The contribution of past experiences to concurrent resurgence was investigated in three experiments. In Experiment 1, resurgence was related to the length of reinforcement history as well as the reinforcement schedule that previously maintained responding. Specifically, more resurgence occurred when key pecks had been reinforced on a…

Rough-and-tumble play, or play fighting, is common in the young of many mammals. Research on play fighting among rats shows that there are many levels of neural control over this behavior: subcortical mechanisms mediate the motivation and behavior of such play, and the cortex provides mechanisms by which the play changes with age and context. The…

Jaak Panksepp, known best for his work on animal emotions and coining the term "affective neuroscience," investigates the primary processes of brain and mind that enable and drive emotion. As an undergraduate, he briefly considered a career in electrical engineering but turned instead to psychology, which led to a 1969 University of…

This essay challenges science's traditional taboo against anthropomorphizing animals or considering their behavior as indicative of feelings similar to human emotions. In their new book "Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals," the authors argue that anthropomorphism is alive and well, as it should be. Here they describe some…

Behavioral data suggest that distinguishable orientations may be necessary for place learning even when distal cues define different start points in the room and a unique goal location. We examined whether changes in orientation are also important in place learning and navigation in a water T-maze. In Experiment 1, rats were trained to locate a…

Research on human and animal behavior has long emphasized its hierarchical structure--the divisibility of ongoing behavior into discrete tasks, which are comprised of subtask sequences, which in turn are built of simple actions. The hierarchical structure of behavior has also been of enduring interest within neuroscience, where it has been widely…

To this day, it remains unresolved whether experimental amnesia reflects failed memory storage or the inability to retrieve otherwise intact memory. Methodological as well as conceptual reasons prevented deciding between these two alternatives: The absence of recovery from amnesia is typically taken as supporting storage impairment…

Six rhesus monkeys responding under a three-component multiple schedule were administered haloperidol to determine its effects on cocaine self-administration and on cocaine's disruptive effects on the repeated acquisition and performance of response chains. In the absence of haloperidol, 0.0032 - 0.032 mg/kg/infusion of cocaine increased response…

The application of modelling to social learning in monkey populations has been a neglected topic. Recently, however, a number of statistical, simulation and analytical approaches have been developed to help examine social learning processes, putative traditions, the use of social learning strategies and the diffusion dynamics of socially…

In 1992, Dr. Marian Breland Bailey, assisted by her husband Robert E. Bailey, gave the following presentation at the Psi Chi Banquet of the University of Central Arkansas. She and her first husband, Keller Breland, were students of B. F. Skinner and established Animal Behavior Enterprises (ABE) in 1947 and the IQ Zoo in 1955. Unknown to many…

Science educators have the common goal of helping students develop scientific literacy, including understanding of the nature of science (NOS). University faculties are challenged with the need to develop informed NOS views in several major student subpopulations, including science majors and nonscience majors. Research into NOS views of…

We utilized olfactory-mediated chemotaxis in "Caenorhabditis elegans" to examine the effect of aging on information processing and animal behavior. Wild-type (N2) young adults (day 4) initially approach and eventually avoid a point source of benzaldehyde. Aged adult animals (day 7) showed a stronger initial approach and a delayed avoidance to…

This study examines first graders' epistemic reasoning, in tacit "practical epistemologies" reflected in thinking about an investigation of their own design. I analyzed children's epistemic reasoning, following a design experiment scaffolding increasing regulation of scientific inquiry in a domain they studied in depth. Participants…

Zentall and Singer (2007a) hypothesized that our failure to replicate the work-ethic effect in pigeons (Vasconcelos, Urcuioli, & Lionello-DeNolf, 2007) was due to insufficient overtraining following acquisition of the high- and low-effort discriminations. We tested this hypothesis using the original work-ethic procedure (Experiment 1) and one…

This article describes the design and implementation of a 1-credit-hour seminar in comparative psychology as a supplement to an introductory biopsychology course. The purpose of the course was to introduce students to the ecological and evolutionary aspects of animal behavior by building on topics that are introduced in many biopsychology courses.…