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Guatemalan beaded lizards (Helodermatidae: Heloderma charlesbogerti) navigate and follow a scent trail in maze tasks. Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2024-09-12 Elizabeth L Haseltine,Maisy D Englund,James L Weed,Michael J Beran,Hollyn Tao,Sarah Paschal,Joseph R Mendelson
Maze studies have provided substantial information about nonhuman cognition, such as insights on navigational strategies, spatial memory, and choice discriminations. This knowledge can aid in how we understand the foraging strategies of many animals, particularly understudied and endangered species, such as the Guatemalan beaded lizard (Heloderma charlesbogerti). These actively foraging lizards rely
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Positive intonation increases the perceived value of smaller rewards in a quantity discrimination task with dogs (Canis familiaris). Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2024-09-09 Erin N Colbert-White,Devin C Anderson,Matthew Q Maus
Like many other species, dogs have a natural quantity judgment system to assist with decision making to maximize resources. Additionally, dogs are highly sensitive to, and influenced by, human-delivered ostensive (i.e., social) cues. Here, we assessed the influence of one such cue-a high, rising, positive "Oooh!" sound-on dogs' choice of differing quantities of pieces of food presented on two different
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Responses to prey chemical cues in wild-caught, adult gopher snakes (Pituophis catenifer). Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2024-09-09 Mark A Krause,Caleb Koharchik,Lucas Staples
Surface chemical cues from prey elicit elevated levels of tongue-flicking and striking behavior in many species of snakes and lizards. These responses are mediated by the vomeronasal system, and they may even occur in the absence of other sensory cues. How individuals of a species respond to prey chemical cues can reflect developmental, ecological, and evolutionary processes. Our focus in this study
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Contrafreeloading in umbrella cockatoos (Cacatua alba): Further evaluation of the play hypothesis. Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2024-09-09 Alana Carroll,Irene M Pepperberg
Contrafreeloading is defined as choosing to perform work to obtain a reward, despite the presence of an identical, freely available alternative. According to standard learning and optimal foraging theories, it should not exist. Thus, any evidence of such behavior is noteworthy. We briefly review the recently introduced play hypothesis, which proposes that contrafreeloading is more likely if the action
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Implementation of automated cognitive testing systems for socially housed rhesus (Macaca mulatta) and squirrel (Saimiri spp.) monkeys: Age differences in learning. Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2024-09-09 Michele M Mulholland,Will Whitham,Michael Berkey,Lisa M Pytka,Peter Pierre,William D Hopkins
Utilizing Automated Cognitive Testing Systems (ACTS) with group-housed nonhuman primates offers a number of advantages over manual testing and computerized testing of singly housed subjects. To date, ACTS usage has been limited to great apes or African monkeys. Here, we detail what we have learned while implementing ACTS with socially housed squirrel monkeys and rhesus macaques and provide information
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Together again but no need to play: Dissociating effects of isolation and separation on social interaction in female rats (Rattus norvegicus). Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2024-09-09 Noah Steckley,Amber Thatcher,Susan M Greene,Heather Warner,Kendra Kuehn,Nathan Insel
Play behavior has been extensively studied across species, but its direct role in social relationships remains unclear. Here we use an "isolation versus separation" protocol to identify behaviors associated with relationship renewal in adolescent female rats. Members of a dyad that had been separated for 24 hr, without isolation from other peers, initially increased investigative behaviors relative
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Pigeons' (Columba livia) intertemporal choice in binary-choice and patch-leaving contexts. Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2024-08-22 Stephanie Gomes-Ng,Quinn Gray,Sarah Cowie
Typical approaches to study self-control present subjects with a simultaneous choice between a larger-later (LL) reinforcer and a smaller-sooner (SS) reinforcer. In contrast, in patch-leaving tasks, subjects choose between staying at a patch for an SS (or LL) reinforcer and leaving for an LL (or SS) reinforcer. Previous studies show that blue jays, monkeys, humans, and rats prefer the SS reinforcer
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Fins, feathers, fingers, and finding an explanation for the puzzle of ephemeral rewards. Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2024-08-01 Michael J Beran
This article discusses the ephemeral reward task and how it is not always a clear and concise choice. This is demonstrated through some animal studies involving birds and primates. This article also shows that when compared to human studies, that there are positive correlations between the BART and optimal choice in the ephemeral reward task, meaning that those who took more risks also were more inclined
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Differences in paradoxical choice between pigeons (Columba livia) and rats (Rattus norvegicus): The problem of cue trackability. Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-16 Patrick Anselme,Aaron P Blaisdell
