Predictors of psychological stress and behavioural diversity among captive red panda in Indian zoos and their implications for global captive management.

At high elevations, biodiversity is at elevated risk from extinctions due to rapid environmental changes. In the most of its range in Himalayas, the red panda, an endangered species, is struggling to survive in the wild, and a global captive breeding programme has been launched to conserve the species. Because captivity can have negative impacts on animals, reducing the chance of successful reintroduction, we investigated the predictors of stereotyped behaviour and behavioural diversity of red panda (n = 26), and the effect of stereotypy on their behavioural diversity in three Indian zoos.

Location as a feature in pigeons' recognition of visual objects.

A number of different phenomena in pigeon visual cognition suggest that pigeons do not immediately recognize two identical objects in different locations as being "the same." To examine this question directly, pigeons were trained in an absolute go/no-go discrimination between arbitrary selections from sets of 16 images of paintings by Claude Monet. Of the eight positive stimuli, four always appeared in the same location, whereas the other four appeared equally often in each of two locations; the same was true of the negative stimuli.

Suppression, resolve, and habit in everyday financial behaviour.

Everyday financial behaviour involves inter-temporal choices, between saving, spending, and debt. Consumers do not always take these decisions to their best advantage. Ainslie's analysis of the means to willpower as suppression, resolve, and habit is potentially applicable to understanding and improving the decisions that consumers make.

Behavioral flexibility: A review, a model, and some exploratory tests.

This paper aimed to explore and clarify the concept of behavioral flexibility. A selective literature review explored how the concept of behavioral flexibility has been used in ways that range from acknowledging the fact that animals' behavior is not always bounded by instinctual constraints, to describing the variation between species in their capacity for innovative foraging, a capacity that has repeatedly been linked to having a brain larger than would be predicted from body size. This wide range of usages of a single term has led to some conceptual confusion.

Measuring response inhibition with a continuous inhibitory-control task.

Inhibitory control enables subjects to quickly react to unexpected changes in external demands. In humans, this kind of behavioral flexibility is often used as an indicator of an individual's executive functions, and more and more research has emerged to investigate this link in nonhuman animals as well. Here we explored the value of a recently developed continuous inhibitory-control task in assessing inhibitory-control capacities in animals.

Pigeons' performance in a tracking change-signal procedure is consistent with the independent horse-race model.

In many cognitive tasks where humans are thought to rely on executive functioning, pigeons' behavior can be explained by associative processes. A key form of executive functioning is inhibiting prepotent responses, often investigated in humans by means of "Stop-Signal" or "Change-Signal" procedures. In these procedures, execution of a well-practiced ("Go") response to a stimulus is occasionally interrupted by a signal to withhold or alter the practiced response.

Inhibitory control and memory in the search process for a modified problem in grey squirrels, Sciurus carolinensis.

Inhibiting learned behaviours when they become unproductive and searching for an alternative solution to solve a familiar but different problem are two indicators of flexibility in problem solving. A wide range of animals show these tendencies spontaneously, but what kind of search process is at play behind their problem-solving success? Here, we investigated how Eastern grey squirrels, Sciurus carolinensis, solved a modified mechanical problem that required them to abandon their preferred and learned solution and search for alternative solutions to retrieve out-of-reach food rewards. Squirrels could solve the problem by engaging in either an exhaustive search (i.

In what sense are dogs special? Canine cognition in comparative context.

The great increase in the study of dog cognition in the current century has yielded insights into canine cognition in a variety of domains. In this review, we seek to place our enhanced understanding of canine cognition into context. We argue that in order to assess dog cognition, we need to regard dogs from three different perspectives: phylogenetically, as carnivoran and specifically a canid; ecologically, as social, cursorial hunters; and anthropogenically, as a domestic animal.

Multiple feature use in pigeons' category discrimination: The influence of stimulus set structure and the salience of stimulus differences.

Two experiments investigated what makes it more likely that pigeons' behavior will come under the control of multiple relevant visual stimulus dimensions. Experiment 1 investigated the effect of stimulus set structure, using a conditional discrimination between circles that differed in both hue and diameter. Two training conditions differed in whether hue and diameter were correlated in the same way within positive and negative stimulus sets as between sets.

Disentangling learning from knowing: Does associative learning ability underlie performances on cognitive test batteries?

Are the mechanisms underlying variations in the performance of animals on cognitive test batteries analogous to those of humans? Differences might result from procedural inconsistencies in test battery design, but also from differences in how animals and humans solve cognitive problems. We suggest differentiating associative-based (learning) from rule-based (knowing) tasks to further our understanding of cognitive evolution across species.

Pigeons in control of their actions: Learning and performance in stop-signal and change-signal tasks.

In human participants, 2 paradigms commonly assumed to measure the executive-control processes involved in response inhibition are the stop-signal and change-signal tasks. There is, however, also considerable evidence that performance in these tasks can be mediated by associative processes. To assess which components of inhibitory response control might be associative, we developed analogues of these tasks for pigeons.

How to stay perfect: the role of memory and behavioural traits in an experienced problem and a similar problem.

When animals encounter a task they have solved previously, or the same problem appears in a different apparatus, how does memory, alongside behavioural traits such as persistence, selectivity and flexibility, enhance problem-solving efficiency? We examined this question by first presenting grey squirrels with a puzzle 22 months after their last experience of it (the recall task). Squirrels were then given the same problem presented in a physically different apparatus (the generalisation task) to test whether they would apply the previously learnt tactics to solve the same problem but in a different apparatus. The mean latency to success in the first trial of the recall task was significantly different from the first exposure but not different from the last exposure of the original task, showing retention of the task.

