Learning & Behavior最新文献

Anglada-Tort et al. Current Biology, 33, 1472-1486.e12, (2023) conducted a large-scale iterative learning study with cross-cultural human participants to understand how musical structure emerges. Together with archaeological, developmental, historical cross-cultural music data, and cross-species studies we can begin to elucidate the origins of music.

Professor Nicola Clayton is perhaps best known for her work on food-caching scrub jays. Her seminal 1998 paper, together with Anthony Dickinson, showed that scrub jays could remember what food they had cached, where and how long ago, suggesting memory ability that is 'episodic-like' in nature. Here, we present data from a previously unpublished study that sought to replicate and extend these findings. The results replicate previous findings and address potential alternative explanations for earlier results. We argue that the controlled behavioural analyses introduced in this study have the potential to add nuance to our understanding of memory in scrub jay cache retrieval, and to inspire new studies exploring this phenomenon, about which we still have so much to learn.

It has been an honor to edit this special issue of Learning & Behavior to recognize the exceptional contributions of Prof. Nicky S. Clayton FRS to the fields of comparative cognition and developmental and experimental psychology. Prof. Clayton has also provided supervision, mentorship, and support for many students, researchers, and colleagues throughout her career, including over 52 PhD candidates and postdoctoral researchers, helping to pave the way for a generation of future scientists in academia and industry. Indeed, all four of the co-editors on this special issue worked with Prof. Clayton in her Cambridge University Comparative Cognition Lab as PhD candidates and/or postdoctoral researchers (from 2011 to 2022), and we happily continue to collaborate together. Prof. Clayton was awarded the 2024 Comparative Cognition Society (CCS) Research Award and delivered the Master Lecture at the 31st International Conference on Comparative Cognition (CO3, April 2024). Dr. Rachael Miller and Prof. Joshua Plotnik (co-editors) co-organized a symposium at the CO3 conference dedicated to Prof. Clayton. The invited symposium speakers were Prof. Mike Beran (Georgia State University), Prof. Jon Crystal (Indiana University), Dr. Christelle Jozet-Alves (Université de Caen Normandie), and Prof. Thomas Bugnyar (University of Vienna). Dr Elias Garcia-Pelegrin (co-editor) served as Master of Ceremony for an evening CO3 banquet, which included a video compilation of "thank you" messages from many of Prof. Clayton's colleagues, students, and friends.

In a clever adaptation of the two-cups task, a recent paper tested for reasoning by exclusion in bees. Although further work is necessary to rule out competing hypotheses, this study advances our ability to test cognitive capacities in invertebrates.

The perception of objects is a challenging task that requires recognizing visual elements and integrating them into a whole. While human vision prioritizes attention to the overall configuration, data from other species suggests this bias towards global form perception is not universal. Studies with pigeons indicate preferential attention to local details when both local and global information may be diagnostic, but studies with other bird species are more limited. To examine whether this local bias is class-wide or potentially species-specific, we studied whether African grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus) have a bias towards local elements or the global configuration when processing Navon-like hierarchical form displays. Two parrots were tested using a computerized touch-screen two-alternative choice task that presented displays that were local-relevant or global-relevant. The results of several successive acquisition phases suggest that these parrots have no local or global bias, indicating differing evolutionary or ecological drives for visual processing among avian species.

A recent study demonstrated that marmoset "phee calls" include information specific to the intended receiver of the call, and that receivers respond more to calls that are specifically directed at them. The authors interpret this as showing that these calls are name-like vocal labels for individual marmosets, but there is at least one other possibility that would equally explain these data.

A decrease in the rate of reinforcement associated with one component of a multiple schedule is typically associated with a decrease in responding in that component as well as with an increase in responding in the unchanged component. This increase in responding, referred to as positive contrast, is thought to result from an increase in the subjective value associated with the unchanged component. Williams Animal Learning & Behavior, 19, 337-344, (1991) challenged this hypothesis in an experiment with pigeons in which Stimulus A, associated with a variable interval schedule, was always followed by Stimulus X, associated with extinction, while Stimulus B, associated with the same variable interval schedule, was always followed by Stimulus Y, also associated with a variable interval schedule. Although Williams found that most of the pigeons pecked more at Stimulus A than at Stimulus B (behavioral contrast), when the pigeons were given a choice between Stimulus A and B, they showed a preference for Stimulus B. In the present experiment (a slight modification from Williams's), we confirmed this finding. Although our pigeons pecked more at Stimulus A than at Stimulus B, they generally preferred Stimulus B, the stimulus that was not followed by extinction. This result suggests that positive contrast may not result from an increase in the subjective value of the unchanged component. Instead, it suggests that this version of positive contrast may result at least in part from the pigeons' attempt to get all of the reinforcers possible in the presence of Stimulus A before the extinction schedule begins.

This study explored long-term retention of spatial memory in rats using an eight-arm radial maze. Crystal and Babb (Learning and motivation, 39(4), 278-284, 2008) previously demonstrated that rats could retain spatial memory for up to 25 h in the radial maze. Notably, they found performance improved with 48-h intertrial intervals compared with 24-h intervals. Our study investigated the effects of extending intertrial intervals on long-term retention of spatial memory by reducing the potential for proactive interference. Each trial comprised a learning phase, during which subjects were required to sequentially visit four randomly selected arms, followed by a free-choice test that included all eight arms, conducted after increasing the retention and intertrial intervals. The retention intervals were systematically increased from 1 h to 24, 48, and, ultimately, 72 h, with corresponding intertrial intervals expanding from 24 to 48, 120, and 144 h. Performance significantly surpassed chance levels across all conditions, demonstrating that rats are capable of retaining spatial memory for up to 72 h.

In a noteworthy observation, Godfrey-Smith and colleagues report the first evidence of debris throwing in wild octopuses, including instances where they target conspecifics. Proposing parallels with behaviours observed in select social mammals, this discovery prompts inquiries into the extent of their similarity and the potential role of cognition.