Organisms are believed to attempt to maximize their net energy intake while foraging. The paradoxical choice task shows that they may instead prefer to obtain information rather than primary reward when the outcome is uncertain. That is, they prefer stimuli that consistently predict food or no food (informative option), to stimuli that inconsistently predict both food and no food in larger amounts
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Within the sound of trouble: Do humans use pitch to correctly assess emotional arousal across species? Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2024-05-01 Alice Auersperg
Comments on an article by Jay W. Schwartz , Kayleigh H. Pierson, and Alexander K. Reece (see record 2024-19488-001). In this issue, Schwartz et al. (2024) tackle the pitch rule in humans by testing to what extent we use pitch alone to judge emotional arousal across closely and distantly related animal species. The findings of Schwartz et al. open a number of intriguing possibilities for future research:
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What makes the ephemeral reward task so difficult? Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-04 Peyton M Mueller,Daniel N Peng,William C Burroughs,Thomas R Zentall
The ephemeral reward task involves providing subjects with a choice between two distinctive stimuli, A and B, each containing an identical reward. If A is chosen, the reward associated with A is obtained and the trial is over. If B is chosen, the reward associated with B is obtained but A remains, and the reward associated with A can be obtained as well. Thus, the reward-maximizing solution is to choose
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Variation in neophilia in seven primate species. Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-04 Christoforos Souganidis,Miquel Llorente,Filippo Aureli,Josep Call,Federica Amici
Neophilia is a measure of individuals' attraction to novelty and is thought to provide important fitness benefits related to the acquisition of information and the ability to solve novel problems. Although neophilia is thought to vary across individuals and species, few studies have made direct comparisons to assess the factors that predict this variation. Here we operationalized neophilia as the probability
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Using isochrony, but not meter, to discriminate rhythmic sequences in rats (Rattus norvegicus). Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-04 Ferran Mayayo,Juan M Toro
Meter induction is a key process for rhythm perception. However, while some nonhuman animals readily detect temporal regularities and perceive beats in auditory sequences, there is no consistent evidence that they extract metrical structures. In the present experiment, we familiarized rats (Rattus norvegicus) to auditory rhythmic sequences that evoked a duple or a triple meter. We then tested their
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No evidence of attentional bias toward threatening conspecific and allospecific faces in capuchin monkeys (Sapajus [Cebus] apella) using a dot-probe task. Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2024-04-04 Olivia T Reilly,Marcela E Benítez,Michael J Beran,Sarah J Barber,Sarah F Brosnan
The ability to quickly perceive and interpret threatening facial expressions from others is critical for successfully maintaining group cohesion in social nonhuman primate species. Rapid detection of threatening or negative stimuli in the environment compared to neutral stimuli, referred to as an attentional bias toward threat, is adaptive in that faster threat detection can lead to greater survival
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Are chimpanzees futurists? Effects of motion lines and motion blur on the judgments of global motion direction in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2024-03-14 Masaki Tomonaga,Tomoko Imura
Based on the invention and development of photography and movie in the 19th century, schools of contemporary art, such as Futurism, have emerged that express the dynamism of motion in painting. Painting techniques such as multiple stroboscopic images, motion blur, and motion lines are culturally based, but the biological basis of their perception has also been intensively investigated recently. Then
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Testing three primate species' attentional biases toward preferred and unpreferred foods: Seeing red or high valued food? Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2024-02-29 Gillian L Vale,Jesse G Leinwand,Priyanka B Joshi
Animals navigate complex environments that present both hazards and essential resources. The prioritization of perceptual information that is relevant to their next actions, such as accessing or avoiding different resources, poses a potential challenge to animals, one that can impact survival. While animals' attentional biases toward negatively valanced and threatening stimuli have been explored, parallel
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Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) with better task-based delay of gratification skills are rated as less impulsive, more agreeable, and smarter. Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2024-02-26 William D Hopkins,Chelsea M Cox,Robert D Latzman,Michael J Beran
Delay of gratification and inhibitory control are generally considered measures of self-control. In humans, individual differences in measures of self-control are associated with a host of behavioral, neurological, cognitive, and health-related outcomes. Self-control is not unique to humans and has been demonstrated in a variety of nonhuman species using a variety of paradigms. In this study, the effect
