Journal of Experimental Psychology-Animal Learning and Cognition最新文献

Valid predictors of an outcome attract more attention than stimuli that are nonpredictive. Furthermore, stimuli that have a probabilistic association with an outcome attract more attention than stimuli that have a deterministic association with an outcome. Two experiments investigated whether predictive validity and outcome uncertainty resulted in the establishment of a more accurate stimulus representation, in which accuracy was measured as the strength of associations between different elements of a compound stimulus. In Experiment 1, pairs of stimuli were established as outcome predictive (always followed by the same outcome) and presented in conjunction with nonpredictive pairs of stimuli (equally likely to be followed by two different outcomes). Outcome uncertainty was also manipulated, between groups, by establishing either a deterministic (100%) or probabilistic (80%) contingency between the predictive pairs and their outcomes. The test trials revealed more accurate recognition for which predictive stimuli were paired together relative to nonpredictive stimuli; however, there was no effect of outcome uncertainty. Experiment 2 reproduced the effect observed in the deterministic group from Experiment 1 and also demonstrated that the superior performance to the predictive stimuli over the nonpredictive stimuli was only evident when, at test, the choice stimuli had predicted different outcomes during training. These results were interpreted as the consequence of two pathways to accurate stimulus representation: direct (within-compound associations) and indirect (mediated through the activation of the outcome) and are discussed in the context of attentional theories of associative learning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Bogong moths (Agrotis infusa) can rely on the stars of the night sky to orient their migrations of distances up to 1,000 km. This navigational mechanism is likely supported by a suite of directionally tuned neurons distributed in the optic lobe, central complex, and lateral accessory lobes of the Bogong brain. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Townrow and Krupenye (2025) show that bonobos will point more in a cooperative task when their partner is ignorant of the location of the desired food. While their study convincingly shows that bonobos can track ignorance, one can question whether it provides evidence that they can represent it as such. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

In the ephemeral reward task, animals are presented with two choice alternatives, one optimal, the other suboptimal. Choosing the suboptimal alternative delivers one immediate reward and ends the trial, whereas choosing the optimal alternative also yields one immediate reward but allows subsequent access to the reward associated with the suboptimal alternative. While species such as cleaner wrasse and grey parrots excel at this task, others-including pigeons, primates, and rats-struggle, raising questions about the factors influencing success. This study investigated these factors by examining performance in starlings under standard and modified task conditions. Across two experiments, starlings successfully learned to prefer the optimal option. In these experiments, we occasionally included single-option trials, which allowed birds to experience the outcomes of each choice in isolation. In Experiment 2, we also manipulated the delay between the two sequential rewards to test its effect on performance. Preference for the optimal option declined as the delay increased, suggesting that shorter delays facilitate credit assignment to the initial choice. We hypothesize that shorter delays facilitate the association between initial choices and subsequent rewards and that differences in apparatus, intertrial intervals, and the rate of memory decay may also influence performance in the task. Overall, our results highlight the complexity of the ephemeral reward task and suggest the potential interplay of ecological relevance and task design. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

