Stress encompasses reactions to stimuli that promote negative and positive effects on cognitive functions, such as learning and memory processes. Herein, we investigate the effect of restraint stress on learning, memory, anxiety levels and locomotor activity of male and female mice. We used the plus-maze discriminative avoidance task (PMDAT), a behavioral task based on the innate exploratory response

A great deal of research has concerned choices of goods or services with different values receivable at various times. Temporal discounting – the magnification of values that can be obtained sooner rather than later – has proven to be immensely important in this regard. In the present article, we shift the focus from the receipt of goods or services to the performance of tasks. We show that temporal

A wide range of species relies on heterospecific visual cues to detect the location of resources like food. Although different hypotheses have been suggested to explain the emergence of this capacity in animals, results are often difficult to interpret due to the influence of other factors, such as close contact with humans. In this study, we presented eight Southern ground-hornbills (Bucorvus leadbeateri)

The gut microbiome can affect various aspects of both behavior and physiology, including exercise ability, but effects on voluntary exercise have rarely been studied. We studied females from a selection experiment in which 4 replicate High Runner (HR) lines of mice are bred for voluntary exercise and compared with 4 non-selected control (C) lines. HR and C mice differ in several traits that likely

Cognitive ability is likely linked to adaptive ability; animals use cognition to innovate and problem-solve in their physical and social environments. We investigated innovative problem-solving in two species of high conservation importance: African lions (Panthera leo; n = 6) and snow leopards (Panthera uncia; n = 9). We designed a custom multi-access puzzle box (MAB) to present a simple and effective

A stressful experience can enhance information storage and impair memory retrieval in the rodent novel object recognition (NOR) task. However, recent conflicting results underscore the need for further investigation. Nonhuman primates may provide a unique, underexplored and more translational means to investigate stress-mediated changes in memory. Therefore, we assessed whether a single brief extrinsic

Ten years ago, we started a project at the National Autonomous University of Mexico with the purpose of building custom-made operant conditioning chambers that could be used in research and laboratory courses. The focus was to reduce the cost and improve the flexibility of operant chambers by integrating advances in electronics and manufacturing processes such as 3D printing and laser-cutting technologies

In many species, the allocation of exploration and exploitation responses to environmental stimuli is important for survival. In this exploratory study, we determined whether dogs (Canis familiaris) explored novel stimuli in a visual discrimination task using food reinforcers. Initially, the dogs were trained with two pairs of simultaneous visual discrimination tasks. Having achieved the learning criterion

Behavioral economic demand has been shown to have high utility in quantifying the value or consumption of a commodity. Demand describes the relationship between cost and consumption of a commodity, and tends to be curvilinear with consumption approaching zero as the cost increases to a sufficiently high cost to suppress consumption completely. Over a period spanning greater than three decades, behavioral

Optimal foraging models are commonly used to determine the strategy maximizing the proxies for fitness, such as foraging success. The strategies maximizing the proxy for fitness and fitness are assumed to be the same. However, this study shows that this assumption can be invalid when the relationship between the proxy for fitness and fitness is nonlinear and the foraging success is uncertain. A well-known

Dietary intake of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) is crucial for neuronal functions, can positively affect cognition, and reduce glucocorticoid (e.g. corticosterone) concentrations in response to stress. We investigated the effects of walnut oil high in PUFAs on spatial cognition and fecal corticosterone metabolite (FCM) concentrations under non-stressed conditions in rats. Unexpectedly, PUFA-supplemented

The most important advancement in the treatment of destructive behavior has been the development of the functional analysis, which is used to prescribe effective treatments like functional communication training. Although this approach can be highly effective, extinction bursts and forms of treatment relapse commonly occur when function-based treatments are implemented by caregivers in natural community

Turn-taking is universally seen in humans during the completion of various tasks. Turn-taking is also reported in non-human animals in the wild; however, in these cases turn-taking is displayed during innate and stereotypic behaviors, so it may differ from turn-taking seen in humans. In the present study, budgerigars were trained to take turns between two individuals under operant control. Two cages

Resurgence occurs when a previously reinforced and then extinguished target response increases due to a worsening of reinforcement conditions for an alternative response. We conducted four crowdsourcing experiments to evaluate effects of alternative-reinforcer rate and magnitude on resurgence with humans. Contingent on an alternative response, we manipulated across groups either the rate of point delivery