Touch screen assays of behavioural flexibility and error characteristics in Eastern grey squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis).

Behavioural flexibility allows animals to adjust their behaviours according to changing environmental demands. Such flexibility is frequently assessed by the discrimination-reversal learning task. We examined grey squirrels' behavioural flexibility, using a simultaneous colour discrimination-reversal learning task on a touch screen.

Task-switching in pigeons: Associative learning or executive control?

Human performance in task-switching paradigms is seen as a hallmark of executive-control processes: switching between tasks induces switch costs (such that performance when changing from Task A to Task B is worse than on trials where the task repeats), which is generally attributed to executive control suppressing one task-set and activating the other. However, even in cases where task-sets are not employed, as well as in computational modeling of task switching, switch costs can still be found. This observation has led to the hypothesis that associative-learning processes might be responsible for all or part of the switch costs in task-switching paradigms.

A stimulus-location effect in contingency-governed, but not rule-based, discrimination learning.

We tested pigeons' acquisition of a conditional discrimination task between colored grating stimuli that included choosing 1 of 2 response keys, which either appeared as white keys to the left and right of the discriminative stimulus, or were replicas of the stimulus. Pigeons failed to acquire the discrimination when the response keys were white disks but succeeded when directly responding to a replica of the stimulus. These results highlight how conditioning processes shape learning in pigeons: The results can be accounted for by supposing that, when pigeons were allowed to respond directly toward the stimulus, learning was guided by classical conditioning, but that responding to white keys demanded instrumental learning, which impaired task acquisition for pigeons.

Feature- versus rule-based generalization in rats, pigeons and humans.

Humans can spontaneously create rules that allow them to efficiently generalize what they have learned to novel situations. An enduring question is whether rule-based generalization is uniquely human or whether other animals can also abstract rules and apply them to novel situations. In recent years, there have been a number of high-profile claims that animals such as rats can learn rules.

Serial reversal learning in gray squirrels: Learning efficiency as a function of learning and change of tactics.

Learning allows individuals to adapt their behaviors flexibly to a changing environment. When the same change recurs repeatedly, acquiring relevant tactics may increase learning efficiency. We examined this relationship, along with the effects of proactive interference and other interference information, in a serial spatial reversal task with 5 gray squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis).

Behavioural responses of Eastern grey squirrels, Sciurus carolinensis, to cues of risk while foraging.

Previous studies have shown that Eastern grey squirrels modify their behaviour while foraging to offset risks of social and predatory costs, but none have simultaneously compared whether such modifications are performed at a cost to foraging. The present study directly compares how grey squirrels respond to cues of these risks while foraging. We simulated social risk and predatory risk using acoustic playbacks of stimuli that grey squirrels might be exposed to at a foraging patch: calls of conspecifics, heterospecifics (competitor and non-competitor) and predators.

Pigeons can learn to make visual category discriminations using either low or high spatial frequency information.

Pigeons were trained to discriminate photographs of cat faces from dog faces, using either high- or low-pass spatial frequency filtered stimuli. Each pigeon was trained with multiple exemplars of the categories, but only with either high-pass or low-pass filtered stimuli. Not all pigeons reached the discrimination criterion.

Both loved and feared: third party punishers are viewed as formidable and likeable, but these reputational benefits may only be open to dominant individuals.

Third party punishment can be evolutionarily stable if there is heterogeneity in the cost of punishment or if punishers receive a reputational benefit from their actions. A dominant position might allow some individuals to punish at a lower cost than others and by doing so access these reputational benefits. Three vignette-based studies measured participants' judgements of a third party punisher in comparison to those exhibiting other aggressive/dominant behaviours (Study 1), when there was variation in the success of punishment (Study 2), and variation in the status of the punisher and the type of punishment used (Study 3).

Pigeons use low rather than high spatial frequency information to make visual category discriminations.

Pigeons were trained to discriminate photographs of cat faces from dog faces. They were then presented with test stimuli involving high- and low-pass spatial frequency filtering. Discrimination was maintained with both types of filtered stimuli, though it was increasingly impaired the more information was filtered out, and high-pass filtering impaired discrimination more than low-pass filtering.

The cognitive mechanisms of optimal sampling.

How can animals learn the prey densities available in an environment that changes unpredictably from day to day, and how much effort should they devote to doing so, rather than exploiting what they already know? Using a two-armed bandit situation, we simulated several processes that might explain the trade-off between exploring and exploiting. They included an optimising model, dynamic backward sampling; a dynamic version of the matching law; the Rescorla-Wagner model; a neural network model; and ɛ-greedy and rule of thumb models derived from the study of reinforcement learning in artificial intelligence. Under conditions like those used in published studies of birds' performance under two-armed bandit conditions, all models usually identified the more profitable source of reward, and did so more quickly when the reward probability differential was greater.

Interpreting the effects of image manipulation on picture perception in pigeons (Columba livia) and humans (Homo sapiens).

The effects of picture manipulations on humans' and pigeons' performance were examined in a go/no-go discrimination of two perceptually similar categories, cat and dog faces. Four types of manipulation were used to modify the images. Mosaicization and scrambling were used to produce degraded versions of the training stimuli, while morphing and cell exchange were used to manipulate the relative contribution of positive and negative training stimuli to test stimuli.

Associations between authoritative parenting and the sun exposure and sun protective behaviours of adolescents and their friends.

Associations between the sun exposure and sun protective behaviours of adolescents and their friends were examined along with the role played by authoritative parenting and other family and peer socialisation factors. Four hundred and two adolescents (198 males, 204 females) participated in the research. It was found that these adolescents and their friends shared similar sun exposure and sun protective behaviours and had similar parenting backgrounds.