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Byrne R.W. (2000). - Animal Cognition in Nature, edited by Russell P. Balda, Irene M. Pepperberg and Alan C. Kamil. Trends. Cognit. Sci., 4, 73.
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Guth S., & Guth W. (2000). Morality based on cognition in primates. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 7, 43–46.
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Ronald J. Schusterman, Colleen J. Reichmuth, & David Kastak. (2000). How Animals Classify Friends and Foes. Curr. Dir. Psychol. Sci., 9, 1–6.
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Ray, E. D., Gardner, M. R., & Heyes, C. M. (2000). Seeing how it's done: matching conditions for observer rats (Rattus norvegicus) in the bidirectional control. Anim. Cogn., 3(3), 147–157.
Abstract: In an attempt to increase the reliability of the demonstrator-consistent responding effect produced in the bidirectional control procedure, experiments 1-4 sought conditions that would magnify the matching effect. The aim was to produce a robust demonstrator-consistent responding effect in order that future analytic experiments could investigate the psychological processes responsible for this effect. The joystick responses of observer rats trained using the standard bidirectional control procedure parameters were compared with those of observers subject to conditions identified in the social learning literature as favourable for imitation. Unlike mice, observer rats in experiments 1 a and 1 b tended to push a joystick in the same direction as their demonstrators when the demonstrators were either familiar or unfamiliar males and females. Comparable demonstrator-consistent responding occurred following observation of a standard and a salient joystick response (experiment 2). Experiment 3 showed that the discriminative accuracy of a demonstrator's responding was important for matching behaviour, and suggested that matching might be enhanced with more than the conventional single observation session. Experiment 4 confirmed that the bidirectional control effect is sensitive to the amount of observational experience; after six observation sessions, demonstrator-inconsistent responding occurs. The results of experiments 1-3 are, and those of experiment 4 are not, compatible with the hypothesis that demonstrator-consistent responding in the bidirectional control is caused by olfactory cues deposited by demonstrators on the joystick.
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Miklósi, A. '., Polgárdi, R., Topál, J., & Csányi, V. (2000). Intentional behaviour in dog-human communication: an experimental analysis of “showing” behaviour in the dog. Anim. Cogn., 3(3), 159–166.
Abstract: Despite earlier scepticism there is now evidence for simple forms of intentional and functionally referential communication in many animal species. Here we investigate whether dogs engage in functional referential communication with their owners. “Showing” is defined as a communicative action consisting of both a directional component related to an external target and an attention-getting component that directs the attention of the perceiver to the informer or sender. In our experimental situation dogs witness the hiding of a piece of food (or a favourite toy) which they cannot get access to. We asked whether dogs would engage in “showing” in the presence of their owner. To control for the motivational effects of both the owner and the food on the dogs' behaviour, control observations were also staged where only the food (or the toy) or the owner was present. Dogs' gazing frequency at both the food (toy) and the owner was greater when only one of these was present. In other words, dogs looked more frequently at their owner when the food (toy) was present, and they looked more at the location of the food (toy) when the owner was present. When both the food (toy) and the owner were present a new behaviour, “gaze alternation”, emerged which was defined as changing the direction of the gaze from the location of the food (toy) to looking at the owner (or vice versa) within 2 s. Vocalisations that occurred in this phase were always associated with gazing at the owner or the location of the food. This behaviour, which was specific to this situation, has also been described in chimpanzees, a gorilla and humans, and has often been interpreted as a form of functionally referential communication. Based on our observations we argue that dogs might be able to engage in functionally referential communication with their owner, and their behaviour could be described as a form of “showing”. The contribution of domestication and individual learning to the well-developed communicative skills in dogs is discussed and will be the subject of further studies.
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Tomonaga, M., & Matsuzawa, T. (2000). Sequential responding to arabic numerals with wild cards by the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes). Anim. Cogn., 3(1), 1–11.
Abstract: One adult female chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) was trained to respond serially to three arabic numerals between 1 and 9, presented on a cathode-ray-tube (CRT) screen. To examine the factors affecting her sequential responding behavior, wild-card items were added to the three-item sequences. When this wild-card item remained until the subject responded to the last numeral (i.e., the terminator condition), her response to the terminator at each point of the sequence was controlled by the ordinal distance between numerals. Thus, the number of responses to the terminator increased as the ordinal distance between numerals increased. When the wild-card item was eliminated by the subject's response (wild-card conditions), the probability of responses to the wild card before the first numeral increased as a function of the serial position of the first numeral. These results were consistent with previous studies of response time and suggest both serial position and symbolic distance effects. It is suggested that the subject might form the integrated 9-item linear representations by training of possible subsets of three-item sequences. Knowledge concerning the ordinal position of each numeral was established through this training.
