Abstract: REASONS FOR PERFORMING STUDY: Responses of horses in frightening situations are important for both equine and human safety. Considerable scientific interest has been shown in development of reactivity tests, but little effort has been dedicated to the development of appropriate training methods for reducing fearfulness. OBJECTIVES: To investigate which of 3 different training methods (habituation, desensitisation and counter-conditioning) was most effective in teaching horses to react calmly in a potentially frightening situation. HYPOTHESES: 1) Horses are able to generalise about the test stimulus such that, once familiar with the test stimulus in one situation, it appears less frightening and elicits a reduced response even when the stimulus intensity is increased or the stimulus is presented differently; and 2) alternative methods such as desensitisation and counter-conditioning would be more efficient than a classic habituation approach. METHODS: Twenty-seven naive 2-year-old Danish Warmblood stallions were trained according to 3 different methods, based on classical learning theory: 1) horses (n = 9) were exposed to the full stimulus (a moving, white nylon bag, 1.2 x 0.75 m) in 5 daily training sessions until they met a predefined habituation criterion (habituation); 2) horses (n = 9) were introduced gradually to the stimulus and habituated to each step before the full stimulus was applied (desensitisation); 3) horses (n = 9) were trained to associate the stimulus with a positive reward before being exposed to the full stimulus (counter-conditioning). Each horse received 5 training sessions of 3 min per day. Heart rate and behavioural responses were recorded. RESULTS: Horses trained with the desensitisation method showed fewer flight responses in total and needed fewer training sessions to learn to react calmly to test stimuli. Variations in heart rate persisted even when behavioural responses had ceased. In addition, all horses on the desensitisation method eventually habituated to the test stimulus whereas some horses on the other methods did not. CONCLUSIONS AND POTENTIAL RELEVANCE: Desensitisation appeared to be the most effective training method for horses in frightening situations. Further research is needed in order to investigate the role of positive reinforcement, such as offering food, in the training of horses.

Abstract: In the present experiments, the 2-action method was used to determine whether pigeons could learn to imitate a conditional discrimination. Demonstrator pigeons (Columba livia) stepped on a treadle in the presence of 1 light and pecked at the treadle in the presence of another light. Demonstration did not seem to affect acquisition of the conditional discrimination (Experiment 1) but did facilitate its reversal of the conditional discrimination (Experiments 2 and 3). The results suggest that pigeons are not only able to learn a specific behavior by observing another pigeon, but they can also learn under which circumstances to perform that behavior. The results have implications for proposed mechanisms of imitation in animals.

Abstract: There has been relatively little research on the psychological mechanisms of social learning. This may be due, in part, to the practice of distinguishing categories of social learning in relation to ill-defined mechanisms (Davis, 1973; Galef, 1988). This practice both makes it difficult to identify empirically examples of different types of social learning, and gives the false impression that the mechanisms responsible for social learning are clearly understood. It has been proposed that social learning phenomena be subsumed within the categorization scheme currently used by investigators of asocial learning. This scheme distinguishes categories of learning according to observable conditions, namely, the type of experience that gives rise to a change in an animal (single stimulus vs. stimulus-stimulus relationship vs. response-reinforcer relationship), and the type of behaviour in which this change is detected (response evocation vs. learnability) (Rescorla, 1988). Specifically, three alignments have been proposed: (i) stimulus enhancement with single stimulus learning, (ii) observational conditioning with stimulus-stimulus learning, or Pavlovian conditioning, and (iii) observational learning with response-reinforcer learning, or instrumental conditioning. If, as the proposed alignments suggest, the conditions of social and asocial learning are the same, there is some reason to believe that the mechanisms underlying the two sets of phenomena are also the same. This is so if one makes the relatively uncontroversial assumption that phenomena which occur under similar conditions tend to be controlled by similar mechanisms. However, the proposed alignments are intended to be a set of hypotheses, rather than conclusions, about the mechanisms of social learning; as a basis for further research in which animal learning theory is applied to social learning. A concerted attempt to apply animal learning theory to social learning, to find out whether the same mechanisms are responsible for social and asocial learning, could lead both to refinements of the general theory, and to a better understanding of the mechanisms of social learning. There are precedents for these positive developments in research applying animal learning theory to food aversion learning (e.g. Domjan, 1983; Rozin & Schull, 1988) and imprinting (e.g. Bolhuis, de Vox & Kruit, 1990; Hollis, ten Cate & Bateson, 1991). Like social learning, these phenomena almost certainly play distinctive roles in the antogeny of adaptive behaviour, and they are customarily regarded as 'special kinds' of learning (Shettleworth, 1993).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

Abstract: The work of behavioural pharmacologists has concentrated on small animals, such as rodents and pigeons. The validity of extrapolation of their findings to humans depends upon the existence of parallels in both physiology and psychology between these animals and humans. This paper considers the question whether there are in fact substantial cognitive parallels between, first, different non-human groups of vertebrates and, second, non-humans and humans. Behavioural data from 'simple' tasks, such as habituation and conditioning, do not point to species differences among vertebrates. Using examples that concentrate on the performance of rodents and birds, it is argued that, similarly, data from more complex tasks (learning-set formation, transitive inference, and spatial memory serve as examples) reveal few if any cognitive differences amongst non-human vertebrates. This conclusion supports the notion that association formation may be the critical problem-solving process available to non-human animals; associative mechanisms are assumed to have evolved to detect causal links between events, and would therefore be relevant in all ecological niches. In agreement with this view, recent advances in comparative neurology show striking parallels in functional organisation of mammalian and avian telencephalon. Finally, it is argued that although the peculiarly human capacity for language marks a large cognitive contrast between humans and non-humans, there is good evidence-in particular, from work on implicit learning--that the learning mechanisms available to non--humans are present and do play an important role in human cognition.