Journal of Comparative Psychology最新文献

Motivation influences essential behaviors for survival and well-being, driven by internal and external factors. By observing behaviors, we can understand motivational needs, decision-making processes, and preferences. Food acquisition is a survival motivator that covers a great part of daily activities, in contrast, play behavior shares a common basis with predation and social interactions. In the domestic cat, vocalizations, particularly the meow, are an acoustic signal expressing motivational and emotional states and are correlated to specific contexts, especially in cat-human interactions. This study investigated how contexts influenced meowing under two motivational conditions: feeding and play. Employing the synchronous citizen science approach, 48 guardians interacted with their cats as the researcher remotely recorded procedures involving presenting a feeder or toy and restricting access for 60 s. During the restriction periods, the cats could see and smell but not reach the stimulus. The condition influenced the frequency of meowing: they meowed significantly more in the feeding condition than in the play condition, suggesting a link between meowing frequency and the motivational context of eating, a crucial survival context. The food presentation likely influenced their motivation to vocalize. During feeding restriction, cats exhibited a significantly higher gazing at the guardian and gazing while meowing, suggesting the potential use of bimodal signals (visual and vocal) to enhance communication. In the play restriction condition, higher contact behaviors indicated a physical response to regain access, highlighting the play's social and motivational aspects. These findings help clarify contexts that motivate cats' vocalizations, aiding our understanding of their vocal communication. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

The composite perception of individual elements and their configurations on the face during its recognition, so-called holistic processing, has been demonstrated in humans and some animals. However, it is unknown whether similar processes apply, at least to some extent, to the recognition of ecologically relevant stimuli by birds. The important role of facial elements (hooked beak and conspicuous eye color) in recognizing avian predators has been repeatedly demonstrated. However, no attention has yet been paid to the importance of their configuration (i.e., the mutual position of the eyes and beak). We tested the ability of untrained wild great tits to recognize a dangerous predator with its eyes rotated by 90° around its beak (inline dummy) and by 180°around its beak (invert dummy) in an outdoor aviary experiment. A dummy of a sparrowhawk with its head devoid of eyes and beak (empty dummy) served as a behavioral baseline alongside dummies of an unmodified sparrowhawk and a pigeon (as a harmless control). The tits showed no more fear toward the empty dummy than they did toward the pigeon. Toward the invert dummy, the tits showed no less fear than toward the unmodified sparrowhawk. By contrast, in the case of the inline modification, their behavior can be interpreted as increased fear. Our results do not prove that tits use holistic processing in predator recognition, but sensitivity to the presence and configuration of facial elements in the predator's face suggests that this possibility should not be ruled out. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

To investigate same-different conceptualization in nonhuman animals, researchers have used the multiple-item array task (MIAT), which requires discriminating whether icons in an array are the same or different from one another. Although entropy-based explanations for MIAT performance have been influential, their validity is debatable. In Experiment 1, budgerigars and pigeons were trained to discriminate whether 16 icons were the same or different from one another. When the number of icons was reduced, the discrimination tendency of both species was correlated with the entropy value, replicating previous findings. Experiment 2 further supported this correlation by controlling for the number of icons and icon patterns. However, Experiment 3 revealed that when entropy was constant, the subjects judged different more frequently for arrays with more icons per pattern, which contradicts entropy-based predictions. Notably, the response patterns of the subjects in Experiment 3 were inconsistent with logical same-different judgments, suggesting that these animals perform the MIAT based on criteria distinct from those of same-different conceptualization. These findings challenge the validity of typical MIAT for examining same-different concepts in animals and indicate the need to develop more reliable alternative methods. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

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 in binary-choice tasks, whereas the same subjects prefer the LL reinforcer in equivalent patch-leaving tasks. The current study systematically replicated this research using pigeons. Six pigeons responded in a binary-choice task and in two patch-leaving tasks in which staying led to an LL (Patch-L) or SS (Patch-S) reinforcer. Across conditions, the SS reinforcer delay varied from 5 to 55 s; the LL reinforcer delay was always 60 s. In binary-choice conditions, subjects preferred the SS reinforcer. In Patch-L and Patch-S conditions, subjects preferred the LL and SS reinforcer, respectively, reflecting a bias to stay at the patch. This bias persisted when the stay response was more effortful and when the delays to both reinforcers were equal. This may reflect a species-specific win-stay bias and the differential consequences of staying (which led to a stimulus signaling food) versus leaving (which led to a stimulus never associated with food). Thus, we propose a conditioned-reinforcement account of intertemporal choice in patch-leaving contexts. We suggest several avenues for further investigations of the mechanisms underlying intertemporal choice in different contexts and question the economic equivalence of the operant and patch-leaving procedures. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