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Still face in pet dogs (Canis familiaris). Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2024-02-15 Molly Byrne,Kayla Sawyer,Angie Johnston
Dogs are able to cooperate in reciprocal exchange with humans but little is known about the extent of these abilities (Range & Virányi, 2015). In the Still Face paradigm, infants reply to a sudden nonreciprocal facial expression with gaze aversion and an increase in re-engagement and distress behaviors (E. Tronick et al., 1978). We directly adapted this method; the dog's owner talked to the dog, then
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The roles of social information, asocial information, and initial bias in nest-building decisions. Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2024-02-08 Benjamin A Whittaker,Gopika Balasubramanian,Andrés Camacho-Alpízar,Connor T Lambert,Lauren M Guillette
Animals can use asocial (e.g., environmental cues) or social (e.g., conspecific behavior) information when making decisions. We investigated decisions made by zebra finches when asocial and social sources conveyed agreeing or conflicting information, and assessed the influence of initial bias on decision making. Finches completed an initial preference test ranking preference for three colors of nest-building
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On parrots, delay of gratification, executive function, and how sometimes we do the best we can. Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2024-02-01 Michael J Beran
Engaging executive functions provides an individual with the means to engage in cognitive control by adjusting to the environment and processing information in a way that leads to optimal outcomes. There are some claims that explicit training on certain executive functioning abilities provides benefits beyond the training tasks, but other studies indicate that this may not be true or may be limited
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Evaluation of decision-making behavior under uncertainty in capuchin monkeys (Sapajus apella) and humans (Homo sapiens) using a modified Balloon Analogue Risk Task. Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2023-12-14 Olivia T Reilly,Sarah F Brosnan
Many animals, including humans, must make decisions when outcomes involve risk and/or ambiguity. To explore the evolutionary roots of decision making when outcomes are unknown, we modified the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) for use with tufted capuchin monkeys (Sapajus [Cebus] apella), creating the Primate Analogue Risk Task (PART). Using both the BART and the PART, we first compared human performance
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Visual and acoustic exploratory behaviors toward novel stimuli in Antillean manatees (Trichechus manatus manatus) under human care. Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2023-12-14 Aviva Charles,Yann Henaut,Michel Saint-Jalme,Baptiste Mulot,Alexis Lecu,Fabienne Delfour
Exploratory behaviors describe the actions performed by an animal to obtain information on an object, environment, or individual by using its different senses. Exploration is described in some marine mammals, but not yet in manatees. Our study investigated behavioral and acoustic responses of two groups of Antillean manatees (N = 12 and N = 4) housed in zoological parks toward various stimuli involving
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Do standard behavioral assays predict foraging behavior of individual Black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) in response to a predator model or calls? Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2023-11-02 Jodilyn R Jenkins,Ian G Pope,Madeline A Dykstra,Jennifer J Jenkins,Cheryl R Dykstra,Kelly A Williams
Black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus) and other species that feed at bird feeders balance the benefit of easy foraging with the added risk of predation. Individual birds respond differently to risky situations, and these differences have been attributed to the birds' personalities, which researchers commonly assess with an "open-field" behavioral assay. However, these behavioral assays in
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Target number influences strategy use by rats (Rattus norvegicus) in the traveling salesperson problem. Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2023-11-01 Kaitlyn Paez,Rachel E Blaser
The traveling salesman problem (TSP) is an optimization problem in which the goal is to find the shortest possible route that passes through each of a set of points in space. The TSP is of interest not only in the fields of mathematics, computer science, and engineering, but also in cognitive and behavioral research to study problem-solving and spatial navigation. Humans are able to complete even complex
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Have we met? New insights into the role of head and body cues in the visual recognition of conspecifics in gray parrots (Psittacus erithacus). Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2023-11-01 Alice Auersperg
Prikrylová et al. (see record 2023-79461-001) contribute a paper to this issue in which they tested two-dimensional individual recognition of familiar subjects in African gray parrots. They not only tested familiar individual recognition per se but also the effect of manipulating individual and combined features in the head and the body of their stimuli. Notably, instead of using discrimination tasks
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Pitch affects human (Homo sapiens) perception of emotional arousal from diverse animal calls. Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2023-10-23 Jay W Schwartz,Kayleigh H Pierson,Alexander K Reece