Behavioral economics is an approach to understanding behavior though integrating behavioral psychology and microeconomic principles. Advances in behavioral economics have resulted in quick-to-administer tasks to assess discounting (i.e., decrements in the subjective value of a commodity due to delayed or probabilistic receipt) and demand (i.e., effort exerted to defend baseline consumption of a commodity

Inbreeding is generally thought to have negative consequences for organismal health. However, despite the potential fitness effects, it remains surprisingly common among wild populations. In many cases, the complex factors that underlie mating dynamics make predicting whether individuals should or do avoid inbreeding quite challenging. One reason inbreeding may persist among species is that the likelihood

Remaining cohesive on the move can be beneficial for animal groups. As such, animal groups have evolved coordination mechanisms such as leadership to resolve navigational conflicts of interest. Consistent “leaders” may have an intrinsic advantage over “followers” which compromise on their preferred route to retain cohesion, which highlights the question of the inter-individual variation (phenotype)

Dominance hierarchies vary between species and possess particular characteristics depending on the distribution and abundance of food resources that affect the competitive regime. Bonobos have been described as having female intersexual dominance, based mainly on female coalitionary support against males, and more egalitarian hierarchies than chimpanzees. In this study, we tested whether female intersexual

In this paper, we introduce discrete choice experiments (DCEs) and provide foundational knowledge on the topic. DCEs are one of the most popular methods within econometrics to study the distribution of choices within a population. DCEs are particularly useful when studying the effects of categorical variables on choice. Procedurally, a DCE involves recruiting a large sample of individuals exposed to

The specific aim of our study was to test individual common shrews from a population monitored long-term. In a preference test, we revealed sex-related differences in behavioral traits of young common shrews and consistent individual differences in sociability, boldness and in an exploration pattern that have not been reported previously. More active animals were bolder and more superficial in the

In chorusing species, sound frequency has been suggested as a decisive cue for male body size in female mate choice. However, few studies on the female choice of male song frequency have been conducted in cicadas, in which males of most species sing in chorusing groups to attract females for mating. In this study, we investigated female mate choice for song frequency and body size of males of a chorusing

McDowell’s (2004) Evolutionary Theory of Behavior Dynamics (ETBD) is a computational theory that has reproduced a wide variety of behavioral phenomena observed in material reality. Here, we extended the generality of the ETBD by successfully replicating laboratory studies of resurgence with live animals using artificial organisms (AOs) animated by the theory. We ran AOs on concurrent random-interval

Resurgence refers to a behavioral process in which a recent response is extinguished (or reinforcement conditions worsen) and a previously extinguished response recurs. In previous research, resurgence has been reliably produced when the resurgence procedure is repeated. Changes in the degree of increase of the resurging response across iterations of the procedure have been inconsistent, however, with

Social learning is widespread across species; however, we still know little about the impact of individual differences in behaviour on social transmission. We aimed to investigate factors influencing social learning in free-living Rhabdomys pumilio, a group-living, arid-adapted mouse. We studied 52 mice in a lid opening task in a field laboratory. We created observer-demonstrator dyads with demonstrators

Impulsive choice may play an important role in serious health-related decisions, like addiction tendencies. Thus, there is merit in exploring interventions that reduce impulsive choice. Delay-exposure training involves extended experience with delayed reinforcement. Following training, delay-exposed rats make fewer impulsive choices than control rats. The reducing effects of delay exposure training

The three-chamber test has been widely used to investigate social approach/novelty preference in rodents. Most studies have used the briefly familiar and unfamiliar individuals as stimuli to examine social recognition; however, little is known about the effects of long-term familiar peers in this paradigm. In the present study, we made a slight modification to it: the first phase measured preference

Search images are perceptual biases acquired through experience that improve an individual’s ability to detect the object of their search (e.g., a predator seeking prey). In hymenopterans, examples include floral search images in bees and acquired sensory biases towards specific prey in wasp predators. Mud dauber wasps exhibit individual specialization and consistency in prey preferences through time

The acoustic startle response and prepulse inhibition (PPI) of startle are measures related to information processing, which is impaired in schizophrenia. Some studies have provided inconclusive patterns of association between both measures in rodents. We assessed the influence of baseline startle response on PPI in large samples of Roman high-(RHA) and low-avoidance (RLA) rat strains and in genetically

Environmental enrichment effectively reduces anxiety-like indicators in animals, a potential co-treatment for diseases that generate variations in basal anxiety, such as alcoholism. Here we present an experimental design that allows investigating the effect of enrichment on anxiety-related behaviors using contextual aversive conditioning in zebrafish (Danio rerio). It was first observed whether animals

