Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes This is an RSS file. You can use it to subscribe to this data in your favourite RSS reader or to display this data on your own website or blog.

Bridging the gap: Learning of acoustic nonadjacent dependencies by a songbird.
We examined whether zebra finches can detect the dependencies between items at the edges of artificially arranged strings of song elements. Zebra finches were trained to discriminate 2 sets of dependent song elements that always appeared in the same order (A and B; C and D), from other element combinations (AD, AC, BD, CB, CA, DB). The element combinations were separated by intervening (I) elements. Subsequent tests revealed that the finches could generalize the learned dependencies over different numbers and types of intervening items. Our findings show that the ability for detecting nonadjacent dependencies is not limite...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - July 6, 2017 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

About bouts: A heterogeneous tandem schedule of reinforcement reveals dissociable components of operant behavior in Fischer rats.
According to the biexponential refractory model (BERM) of variable-interval (VI) performance, operant behavior is organized in bouts, described by 3 dissociable components: between-bout interresponse times (IRTs), within-bout IRTs, and bout lengths. Research has shown that between-bout IRTs are sensitive to changes in rate of reinforcement and reinforcer efficacy, the length of some bouts is selectively sensitive to changes in response-reinforcer contingencies, and within-bout IRTs are relatively insensitive to both manipulations. BERM assumes that within- and between-bout IRTs are exponentially distributed, and bout lengt...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - July 6, 2017 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Reinforcement learning models of risky choice and the promotion of risk-taking by losses disguised as wins in rats.
Risky decisions are inherently characterized by the potential to receive gains or incur losses, and these outcomes have distinct effects on subsequent decision-making. One important factor is that individuals engage in loss-chasing, in which the reception of a loss is followed by relatively increased risk-taking. Unfortunately, the mechanisms of loss-chasing are poorly understood, despite the potential importance for understanding pathological choice behavior. The goal of the present experiment was to illuminate the mechanisms governing individual differences in loss-chasing and risky-choice behaviors. Rats chose between a...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - July 6, 2017 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Feature predictiveness and selective attention in pigeons’ categorization learning.
Prior categorization studies have shown that pigeons reliably track features that are perfect predictors of category membership (Castro & Wasserman, 2014, 2016a). One might further ask whether pigeons would also track features that are relevant, but imperfect predictors of category membership. In our present project, pigeons had to categorize multiple exemplars from 2 different artificial categories, in which the exemplars were composed of 4 different features that were associated with 1 of 2 different report responses. Each exemplar contained 1 feature that perfectly predicted category membership; 1 feature that imperfect...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - July 6, 2017 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Feature predictiveness and selective attention in pigeons ’ categorization learning.
Prior categorization studies have shown that pigeons reliably track features that are perfect predictors of category membership (Castro& Wasserman, 2014, 2016a). One might further ask whether pigeons would also track features that are relevant, but imperfect predictors of category membership. In our present project, pigeons had to categorize multiple exemplars from 2 different artificial categories, in which the exemplars were composed of 4 different features that were associated with 1 of 2 different report responses. Each exemplar contained 1 feature that perfectly predicted category membership; 1 feature that imperfectl...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - July 6, 2017 Category: Zoology Authors: Castro, Leyre; Wasserman, Edward A. Source Type: research

Evidence of a goal-directed process in human Pavlovian-instrumental transfer.
Cues that signal rewards can motivate reward-seeking behaviors, even for outcomes that are not currently desired. Three experiments examined this phenomenon, using an outcome-selective Pavlovian-instrumental transfer (PIT) design and an outcome devaluation procedure. In Experiment 1, participants learned to perform one response to earn crisps points and another response to earn popcorn points. One outcome was then devalued by adulterating it to make it taste unpleasant. On test, overall response choice was biased toward the outcome that had not been devalued, indicating goal-directed control. Stimuli that signaled crisps a...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - June 19, 2017 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

“Familiarity-based stimulus generalization of conditioned suppression”: Correction to Robinson, Whitt, and Jones (2017).
We report that stimulus novelty/familiarity is able to modulate stimulus generalization and discuss the theoretical implications of novelty/familiarity coding. Rats in Skinner boxes received clicker → shock pairings before generalization testing to a tone. Before clicker training, different groups of rats received preexposure treatments designed to systematically modulate the clicker and the tone’s novelty and familiarity. Rats whose preexposure matched novelty/familiarity (i.e., either both or neither clicker and tone were preexposed) showed enhanced suppression to the tone relative to rats whose preexposure mixed nov...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - June 5, 2017 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

“Familiarity-based stimulus generalization of conditioned suppression”: Correction to Robinson, Whitt, and Jones (2017).
We report that stimulus novelty/familiarity is able to modulate stimulus generalization and discuss the theoretical implications of novelty/familiarity coding. Rats in Skinner boxes received clicker → shock pairings before generalization testing to a tone. Before clicker training, different groups of rats received preexposure treatments designed to systematically modulate the clicker and the tone’s novelty and familiarity. Rats whose preexposure matched novelty/familiarity (i.e., either bot h or neither clicker and tone were preexposed) showed enhanced suppression to the tone relative to rats whose preexposure mixed no...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - June 5, 2017 Category: Zoology Authors: No authorship indicated Source Type: research

An examination of changes in behavioral control when stimuli with different associative histories are conditioned in compound.
This series of experiments used rats to examine changes in behavioral control when stimuli with different associative histories are conditioned in compound. The initial experiments used blocking designs. Experiment 1 provided a within-subject demonstration of blocking, and Experiment 2 used the compound test procedure to show that, when a novel stimulus, X, is conditioned in compound with an already conditioned stimulus (CS), A, these audiovisual compound stimulus (AX)+ conditioning trials produce a greater increase in behavioral control for X than A. Experiment 3 showed that, when the blocked X is subject to further condi...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - May 8, 2017 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Extinction of specific stimulus–outcome (S-O) associations in Pavlovian learning with an extended CS procedure.
Three experiments with male and female rats were conducted to examine the effects of Pavlovian extinction training on Pavlovian-to-instrumental transfer (PIT) in a task in which the unconditioned stimulus (US) was presented at an early time point within an extended conditioned stimulus (CS). Two instrumental responses were trained with different reinforcing outcomes (R1-O1, R2-O2) and then, independently, 2 stimuli were trained with those outcomes (S1-O1, S2-O2). One group then underwent an extinction treatment (S1-, S2-) and a second was merely exposed to the experimental contexts without any stimulus events. Finally, the...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - May 4, 2017 Category: Zoology Source Type: research

Do salient features overshadow learning of other features in category learning?
In this study, we reversed this pattern and examined the role of an aversive stimulus, shock, as a feature of a complex stimulus composed of several features, rather than as an outcome. In particular, we used a category learning paradigm in which multiple features predicted category membership and asked whether a salient, aversive feature would reduce learning of other category features through cue competition. Three experiments compared a condition in which 1 category had among its 6 features a painful “sting” (shock) and the other category a distinctive sound (the critical features) to a control condition in which th...
Source: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes - May 4, 2017 Category: Zoology Source Type: research