A growing body of research demonstrates that humans can accurately perceive the emotional states of animals solely by listening to their calls, highlighting shared evolutionary ancestry. Yet, the cognitive and perceptual mechanisms underlying heterospecific emotion perception have remained open to investigation. One hypothesis is that humans rely on simple acoustic heuristics to make such judgments
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Humans' (Homo sapiens), capuchin monkeys' (Sapajus [Cebus] apella), and rhesus macaques' (Macaca mulatta) size judgments shift when stimuli change in frequency. Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2023-10-23 Sierra M V Simmons,Sarah F Brosnan
When making decisions, humans often strive to uphold objective, absolute standards, such as about what is small versus large, blue versus purple, or unfair versus fair, suggesting that our judgments should not be swayed by extraneous factors such as the sequence or frequency of events to be judged. Yet in previous research, when some items (e.g., threatening faces) became less frequent, humans responded
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The effects of goal-landmark distance on overshadowing: A replication in humans (Homo sapiens) of Goodyear and Kamil (2004). Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2023-09-21 Estibaliz Herrera,Joe M Austen,Gonzalo P Urcelay
Goodyear and Kamil (2004) assessed the ability of Clark's nutcrackers to find buried food based on a cross-shaped array of landmarks at different distances from the goal. Their findings suggested that proximal landmarks overshadowed learning about distal landmarks, and this was attenuated when assessing the effect of distal landmarks on learning about proximal landmarks. In this study, we aimed to
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Reach-to-grasp kinematic signatures in Colombian spider monkeys (Ateles fusciceps rufiventris). Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2023-08-10 Eliza L Nelson,Megan A Taylor,Armando Del Valle,Narciso Pavon
A defining feature of most primates is a hand with five fingers. Spider monkeys are an exception because they have four fingers and no thumb. Despite the prevalence of reach-to-grasp research in primates, it is not known how the lack of a thumb affects reaching and grasping in spider monkeys. Drawing on patterns that have been well described in human adults, human infants, and other nonhuman primates
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A study of executive function in grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus): Experience can affect delay of gratification. Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2023-08-10 Irene M Pepperberg,Leigh Ann Hartsfield
Executive function (EF) involves several abilities often correlated with success in various aspects of human life. Similar skills could also be advantageous to nonhumans, but few studies have effectively examined the extent of their EF abilities. Studies have also examined what experiences might strengthen/weaken human EF; might specific experiences also affect nonhuman EF? One type of EF often tested
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Physiological constraints and cognitive chunking: Sequence organization in the songs of zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata). Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2023-08-10 Zina B Ward,Charles T Upton,Manasi Iyer,Heather Williams
Learned bird songs often have a hierarchical organization. In the case of zebra finches, each bird's song is made up of a string of notes delivered in a stereotyped sequence to form a "motif," and motifs are repeated to form a song bout. During song learning, young males copy "chunks" of two or more consecutive notes from their tutors' songs. These chunks are represented as distinct units within memory
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Impulsivity as a trait in domestic dogs (Canis familiaris): A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2023-08-03 Jessica Barela,Yasmin Worth,Jeffrey R Stevens
Impulsivity is a critical component of dog (Canis familiaris) behavior that owners often want to curtail. Though studies of dog impulsivity have examined their inability to wait and to inhibit inappropriate behaviors, it is not clear whether impulsivity is a behavioral trait with consistent characteristics across contexts. For this project, we conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to investigate
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Responses of wild skuas (Catharacta antarctica ssp. lonnbergi) to human cues in cooperative and competitive social contexts. Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2023-08-01 Samara Danel,Nancy Rebout,Laura Pinto,Pierre Carette,Francesco Bonadonna,Dora Biro
Many animals respond to and use social cues emitted by other species (e.g., head direction). In the context of human-animal communication, these capacities have been attributed to regular and longstanding exposure to humans. We presented wild brown skuas (Catharacta antarctica ssp. lonnbergi) with two versions of an object-choice paradigm. In the cooperative version (Experiment 1), one human experimenter
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Influence of group size on shelter choice in Blaptica dubia cockroaches. Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2023-08-01 Todd M Freeberg,Sylvain Fiset
Individuals in social groups can gain benefits from being in those groups, including an increased ability to find food and avoid predators. We tested for potential group benefits in shelter choice in the Argentinian wood roach, Blaptica dubia. Roaches were tested in arenas with two shelters available in which one shelter was significantly darker than the other. Female and male roaches, housed separately