Early-life environmental conditions affect offspring's development. Maternal deprivation (MD) can induce persistent changes that give rise to neuropsychiatric diseases including substance abuse disorders. However, long-lasting mechanisms that determine vulnerability to drug addiction remain unknown. We hypothesized that MD could induce changes in Opioid system, HPA (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal)

Studies have investigated the relationship between dogs’ morphological characteristics and behavioural dimensions, but little is discussed about this relationship in the context of dogs’ responses to emotion eliciting stimuli and temperament. Based on the assumption that the developmental trajectory of behaviour and emotion processing is impacted by the interaction between organisms and environment

In a symbolic matching-to-sample task, pigeons learned to discriminate between 5 and 15 key pecks (samples): different choices were correct following the smaller and the larger response requirements. Subsequently, accuracy was tested in delayed matching, with the delay spent in darkness, contrarily to previous studies, that used illuminated delays. On average, delayed choices reflected indifference

Jumping spiders (Salticidae) use exceptional vision, largely mediated by their forward-facing anterior lateral (AL) and anterior medial (AM) eyes, to pounce on prey from a distance. We evaluated depth perception through the use of ‘texture density’ (depth estimation through surface texture comparisons, with greater distances having higher textural density) in the salticid Trite planiceps. In visual

Crop-raiding by wildlife species often involves collective group movement and animal decision-making in this context is an important area of investigation as the risks and rewards associated with crop-raiding are greater than those that are likely to occur in wild food foraging situations. Yet, the form of consensus decision-making involved in wildlife crop-raiding has not been evaluated. In the current

Although both human and non-human animals, in everyday life, deal with risky decisions in a social environment, few studies investigated how social dimension influences risk preferences (i.e., if consequences on others feeds back over own choice). Here, we assessed whether the presence of a conspecific, acting as a potential competitor for the same food resource, influenced risky decision-making in

Gold-standard psychological treatments such as exposure therapy are significantly undermined by high relapse rates. Although exposure-based treatments are capable of extinguishing maladaptive behaviours, these behaviours often spontaneously re-emerge over time – a phenomenon known in experimental research as spontaneous recovery. Understanding the factors that underlie this process is essential to

Interventions exposing rats to delayed-reward contingencies attenuate suboptimal impulsive choices, a preference for a smaller-sooner (SS) over a larger-later (LL) reward. Interventions may potentially improve delay-tolerance, timing of delays, and/or discrimination of reward magnitudes. Generalization from the intervention to impulsive choice under different procedures can provide insights into the

Behavioral economics offers unique tools for assessing value and motivation associated with college drinking. Tasks that model changes in consumption as a function of price (operant demand) or the decline in an outcome’s subjective value as a function of time-to-occurrence (delay discounting) provide valuable information that may efficiently supplement clinical screening instruments when characterizing

Resurgence refers to an increase of a previously reinforced target behavior following the worsening of conditions for a more recently reinforced alternative behavior. There is evidence to suggest that alternative reinforcers of greater magnitude are more effective at reducing target responding but may also result in more resurgence when removed. Similar effects have been observed with high rates of

Resurgence occurs when a worsening of conditions for an alternative response (e.g., extinction) increases a previously reinforced and subsequently extinguished target response. In contrast, renewal is an increase in a response previously eliminated by extinction following a contextual change. Moreover, arranging contextual changes during resurgence tests has enhanced relapse compared with the absence

We recently found that initial-link stimuli signaling trial outcomes (signals) in a concurrent-chains procedure exerted imperfect control during initial and terminal links. Here, we conducted a follow-up experiment to investigate further such imperfect control. Five pigeons worked on a concurrent-chains procedure in which one alternative led to a terminal link ending in a smaller-sooner reinforcer

In birds, early experiences determine the later behavioural phenotype of individuals and their way of adapting to the challenges they encounter in their environment. We investigated how the degree of exposure of barn owl chicks to humans and their biological parents influenced their behavioural response to humans and different environments. Only the treatment groups raised by human beings, or those

The influence of cue informativeness on human temporal discrimination was evaluated using a peak-interval (PI) procedure. A target moved across the computer monitor, reaching the center at 2 or 4 s. Key presses shot the center of the screen. Participants earned points when shots hit the target and lost points for misses. The target was masked during occasional, extended PI trials, allowing for measurement

The welfare of broilers is strongly dependent on the litter material because they spend their life in contact with it. The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of alternative litter materials on broiler behaviour. Two hundred eighty-eight 1-day old male broiler chicks were used. Chicks were placed in pens each having different litter material (Wood shavings (WS), paper waste sludge (PWS)