In the Ephemeral Reward Task, a subject is presented with a choice between two stimuli, A and B. If it chooses A, it gets a reward and the trial is over. If it chooses B, it gets a reward and it can then respond to A, to obtain a second reward. Wrasse (cleaner fish) and parrots learn to choose B optimally within 100 trials, primates may also learn, whereas pigeons and rats do not. We attempted to determine why pigeons have difficulty learning their task. First, we tested the hypothesis that pigeons fail because the outcome after choice of A is similar to the outcome after a response to A given choice of B. For group AC, after the choice of B, stimulus A changed to stimulus C. For group BC, after the choice of stimulus B, stimulus B changed to stimulus C. For group BB, after the choice of stimulus B, stimulus B remained for a second reward. None of the three groups learned to choose optimally. In Experiment 2, the probability of reward for choice of stimulus A or B was reduced to 50%. Pigeons learned to choose optimally. We suggest that the difference in value between one and two rewards may not be as great as the difference in value between 0.5 and one reward. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Food-caching chickadees are known to cache thousands of food items and retrieve these caches using, at least in part, spatial memory. New research shows memory recall is associated with remote activation of hippocampal place cells by gaze using two peaks in neuronal firing: an early peak predicts the gaze direction and a later peak reflects the gaze. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Habituation and dishabituation are fundamental adaptive processes that govern how animals respond to repeated stimuli. Habituation is defined as a decline in response to irrelevant stimuli, and dishabituation reactivates this response upon qualitatively different stimulation. Here, we explored these processes in bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) by exposing freely foraging individuals to a repeated overhead looming stimulus, followed by a distinct vibration. We identified three defensive responses-flight, disturbance leg-lift response, and startle-and found that only flight probability showed robust habituation and dishabituation. Disturbance leg-lift response remained consistently frequent, whereas startle initially increased and later declined when flight was reinstated. Our findings demonstrate clear habituation and dishabituation of defensive responses in bumblebees within a novel free-flying testing paradigm, providing initial support for response-specific plasticity mechanisms. The results underscore the importance of differentiating among multiple defensive responses to better understand the mechanisms driving habituation and dishabituation, suggesting that bumblebee defense strategies are finely tuned across multiple stimulus-response pathways. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

DeepLabCut, a deep-learning-based network for markerless pose estimation, has been used to track the acquisition and development of tool use in a nontool-using corvid species. This development has the potential to lead to new lines of research understanding how tool and motor expertise develop at the behavioral, neural, cognitive, and evolutionary level. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Reports an error in "The spatiotemporal dynamics of conditioned behavior: First-order and higher-order conditioning" by Victor M. Navarro, Dominic M. Dwyer and Robert C. Honey (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, 2025[Apr], Vol 51[2], 92-102; see record 2026-02046-003). The article had the incorrect open access license listed in the author note due to a processing error. The correct open access license for the article is CC BY 4.0; https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0. The online version of this article has been corrected. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2026-02046-003). Pavlovian conditioning procedures generate spatially and temporally distinct behaviors. For example, after rats have received pairings of a lever with food, they approach the food well during the lever (called goal-tracking) and interact with it (called sign-tracking), with these two spatially distinct behaviors being distributed differently across the temporal duration of the lever. Experiment 1 assessed the development of these spatiotemporally defined behaviors during first-order conditioning, as a function of the sequence in which the lever and food occurred (lever→food or food→lever) and the interval between them (1 s or 11 s). In Experiment 2, the same rats received higher-order conditioning trials in which an auditory stimulus was paired with the lever and the emergence of goal-tracking to the auditory stimulus was assessed. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 revealed dissociations between where and when learning was evident during first- and higher-order conditioning, underscoring the need for models of Pavlovian conditioning to explain both the nature and timing of different conditioned responses. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Habituation is a form of learning characterized by a decreased response to repeated stimuli. Research has shown that the interval between stimuli (interstimulus interval [ISI]) influences the development and retention of habituation. Experiments 1-4 examined earthworm contraction-response habituation to light using ISIs ranging from 2 to 256 s. Experiment 1 showed an inverted-U in response probability across ISIs: very short (2-8 s) and very long (128-256 s) ISIs produced greater within-session decrements than intermediate ISIs (16-88 s). Experiment 2 found that 128-256 s yielded faster, larger decrements than 88 s, with group differences persisting 24 hr later when all animals were tested at 4 s. Experiment 3 focused on ISIs of 2-64 s with extended training (50 trials): on Day 1, 32 s yielded the least within-session decrement, and under the common 4-s Day 2 test, only the 64-s group showed evidence of retention of habituation. Experiment 4 replicated the key patterns when comparing ISIs of 4, 32, and 128 s: 128 s produced the largest short- and long-term decrements. Experiments 5 and 6 introduced an air puff and demonstrated stimulus specificity of the 128-s ISI condition. Day 2 responding was lowest when the Day 2 stimulus matched Day 1 (light-light; puff-puff), whereas switching stimuli (light-puff; puff-light) reduced or eliminated this carryover. Overall, the ISI-dependent patterns and stimulus-specificity effects observed here confirm the value of this animal model as a preparation for studying habituation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).