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What enables "distraction" to reduce delay discounting for pigeons (Columba livia). Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2023-08-01 Peyton M Mueller,Daniel N Peng,Thomas R Zentall
In a successive delay-discounting task, a small reward can be obtained immediately but a larger reward can be obtained if one waits. There is evidence that the larger reward can be obtained more easily if one is "distracted" from obtaining the small reward. It is proposed here that a distractor stimulus may function as a Pavlovian conditioned stimulus (sign tracking) because orienting to it may be
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Why do distractions sometimes aid self-control? Pigeons (Columba livia) highlight possible mechanisms underlying the distraction effect. Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2023-08-01 Michael J Beran
In this essay, the author explores the question of why distractions sometimes aid self-control. In a study with chimpanzees, Evans and Beran (2007) used two conditions with toys to address the possibility raised by Mueller et al. (2023) about toys as distractors. In the first, the accumulating rewards were within reach, and so chimpanzees had to inhibit taking rewards if more were to accumulate. The
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Anthropomorphism as a contributor to the success of human (Homo sapiens) tool use. Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2023-08-01 Michael Haslam
Humans anthropomorphize: as a result of our evolved ultrasociality, we see the world through person-colored glasses. In this review, I suggest that an interesting proportion of the extraordinary tool-using abilities shown by humans results from our mistakenly anthropomorphizing and forming social relationships with objects and devices. I introduce the term machination to describe this error, sketch
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Gaze in cats (Felis catus) and dogs (Canis lupus familiaris). Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2023-07-31 Michael J Bogese,Angie M Johnston,Sarah-Elizabeth Byosiere
Within human-animal dyadic interactions, dog-human gaze has been identified as the crux of several important visual behaviors, such as looking back, gaze-following, and participation in an oxytocin feedback loop. It has been posited that this gaze behavior may have been motivated and sustained by cooperative relationships between dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) and humans (e.g., hunting, service roles)
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The role of head and body cues in visual individual recognition in grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus). Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2023-06-12 Katarína Prikrylová,Denisa Kovácsová,Jitka Lindová
Individual recognition underlies social behaviors in many species and is essential for complex social interactions commonly occurring between conspecifics. Focusing on visual perception, we explored this process in African grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus) using the matching-to-sample (MTS) method commonly used in primate research. We used cards made from photographs of familiar conspecific in four
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Is inferential reasoning a distinctly human cognitive feature? Testing reasoning in cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus). Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2023-06-12 Julie J Neiworth,Ana D Knighten,Christopher Leppink-Shands
Logical inference is often assumed a human-unique ability, although many species of apes and monkeys have shown some facility within a two-cup task in which one cup is baited, the primate is shown the cup which is empty (an exclusion cue), and subsequently chooses the other baited cup. In published reports, New World monkey species show a limited ability to choose successfully, often with half or more
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The dynamics of chunking in humans (Homo sapiens) and Guinea baboons (Papio papio). Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2023-06-01 Laure Tosatto,Joël Fagot,Arnaud Rey
Chunking is an important cognitive process allowing the compression of information in short-term memory. The aim of this study is to compare the dynamics of chunking during the learning of a visuomotor sequence in humans (Homo sapiens) and Guinea baboons (Papio papio). We duplicated in humans an experimental paradigm that has been used previously in baboons. On each trial, human participants had to
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Primate socio-ecology shapes the evolution of distinctive facial repertoires. Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2023-05-11 Brittany N Florkiewicz,Linda S Oña,Leonardo Oña,Matthew W Campbell
Primate facial musculature enables a wide variety of movements during bouts of communication, but how these movements contribute to signal construction and repertoire size is unclear. The facial mobility hypothesis suggests that morphological constraints shape the evolution of facial repertoires: species with higher facial mobility will produce larger and more complex repertoires. In contrast, the
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First report of reindeer (Rangifer tarandus tarandus) response to human-given cues. Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2023-05-11 Océane Liehrmann,Anne Ollila,Virpi Lummaa,Léa Lansade,Martin W Seltmann
Many argue that the animal understanding of human referential communication is a by-product of domestication. However, the domestication hypothesis is not unanimously supported as some nondomesticated species such as sea lions, dolphins, or African elephants perform well in the understanding of human pointing gesture. There is a need to study species with different levels of domestication across different