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von Fersen, L., & Delius, J. D. (2000). Acquired equivalences between auditory stimuli in dolphins (Tursiops truncatus). Anim. Cogn., 3(2), 79–83.
Abstract: This study investigated whether dolphins would show evidence of equivalence class formation between auditory stimuli. Bottlenose dolphins were trained to press one or other of two response levers depending on which one of four auditory stimuli had been previously presented. Once they had learned the initial discriminations, the stimulus-lever contingencies was repeatedly reversed. Within any given session, however, pressing of one lever always led to reward with one set of two tones and pressing the other lever led to non-reward with an alternative set of two tones. After sufficient experience with this response reversal procedure, the dolphins spontaneously chose the same levers they had first learned to be correct with one of the across-set stimulus pairs when later in the session they were presented with the other of the across-set stimulus pairs. They thus demonstrated that they had associated the tones belonging to the two sets within two separate functional classes. It is discussed why the dolphins succeeded with auditory stimuli when they had previously failed in a similar task with visual stimuli.
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Waite, T. A., & Field, K. L. (2000). Erroneous choice and foregone gains in hoarding gray jays (Perisoreus canadensis). Anim. Cogn., 3(3), 127–134.
Abstract: Under the conventional assumption that natural selection favors choice behavior that maximizes some fitness-related currency, a forager making repeated binary choices should consistently choose the more valuable option. Under the alternative assumption that natural selection favors choice behavior that minimizes costly errors, erroneous choice is not only expected but is expected to be common when the cost of errors is low. This cost depends on the potential rate of return: the higher this rate, the smaller the cost of choosing the less valuable option. When this rate is very high, a forager may err frequently and yet forego no appreciable fitness gain. Errors should thus be more common when interruptions to foraging are shorter. Our experimental results supported this prediction: gray jays chose the less valuable option more frequently when subjected to shorter interruptions (experimentally imposed delays to access to food rewards). This tendency is consistent with the idea that an adaptive decision-making process may routinely produce errors, not because errors are in some way adaptive but because their fitness cost is minimal, particularly when delays are short. From a proximate perspective, this tendency to commit errors more frequently following shorter delays may be due to constraints on the jays' information-processing capacity. In general, choice behavior should be viewed as the joint byproduct of adaptive decision making and cognitive constraints.
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Kusayama, T., Bischof, H. - J., & Watanabe, S. (2000). Responses to mirror-image stimulation in jungle crows (Corvus macrorhynchos). Anim. Cogn., 3(1), 61–64.
Abstract: Four jungle crows (Corvus macrorhynchos) were exposed to a mirror placed either vertically or horizontally. The most frequently observed behaviors were pecking at the mirror and wing flapping when looking toward the mirror. These behavior patterns, which were only rarely observed when the mirror was reversed, can be interpreted as aggressive behaviors against a conspecific. The vertical mirror evoked the behaviors more often than the horizontal mirror. The present results suggest that crows perceive their mirror image as an image of a conspecific, not as their own.
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Regolin, L., Tommasi, L., & Vallortigara, G. (2000). Visual perception of biological motion in newly hatched chicks as revealed by an imprinting procedure. Anim. Cogn., 3(1), 53–60.
Abstract: Day-old chicks were exposed to point-light animation sequences depicting either a walking hen or a rotating cylinder. On a subsequent free-choice test (experiment 1) the chicks approached the novel stimulus, irrespective of this being the hen or the cylinder. In order to obtain equivalent local motion vectors, in experiments 2 and 3 newly hatched chicks were exposed either to a point-light animation sequence depicting a walking hen, or to a positionally scrambled walking hen (i.e. an animation in which exactly the same set of dots in motion as that employed for the walking hen was presented, but with spatially randomized starting positions). Chicks tested on day 1 (experiment 2) or on day 2 (i.e. after a period in the dark following exposure on day 1 (experiment 3)) proved able to discriminate the two animation sequences: males preferentially approached the novel stimulus, females the familiar one. These results indicate that discrimination was not based on local motion vectors, but rather on the temporally integrated motion sequence.
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