Article
Psychology, Biological
John Keller
Summary: This article describes a unique approach to the experimental analysis of interactive choice behavior. The results show that players' choices tend to gravitate towards pure strategy Nash equilibriums in games that have them, and towards a near equality of responding in the game Rock-Paper-Scissors. The principle of positive reinforcement entirely accounts for these results.
LEARNING AND MOTIVATION
(2022)
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Xiaoqin Yang, Liangjie Chen, Pengcheng Yang, Xiaodong Yang, Lei Liu, Liang Li
Summary: This study found that using a negative emotional-conditioned prepulse can enhance female attention and startle reflex, while perceptual spatial attention can also enhance startle reflex in both males and females. These results suggest that startle reflex is influenced by emotional, perceptual spatial attention, and sex.
BEHAVIOURAL BRAIN RESEARCH
(2023)
Review
Behavioral Sciences
Patrick A. F. Laing, Ben J. Harrison
Summary: Safety learning, the process by which organisms utilize safety information to inhibit fear and anxiety in nonthreatening environments, remains inconsistently defined and under-researched. Although Pavlovian conditioned inhibition presents a theoretically sound model for safety learning, it has been investigated infrequently and with notable methodological variability, indicating that its full potential remains untapped. We propose revisiting conditioned inhibition as a framework for addressing timely questions in the behavioural and clinical sciences.
NEUROSCIENCE AND BIOBEHAVIORAL REVIEWS
(2021)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Shota Okabe, Yuki Takayanagi, Masahide Yoshida, Tatsushi Onaka
Summary: The research findings suggest that gentle stroking of female rats can lead to affiliative behaviors towards humans, possibly through activation of oxytocin neurons and suppression of hypothalamic neurons.
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
(2021)
Article
Clinical Neurology
Rami El Matine, Judith C. Kreutzmann, Markus Fendt
Summary: By manipulating neural excitability in the amygdala, the specificity of fear learning can be improved, reducing fear generalization and anxiety. The findings suggest that moderate increases in amygdala excitability can be beneficial for fear learning specificity and may have applications for therapeutic interventions.
PROGRESS IN NEURO-PSYCHOPHARMACOLOGY & BIOLOGICAL PSYCHIATRY
(2023)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Travis Francis, Michael Wolter, Francesco Leri
Summary: The mode of administration may influence the modulatory action of drugs on memory consolidation, but not the effects of environmental stimuli linked to their reinforcing effects.
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
(2022)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Patricia Di Ciano, Harriet de Wit, Esmaeil Mansouri, Sylvain Houle, Isabelle Boileau, Bernard Le Foll
Summary: PET imaging with [C-11]-(+)-PHNO was used to measure changes in dopamine levels in regions of interest in smokers who had maintained abstinence for 7-10 days. Results showed that smoking cues did not increase craving, and there were no significant changes in dopamine binding potential in most regions except for a decrease in the substantia nigra. Further research with a larger sample size is needed to validate these preliminary findings.
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
(2021)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Travis Francis, Francesco Leri
Summary: It has been found that the modulation of memory consolidation by opiates is dependent on the way the drug is experienced. Studies on male rats showed that passive injections of heroin enhanced memory consolidation, while self-administered heroin only enhanced memory at the beginning of self-administration or after a change in schedule. Blocking the dopamine D1 receptor with SCH23390 prevented the memory modulation effects of heroin, whether it was passively administered or self-administered.
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
(2023)
Article
Psychology, Biological
Matthew L. Banks, Blake A. Hutsell, S. Stevens Negus
Summary: The study evaluated the effects of extinction training on cocaine and heroin self-administration behaviors, finding that exposure to extinction training did not significantly decrease drug choice before extinction.
JOURNAL OF THE EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF BEHAVIOR
(2022)
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Walter T. Herbranson, Hunter Pluckebaum, Jaidyanne Podsobinski, Zachary Hartzell
Summary: The secretary problem poses a challenging mathematical puzzle, with humans often struggling to find the optimal solution and making suboptimal choices. Experimental findings show that pigeons, while performing poorly on the problem, incur only limited costs to their rate of reinforcement.
JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
Luis Antonio Perez-Gonzalez, Elena Huluta
Summary: This study investigates the emergence of relations between stimuli, responses, and consequences in intraverbal language. Results from experiments 1 and 2 demonstrate that children are able to learn and demonstrate various relations in intraverbal language.
PSYCHOLOGICAL RECORD
(2022)
Article
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
Lucy Porter, Fiona B. Gillison, Kim A. Wright, Frederick Verbruggen, Natalia S. Lawrence
Summary: Food-specific inhibition training (FSIT) has been shown to have a positive impact on children's food choices, but variations in FSIT may lead to different effects. Children working with computers in a quiet environment for FSIT training may increase their selection of healthy foods.
FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY
(2021)
Article
Psychology, Biological
Francesca Zoratto, Gabriele Oddi, Silvia Pillitteri, Fabiana Festucci, Concetto Puzzo, Giuseppe Curcio, Giovanni Laviola, Fabio Paglieri, Walter Adriani, Elsa Addessi
Summary: This study investigated the impact of the presence of a conspecific on risky decision-making in male rats. The results showed that rats were more risk-prone when paired with a conspecific, but also experienced a higher level of motivational conflict.