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Evidence of motor intentions in plants: A kinematical study. Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2023-05-11 Bianca Bonato,Valentina Simonetti,Maria Bulgheroni,Qiuran Wang,Silvia Guerra,Silvia Quaggiotti,Benedetto Ruperti,Umberto Castiello
"How" an action is performed is not solely determined by biomechanical constraints, but it depends on the agent's intention, that is, "why" the action is performed. Recent findings suggest that intentions can be specified at a tangible and quantifiable level in the kinematics of movements; that is, different motor intentions translate into different kinematic patterns. In the present study, we used
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I am as fooled as you are, say some primates … but only sometimes. Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2023-05-01 Michael J Beran
The evidence of "cognitive impenetrability" is a byproduct of the fact that minds often must react quickly to sensory stimulation, and they must attempt to make visual stimuli meaningful given what the perceiver knows of the world. Hanus et al. remind us that such immediate decisions may, in fact, help keep us alive, but at the possible cost of sometimes misaligning visual perception and physical reality
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Incorporating animal agency into research design could improve behavioral and neuroscience research. Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2023-04-27 Cédric Sueur,Sarah Zanaz,Marie Pelé
Despite increasing numbers of publications showing that many animals possess the neural substrates involved in emotions and consciousness and exhibit agency in their behavior, many animals are still restrained and forced to take part in applied or fundamental research. However, these restraints and procedures, because they stress animals and limit the expression of adaptive behavior, may result in
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Some phenomena of the cap-pushing response in honey bees (Apis mellifera spp.). Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2023-04-06 Sierra Dee Rodriguez,Riley J Wincheski,Ian T Jones,Michael G De Jesus-Soto,Skylar J Fletcher,Troy Joseph Pretends Eagle,James W Grice,Charles I Abramson
The cap-pushing response (CPR) is a new free-flying technique used to study learning and memory in honey bees. Bees fly to a target where they push a cap to reveal a hidden food source. When combined with traditional odor and color targets, the CPR technique opens the door to additional choice preference tests in honey bees. To facilitate the use of the CPR technique, three experiments were conducted
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Sound order discrimination in two species of birds-Taeniopygia guttata and Melopsittacus undulatus. Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2023-02-01 Katherine A Stennette,Adam Fishbein,Nora Prior,Gregory F Ball,Robert J Dooling
Recent psychophysical experiments have shown that zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata-a songbird) are surprisingly insensitive to syllable sequence changes in their species-specific motifs while budgerigars (Melopsittacus undulatus-a psittacine) do much better when tested on exactly the same sounds. This is unexpected since zebra finch males learn the order of syllables in their songs when young and
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Spatial frequency and global-local visual processing in capuchin monkeys (Sapajus spp.) and humans (Homo sapiens). Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2023-02-01 Milena Palumbo,Giovanna Spinozzi,Valentina Truppa,Carlo De Lillo
Two experiments employing an identity matching-to-sample procedure were carried out to clarify the factors affecting global-local visual processing of capuchin monkeys (Sapajus spp.) in comparison with humans. In the first experiment, we assessed the relative ability of the two species to discriminate high, medium, or low spatial frequencies (HSFs, MSFs, or LSFs). Then, in a second experiment, we determined
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Adaptable navigation in bull ants (Myrmecia midas). Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2023-02-01 Dorothy Munkenbeck Fragaszy
In an early scientific description of navigation (finding one's way from a known location to a known destination) in an arthropod, Charles Turner, one of comparative psychology's staunchest early proponents of studying individual variation. The field of comparative psychology has caught up with Charles Turner. In this essay, the author presents an overview of the results of previous studies which suggest
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Detouring while foraging up a tree: What bull ants (Myrmecia midas) learn and their reactions to novel sensory cues. Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2023-02-01 Muzahid Islam,Sudhakar Deeti,Zakia Mahmudah,J Frances Kamhi,Ken Cheng
Many animals navigate in a structurally complex environment, which requires them to detour around the physical barriers that they encounter. Although many studies in animal cognition suggest that they are able to adeptly avoid obstacles, it is unclear whether a new route is learned to navigate around these barriers and, if so, what sensory information may be used to do so. We investigated detour learning
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Recognition of visual kinship signals in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) by humans (Homo sapiens). Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2022-11-07 Hella Péter,Marion Laporte,Nicholas E Newton-Fisher,Vernon Reynolds,Liran Samuni,Adrian Soldati,Linda Vigilant,Jakob Villioth,Kirsty E Graham,Klaus Zuberbühler,Catherine Hobaiter
