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Pickens, C. L., & Holland, P. C. (2004). Conditioning and cognition. Neurosci Biobehav Rev, 28(7), 651–661.
Abstract: Animals' abilities to use internal representations of absent objects to guide adaptive behavior and acquire new information, and to represent multiple spatial, temporal, and object properties of complex events and event sequences, may underlie many aspects of human perception, memory, and symbolic thought. In this review, two classes of simple associative learning tasks that address these core cognitive capacities are discussed. The first set, including reinforcer revaluation and mediated learning procedures, address the power of Pavlovian conditioned stimuli to gain access, through learning, to representations of upcoming events. The second set of investigations concern the construction of complex stimulus representations, as illustrated in studies of contextual learning, the conjunction of explicit stimulus elements in configural learning procedures, and recent studies of episodic-like memory. The importance of identifying both cognitive process and brain system bases of performance in animal models is emphasized.
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Roper, K. L., & Zentall, T. R. (1993). Directed forgetting in animals. Psychol Bull, 113(3), 513–532.
Abstract: Directed-forgetting research with animals suggests that animals show disrupted test performance only under certain conditions. Important variables are (a) whether during training, the cue to forget (F cue) signals nonreward (i.e., that the trial is over) versus reward (i.e., that reinforcement can be obtained) and (b) given that reinforcement can be obtained on F-cue trials, whether the post-F-cue response pattern is compatible with the baseline memory task. It is proposed that some findings of directed forgetting can be attributed to trained response biases, whereas others may be attributable perhaps to frustration-produced interference. It is suggested that directed forgetting in animals should be studied using procedures similar to those used to study directed forgetting in humans. This can be accomplished by presenting, within a trial, both to-be-remembered and to-be-forgotten material.
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Rubin, L., Oppegard, C., & Hindz, H. F. (1980). The effect of varying the temporal distribution of conditioning trials on equine learning behavior. J. Anim Sci., 50(6), 1184–1187.
Abstract: Two experiments were conducted to study the effect of varying the temporal distrbution of conditioning sessions on equine learning behavior. In the first experiment, 15 ponies were trained to clear a small hurdle in response to a buzzer in order to avoid a mild electric shock. Three treatments were used. One group received 10 learning trials daily, seven times a week; one group was trained in the same fashion two times a week and one group was trained once a week. The animals conditioned only once a week achieved a high level of performance in significantly fewer sessions than the ones conditioned seven times a week, although elapsed time from start of training to completion was two to three times greater for the former group. The twice-a-week group learned at an intermediate rate. In the second experiment, the ponies were rearranged into three new groups. They were taught to move backward a specific distance in response to a visual cue in order to avoid an electric shock. Again, one group was trained seven times a week, one group was trained two times and one group was trained once a week. As in the first experiment, the animals trained once a week achieved the learning criteria in significantly fewer sessions than those trained seven times a week, but, as in trial 1, elapsed time from start to finish was greater for them. The two times-a-week group learned at a rate in-between the rates of the other two groups.
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Sachs, E. (1967). Dissociation of learning in rats and its similarities to dissociative states in man. Proc Annu Meet Am Psychopathol Assoc, 55, 249–304.
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Shettleworth, S. J. (1972). Stimulus relevance in the control of drinking and conditioned fear responses in domestic chicks (Gallus gallus). J Comp Physiol Psychol, 80(2), 175–198.
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Van Schaik, C. (2006). Why are some animals so smart? Sci Am, 294(4), 64–71.
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Vlamings, P. H. J. M., Uher, J., & Call, J. (2006). How the great apes (Pan troglodytes, Pongo pygmaeus, Pan paniscus, and Gorilla gorilla) perform on the reversed contingency task: the effects of food quantity and food visibility. J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process, 32(1), 60–70.
Abstract: S. T. Boysen and G. G. Berntson (1995) found that chimpanzees performed poorly on a reversed contingency task in which they had to point to the smaller of 2 food quantities to acquire the larger quantity. The authors compared the performance of 4 great ape species (Pan troglodytes, Pongo pygmaeus, Pan paniscus, and Gorilla gorilla) on the reversed contingency task while manipulating food quantity (0-4 or 1-4) and food visibility (visible pairs or covered pairs). Results showed no systematic species differences but large individual differences. Some individuals of each species were able to solve the reversed contingency task. Both quantity and visibility of the food items had a significant effect on performance. Subjects performed better when the disparity between quantities was smaller and the quantities were not directly visible.
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Zentall, T. R., & Riley, D. A. (2000). Selective attention in animal discrimination learning. J Gen Psychol, 127(1), 45–66.
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.
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Zentall, T. R., Clement, T. S., & Weaver, J. E. (2003). Symmetry training in pigeons can produce functional equivalences. Psychon Bull Rev, 10(2), 387–391.
Abstract: Functional stimulus equivalence has been demonstrated using a transfer of training design with matching-to-sample training in which two sample stimuli are associated with the same comparison stimulus (A-B, C-B; many-to-one matching). Equivalence is shown by training a new association (A-D) and demonstrating the presence of an emergent relation (C-D). In the present experiment, we show that symmetry training, in which a bidirectional association is trained between two stimuli (A-B, B-A, using successive stimulus presentations followed by reinforcement), can also produce functional equivalence using a transfer of training design (i.e., train B-C, test A-C). The results suggest that training pigeons in the substitutability of two stimuli may be sufficient to produce functional stimulus equivalence between them. The results also have implications for the development of an emergent transitive relation, because training on A-B and B-C relations results in the emergence of an untrained A-C relation, if B-A training also is provided.
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