Published in Learning & Behavior
Rule-governed behavior and derived relational responding have both been identified as important variables in human learning. Recent developments in the relational frame theory (RFT) have outlined a number of key variables of potential importance when analyzing the dynamics involved in derived relational responding. Recent research has explored the ...
Published in Learning & Behavior
Symmetry inference—that is, spontaneously deriving the stimulus association B-A from A-B—was recently reported in preverbal infants (Kabdebon & Dehaene-Lambertz, 2019, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 116[12], 5805–5810) and regarded as a “building block for human cognition.” Here, we argue that empir...
Published in Learning & Behavior
Effective communication is essential in animal life to allow fundamental behavioral processes and survival. Communicating by surface-borne vibrations is likely the most ancient mode of getting and exchanging information in both invertebrates and vertebrates. In this review, we concentrate on the use of vibrational communication in arthropods as a f...
Published in Learning & Behavior
Conditioned inhibitors have been shown to be largely unaffected by non-reinforced exposure (i.e., extinction treatment). Although excitatory associations are readily diminished by extinction treatment, so-called inhibitory associations appear to be largely immune to them. In two fear-conditioning experiments with rats, it was found that a decrease ...
Published in Learning & Behavior
In the present study, we aimed to evaluate whether the number of training trials performed bythe participants during the baseline protocol in equivalence class experiments could modulatethe N400 evoked component. Two groups of 15 participants each followed a matching-tosampleprotocol to train on the conditional relations between four sets of abstra...
Published in Learning & Behavior
Two experiments determined the effect of interference training on subsequent spatial learning in a Morris water maze. Rats first learned that a platform was located in a quadrant marked by landmarks A and B. Different groups of rats either continued or reversed that training. In the reversal condition the platform was opposite to the initially trai...
Published in Learning & Behavior
Reactions to a recent study suggesting that cleaner wrasse can pass the mirror self-recognition test (Kohda et al. in PLOS Biology, 17(2), e3000021, 2019) reveal more about scientists’ biases than about self-awareness. Scientists should base conclusions about species’ abilities based on the corpus of data on that species rather than on a single tes...
Published in Learning & Behavior
Many of the scientists working in the field of ‘animal behaviour’ and especially of ‘animal cognition’ consider the most obvious factors for fitness maximization — for instance, nutritional reward maximization — as the sole motivators when a course of action must be chosen. Sweis, Thomas, and Redish (2018, PLOS Biology, 16(6), e2005853) show that e...
Published in Learning & Behavior
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 cap...
Published in Learning & Behavior
Despite being observed throughout the animal kingdom, catching a moving object is a complex task and little is known about the mechanisms that underlie this behavior in non-human animals. Three experiments examined the role of prediction in capture of a moving object by pigeons. In Experiment 1 , a stimulus moved in a linear trajectory, but sometim...