Associating with kin provides individual benefits but requires that these relationships be detectable. In humans, facial phenotype matching might help assess paternity; however, evidence for it is mixed. In chimpanzees, concealing visual cues of paternity may be beneficial due to their promiscuous mating system and the considerable risk of infanticide by males. On the other hand, detecting kin can
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Dominance in human (Homo sapiens) personality space and in hominoid phylogeny. Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2022-11-01 Alexander Weiss
Unlike nonhuman primates, individual differences between humans in dominance do not appear as broad personality factors. This may be attributable to differences between the questionnaires used to study human and nonhuman primate personality. Alternatively, this may reflect differences in the organization of personality in humans and nonhuman primates. To determine which of these possibilities was most
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Consistent second-order motor planning by cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus): Evidence from a dowel task. Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2022-10-31 Natalie Schwob,Ricky Groner,Amy L Lebkuecher,Sylvia Rudnicki,Daniel J Weiss
One of the hallmarks of complex motor planning in humans involves grasping objects in preparation for future actions, termed second-order motor planning. This ability has an extended developmental trajectory in humans and is also shared with nonhuman primates. Here, we presented seven cotton-top tamarins with a dowel task that has prompted variable grasping behaviors for some primate species. Tamarins
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Mother-infant relationships and infant independence in wild Geoffroy's spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi). Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2022-10-31 Ana Lucía Arbaiza-Bayona,Colleen M Schaffner,Germán Gutiérrez,Filippo Aureli
We studied mother-infant relationships and infant independence in wild Geoffroy's spider monkeys (Ateles geoffroyi) during the first 3 years of infant life. We used 15-min focal sampling to collect data on mother-infant interactions and infant behavior in 12 mother-infant dyads in the Yucatan peninsula, Mexico. Data were analyzed using generalized linear mixed models. Newborns spent almost all their
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Simplicity and complexity in human and nonhuman communication. Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2022-10-31 Todd M Freeberg
Comments on an article by Limor Raviv et al. (see record 2023-07345-001). Raviv et al. argue that the conflicting findings from human language and from studies of communication in nonhuman animals boil down to different levels of analysis used by researchers studying non-humans compared with those studying humans. Researchers studying nonhuman animal communication typically focus on the size of signal
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Are you as fooled as I am? Visual illusions in human (Homo) and nonhuman (Sapajus, Gorilla, Pan, Pongo) primate species. Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2022-10-31 Daniel Hanus,Valentina Truppa,Josep Call
It has been argued that humans' susceptibility to visual illusions does not simply reflect cognitive flaws but rather specific functional adaptations of our perceptual system. The data on cross-cultural differences in the perception of geometric illusions seemingly support this explanation. Little is known, however, about the developmental trajectories of such adaptations in humans, let alone a conclusive
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Vocal repertoire and auditory sensitivity of white-throated woodrats (Neotoma albigula). Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2022-10-31 Anastasiya Kobrina,Mariah E Letowt,Bret Pasch
Rodents produce a variety of acoustic signals to communicate different types of information such as identity, reproductive state, or danger. The degree to which hearing sensitivity matches particular frequencies of conspecific vocalizations may provide insight into the relative importance of different acoustic signals. In this experiment, we characterized vocal and footdrumming behaviors of white-throated
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Same-different conceptualization in dogs (Canis familiaris). Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2022-10-27 Allison Scagel,Eduardo Mercado
concept formation was once thought to be a uniquely human ability. An increasing variety of nonhuman species have demonstrated aspects of this ability, however, suggesting that conceptualization is a widely shared aspect of cognition. The capacity to form a concept of same-different, in particular, has now been shown in pigeons, primates, bottlenose dolphins, sea lions, and more. Traditional methods
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What is simple is actually quite complex: A critical note on terminology in the domain of language and communication. Journal of Comparative Psychology (IF 1.1) Pub Date : 2022-10-10 Limor Raviv,Louise R Peckre,Cedric Boeckx
On the surface, the fields of animal communication and human linguistics have arrived at conflicting theories and conclusions with respect to the effect of social complexity on communicative complexity. For example, an increase in group size is argued to have opposite consequences on human versus animal communication systems: although an increase in human community size leads to some types of language