In recreational fisheries, fish often undergo catch-and-release angling, which can lead to an indirect selection response of the behavioral traits of the fish. As individuals experience high-intensity angling activities, individuals learn to avoid being selected for artificial bait again, resulting in a change in the vulnerability to angling of fish, which is partly dependent on the cognitive learning

The effects of local periods of extinction on resurgence following transitions from variable-interval (VI) to fixed-interval (FI) schedules were studied using four pigeons exposed to a within-session resurgence procedure. Each session was divided into a Training (T) Alternative-Reinforcement (AR), and Resurgence Test (RT) phase. During the T phase, key pecking was reinforced under a VI 60-s schedule

Many nonhuman animals have been used as subjects to elucidate intra-individual variation in the stress response – understood via coping styles and stress reactivity. Given the evidence and theory supporting evolutionary trade-offs associated with such differences, it is surprising, then, how few studies have used wild nonhuman primates to develop this theoretical framework. In the current study, we

In human learning a distinction has been made between implicit and explicit learning. Implicit learning is thought involve automatic processes of the kind involved in Pavlovian conditioning, while explicit learning is thought to involve conscious hypothesis testing and rule formation, in which the ability to report the rule used to learn the task is taken as evidence. Because non-verbal animals cannot

According to the Multiplicative Hyperbolic Model (MHM), the value of a reinforcer is an increasing hyperbolic function of its size (q). Recently reported results indicated that dilution of a sucrose solution reduced its reinforcing value by increasing the ‘size-sensitivity’ parameter of this function and reducing its maximum. The present experiment examined whether adulterating a sucrose solution with

Laboratory models of relapse provide methods for evaluating challenges to behavioral treatments with differential reinforcement of an alternative response (DRA). Resurgence occurs with the worsening of conditions of reinforcement for appropriate behavior and renewal occurs when transitioning out of a treatment context. Across five experiments, participants recruited via online crowdsourcing pressed

The number, duration and depth of social relationships that an individual maintains can impact social cognition, but the connection between sociality and other aspects of cognition has hardly been explored. To date, the link between social living and intelligence has been mainly supported by studies on primates, and far fewer tests connecting sociality to cognitive abilities have used other taxa. Here

The dear enemy hypothesis predicts that territorial individuals will be less aggressive toward known neighbors than to strangers. This hypothesis has been well studied and there is a wealth of data demonstrating its prevalence in some taxa. However, a quantitative synthesis is needed to test the generality of the phenomenon, identify key mechanisms driving the behavior, and guide future research. In

Vocal learning species such as humans and parrots show auditory dominance when they synchronize their actions to an external rhythm. However, whether non-vocal-learners show a specific modality dominance in a rhythmic task has scarcely been examined. We predicted that rats, who are nocturnal and known to rely on acoustic communication, would exhibit higher sensitivity to auditory rhythm compared to

Bottlenose dolphin signature whistles are characterized by distinctive frequency modulation over time. The stable frequency contours of these whistles broadcast individual identity information. Little is known however, about whether or not the amplitude contour is also stereotyped. Here, we examined the relative amplitude-time contour of signature whistle emissions from eight bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops

Body size, nuptial gift characteristics and courtship behaviour, among other traits, can reflect the quality of a potential mate and, thus, might be under sexual selection. To maximize their mating success, individuals can show behavioural plasticity in sexual context. Allocosa senex is a burrow-digging wolf spider that exhibits reversal in courtship roles and in sexual size-dimorphism expected for

While an extensive literature has demonstrated that the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI) antidepressant fluoxetine, disrupts aggressive behavior in male Betta splendens the behavioral mechanisms underlying this disruption remain unknown. To elucidate the behavioral mechanism underlying fluoxetine, male fish were acutely exposed to a 10 μmol (0.0034578 μg/L) concentration of fluoxetine

Given the choice, people are often drawn toward more options over fewer options in decision-making scenarios. However, mounting evidence indicates that sometimes, choosing from large arrays can result in suboptimal outcomes. The tendency to be overwhelmed, regretful, or less satisfied with a choice when there are many options to choose from is called choice overload. This effect has been well-studied

Individuals of the same population differ in several ways. For instance, in fish populations, individuals who hatch earlier show more active behavior and are more explorative than those that hatch later, which is a characteristic of the behavioral personality type. One of the aspects relevant to this theory is the consistency of behavioral differences between contexts and over time. Thus, the present