could make the same discrimination when information on surface segmentation was unexpectedly switched from relative motion to half-occlusion. In the latter case, stereograms were used that provide the impression of stratified surfaces to humans by giving unpairable image features to the eyes. The ability to use image features such as texture, binocular disparity, relative motion, and half-occlusion interchangeably to determine figure-ground relationships suggests that in owls, as in humans, the structuring of the visual scene critically depends on how indirect image information (depth order, occlusion contours) is allocated between different surfaces.
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Vonk, J. (2003). Gorilla ( Gorilla gorilla gorilla) and orangutan ( Pongo abelii) understanding of first- and second-order relations. Anim. Cogn., 6(2), 77–86.
Abstract: Four orangutans and one gorilla matched images in a delayed matching-to-sample (DMTS) task based on the relationship between items depicted in those images, thus demonstrating understanding of both first- and second-order relations. Subjects matched items on the basis of identity, color, or shape (first-order relations, experiment 1) or same shape, same color between items (second-order relations, experiment 2). Four of the five subjects performed above chance on the second-order relations DMTS task within the first block of five sessions. High levels of performance on this task did not result from reliance on perceptual feature matching and thus indicate the capability for abstract relational concepts in two species of great ape.
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Uller, C., Jaeger, R., Guidry, G., & Martin, C. (2003). Salamanders ( Plethodon cinereus) go for more: rudiments of number in an amphibian. Anim. Cogn., 6(2), 105–112.
Abstract: Techniques traditionally used in developmental research with infants have been widely used with nonhuman primates in the investigation of comparative cognitive abilities. Recently, researchers have shown that human infants and monkeys select the larger of two numerosities in a spontaneous forced-choice discrimination task. Here we adopt the same method to assess in a series of experiments spontaneous choice of the larger of two numerosities in a species of amphibian, red-backed salamanders ( Plethodon cinereus). The findings indicate that salamanders “go for more,” just like human babies and monkeys. This rudimentary capacity is a type of numerical discrimination that is spontaneously present in this amphibian.
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