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 plates. Subjects (N = 29) received 16 randomized trials of four conditions: 1 versus 1 paired with experimenter "Oooh!" while looking at the one plate, 1 versus 3, 3 versus 1 paired with experimenter "Oooh!," and 1 versus 1. As predicted, dogs chose the larger quantity more often in 1 versus 3 conditions. Contrary to one of our predictions, subjects chose the 1 versus 1+ "Oooh!" at chance levels. However, in support of another prediction, pairing the smaller reward with a positive intonation in 3 versus 1+ "Oooh!" significantly reduced dogs' choice of the larger reward. That is to say, without the presence of words, eye contact, or facial expressions, dogs followed a misguiding cue and chose a smaller reward that a stranger had deemed more valuable than a larger one. Local enhancement as well as a drive to increase social capital with the human are discussed as possible explanations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Music is a ubiquitous feature of human behavior. Yet the origins of human musicality remain poorly understood. One attractive approach has investigated the distribution and components of musicality among nonhuman animals. Here I tested four highly trained pigeons in three experiments for their capacity to discriminate the intervals of the chromatic scale. Using an auditory go/no-go same/different task, the pigeons discriminated intervals spanning different numbers of semitones on each trial as synthesized with two musical instruments (cello and organ). Experiment 1 examined this discrimination using a successive melodic context, while Experiment 2 used a simultaneous harmonic context. Experiment 3 tested pure tones in both contexts. The pigeons were sensitive to the distance among the pitch intervals, but examination of specific diagnostic intervals revealed little evidence for any contribution of human-like musical consonance (perfect fifth and octave) and dissonance (tritone and major seventh) to the discrimination. Although more accomplished in the auditory modality than widely assumed, the current state of the evidence suggests pigeons, while sensitive to the pitched nature of sound, lack essential capacities needed for music perception. The evolutionary implications for the comparative psychology of music are considered. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Striped skunks are omnivorous generalists with patchily distributed food-two selection pressures that are purported to drive the evolution of cognition. Despite this, the cognitive abilities of skunks have rarely been tested. Using the slat-pulling task, we assessed the ability of three striped skunks to reason about the visual patterns of support when two slats were presented (one supporting a food item). We used both functional slats (real wooden slats that gave subjects both visual and functional information when manipulated) and purely representational slats in an arbitrary version of the task (painted lines that provided only visual information). All three skunks found the arbitrary task difficult to learn but nevertheless learned to solve it after thousands of trials. They appeared to respond to visual patterns of contact and perceptual containment between food and painted lines to solve several configurations of the task. Interestingly, only one of three skunks learned to pull supportive over unsupportive slats (despite the addition of functional information). This subject had first learned the visual pattern associated with reward in the arbitrary version, thus showing the transfer of visual patterns from the arbitrary to the functional task. Overall, striped skunks demonstrated the ability to use visual patterns to solve problems despite their relatively poor vision and difficulty in learning the tasks. These findings provide further support for the idea that slat-pulling tasks can be solved by visual pattern learning alone and that this possibility needs to be controlled for in tasks assessing abstract causal reasoning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Detection dogs are required to learn and alert to multiple different odors during training and to generalize this learning to similar odors when working. They should be both sensitive to variation in the target odors and specific enough to avoid false alerts, but how readily they achieve this is likely to depend on the training method employed. The majority of agencies train by presenting single target odors in isolation, and adding additional odors consecutively, although recent research with rats suggests intermixing the target odors concurrently throughout training may be a more effective approach. This study therefore tested the relative efficacy of intermixed training in dogs. Using an odor-detection lineup, pet dogs were trained to detect two target odors, A and B. Those allocated to the "sequential" group were trained to criterion on odor A and then trained on odor B (or vice versa), the "compound" group were trained on a mixture of AB, and the "intermixed" group trained on A and B concurrently. Each dog was then tested on all combinations of the test stimuli (A, B, and AB), as well as combinations containing a novel interferent (AC, BC, and ABC). Results revealed that dogs trained by the intermixed method made significantly more correct (true positive) indications, and significantly fewer miss (false negative) indications than the other two methods, suggesting that intermixed training is more effective than currently used alternative training methods. Thus, for improved performance and generalization, we recommend detection dog training should use an intermixed method of training. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

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 to nonseparated peers; however, in contrast with social isolation, separation by itself did not increase rough-and-tumble play. The data suggest that increased play following isolation depends on general motivations, rather than a "peer-specific" drive to renew relationships with an individual. This is consistent with a role of play in more general social learning rather than reestablishing bonds or expectations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Drugs, bomb materials, fruits, and even medical conditions such as cancer are all stimuli that a dog's nose can be trained to detect, and the dog then can report reliable information about those stimuli in terms of presence or absence. This essay discusses the tremendous effort that goes into training expert detection dogs, highlighting different ways of instantiate training. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).