BEHAVIOURAL PROCESSES
(2022)
Article
Psychology, Biological
Anna Kittendorf, Ben Dantzer
Summary: Urban squirrels exhibit reduced vigilance and anti-predator behavior when in the presence of humans, but show similar responses to potential predators (such as hawks or dogs) compared to squirrels in less urban areas. Urban squirrels also display increased vigilance and anti-predator behavior when exposed to a human paired with hawk playbacks.
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Thomas R. Zentall, Jacob P. Case, Jonathon R. Berry
Review
Psychology, Biological
Thomas R. Zentall
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Dalton House, Daniel Peng, Thomas R. Zentall
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Wilson D. Clayton, Thomas R. Zentall
Summary: This study found that pigeons exhibit reference dependence when making reward choices, preferring options that provide additional rewards rather than options that offer more rewards in a single instance.
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Henna Chandel, Morgan Boring, Thomas R. Zentall, Edward A. Wasserman
Summary: The optimal foraging theory suggests that animals have evolved to maximize energy intake, but in nature, various factors such as uncertainty, time, and potential danger may delay animals from leaving a depleting patch. In an experiment with pigeons, researchers found that the birds tended to switch to a more efficient feeding schedule earlier than optimal, possibly due to a form of pattern learning.
JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY
(2021)
Review
Agriculture, Dairy & Animal Science
Thomas R. Zentall
Summary: The environment in which animals are housed plays a crucial role in shaping their cognitive behavior and decision-making abilities. Enriched environments lead to reduced impulsivity and more optimal choices in animals, as well as potentially increasing their optimism. Therefore, it is important to prioritize providing animals with enriched environments for both ethical and experimental reasons.
Article
Psychology, Biological
Daniel N. Peng, Peyton M. Mueller, Thomas R. Zentall
Summary: In this study, pigeons were able to learn to avoid incorrect comparison stimuli and select correct comparison stimuli in a conditional discrimination task. The results showed that pigeons exhibited flexibility in learning different types of stimuli in a conditional discrimination setting.
JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY-ANIMAL LEARNING AND COGNITION
(2021)
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Wilson D. Clayton, Shelby M. Brantley, Thomas R. Zentall
Summary: When humans face probabilistic outcomes, their choices are often influenced by whether the choice is framed in terms of losses or gains. Pigeons, on the other hand, show preferences for risky alternatives when outcomes represent losses, indifference when outcomes represent gains, and strong preferences for risky alternatives when outcomes represent neither gains nor losses. These results highlight the relative value of gains and losses given to the alternatives and provide insights into the differences between pigeons and humans in decision-making under uncertainty.
Article
Psychology, Biological
Thomas R. Zentall, Daniel N. Peng, Peyton M. Mueller
Summary: Pigeons' choice depends primarily on the value of the outcome rather than its frequency or contrast.
JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY-ANIMAL LEARNING AND COGNITION
(2022)
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Peyton M. Mueller, Daniel N. N. Peng, Thomas R. Zentall
Summary: Impulsive behavior was measured through a delay-discounting task, and it was found that the presence of a concurrent distractor stimulus increased LL reinforcers. The experiments tested the hypothesis that the concurrent stimulus could become a Pavlovian conditioned stimulus. Results showed that the concurrent stimulus was less effective in the Red-Green group compared to the Red-Only group. Both the yellow key-light and the houselight as concurrent stimuli were effective in increasing LL reinforcers.
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Daniel N. Peng, Thomas R. Zentall
Summary: Humans can learn tasks explicitly, but animals learn tasks implicitly through associative learning. Humans are unable to learn the 1-back rule, while pigeons can learn it gradually through associative learning. These results suggest that explicit learning in humans may interfere with their learning abilities, while pigeons are not distracted by explicit learning.
Review
Agriculture, Dairy & Animal Science
Thomas R. Zentall
Summary: The traditional view of cognition as a human-specific attribute has been challenged by growing evidence showing that other animals also exhibit cognitive abilities previously thought to be unique to humans. This review primarily focuses on pigeons as a representative of non-primates and explores several cognitive phenomena observed in animals. The findings suggest that simpler cognitive processes may be involved and highlight the need for a better understanding of the similarities between humans and other animals.
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Peyton M. Mueller, Daniel N. Peng, Thomas R. Zentall
Summary: In a delay-discounting task, it was found that a distractor stimulus can facilitate the obtaining of a larger reward when one is distracted from a small reward. In this study with pigeons, it was shown that pigeons waited longer for a larger reward when a distractor stimulus was present compared to when it was absent. The results support the hypothesis that the distractor stimulus served as a conditioned stimulus.
JOURNAL OF COMPARATIVE PSYCHOLOGY
(2023)
Article
Psychology, Biological
Thomas R. Zentall, Daniel N. Peng
Summary: In conditional discrimination, the sample stimulus can serve as either a stimulus-response chain or an occasion setter. Two experiments supported the hypothesis that the sample serves as an occasion setter, as presenting the sample alone did not affect conditional discrimination accuracy.
JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY-ANIMAL LEARNING AND COGNITION
(2023)
Article
Psychology, Mathematical
Jacelyn Sturgill, Cameron Bergeron, Thomas Ransdell, Tatum Colvin, Gia Joshi, Thomas R. Zentall
Summary: The reverse-contingency task is challenging for chimpanzees but easy for pigeons if reward amounts are associated with colors and choice is delayed. Pigeons can learn to avoid an alternative after experiencing a loss, indicating perceived loss aversion in pigeons. This suggests that loss aversion is a general phenomenon not exclusive to humans and primates, likely due to contrast and related to endowment and ownership effects.
PSYCHONOMIC BULLETIN & REVIEW
(2021)