In two experiments, the evidence showed that 20 min of forced swimming by rats caused aversion to a taste solution consumed before swimming. When one of two taste solutions (sodium saccharin or sodium chloride, counterbalanced across rats) was paired with swimming and the other was not, the rats' intakes of these two solutions showed less…

This experiment assessed the effects of "d"-Amphetamine and ethanol on reinforced variable and repetitive key-peck sequences in pigeons. Pigeons responded on two keys under a multiple schedule of Repeat and Vary components. In the Repeat component, completion of a target sequence of right, right, left, left resulted in food. In the Vary component,…

The article discusses two important influences of B. F. Skinner, and later workers in the behavior-analytic tradition, on the study of animal timing. The first influence is methodological, and is traced from the invention of schedules imposing temporal constraints or periodicities on animals in "The Behavior of Organisms," through the rate…

Philosophers often consider what it is that makes individuals human. For biologists considering the same, the answer is often framed in the context of what are the key differences between humans and other animals. One vestige of human uniqueness still often cited by anthropologists is culture. However, this notion has been challenged in recent…

Pigeons were trained in a matching task with either color (group color-first) or line (group line-first) samples. After asymmetrical training in which each group was initially trained with the same sample on all trials, marked retention asymmetries were obtained. In both groups, accuracy dropped precipitously on trials involving the initially…

In this article we use actual instances of human conduct with animals to reflect on the debates about animal agency in human activities. Where much of psychology, philosophy, and sociology begin with a fundamental scepticism over animal mind as the grounds for its inquiries, we join with a growing body of work that examines the continuities…

Gottlieb's (1991/2007) target article represents a milestone in our understanding of the impact of social experience on developmental malleability. Interactions across the species-typical and operant behavior categories are increasingly understood to exist. The social contingencies present in the normal species-typical developmental manifold are…

When behavior suggests that the value of a reinforcer depends inversely on the value of the events that precede or follow it, the behavior has been described as a "contrast" effect. Three major forms of contrast have been studied: "incentive contrast," in which a downward (or upward) shift in the magnitude of reinforcement produces a relatively…

Mice from replicate lines, selectively bred based on high daily wheel-running rates, run more total revolutions and at higher average speeds than do mice from nonselected control lines. Based on this difference it was assumed that selected mice would find the opportunity to run in a wheel a more efficacious consequence. To assess this assumption…

Previous reports have shown that overexpression of the growth- and plasticity-associated protein GAP-43 improves memory. However, the relation between the levels of this protein to memory enhancement remains unknown. Here, we studied this issue in transgenic mice (G-Phos) overexpressing native, chick GAP-43. These G-Phos mice could be divided at…

Stimulation paradigms that induce perforant path long-term potentiation (LTP) initiate phosphorylation of ERK1/2 and induce expression of a variety of immediate early genes (IEGs). These events are thought to be critical components of the mechanism for establishing the changes in synaptic efficacy that endure for hours or longer. Here we show that…

In Experiment 1, 10 pigeons were exposed to a successive symbolic matching-to-sample procedure in which the sample was generated by the pigeons' own behavior. Each trial began with both response keys illuminated white, one being the "correct" key and the other the "incorrect" key. The pigeons had no way of discriminating which key was correct and…

Increases in regulatory oversight of animal research require verification of effects of standard practices. There are no formal guidelines for establishing free-feeding weights in adult pigeons. In the present study, pigeons were obtained from a commercial supplier, weighed upon arrival, and then held in quarantine for 7 days with free access to…

The present experiment arranged a series of inverted U-shaped feedback functions relating reinforcer rate to response rate to test whether responding was consistent with an optimization account or with a one-to-one relation of response rate to reinforcer rate such as linear system theory's rate equation or Herrnstein's hyperbola. Reinforcer rate…

Identity matching-to-sample has been difficult to demonstrate in rats, but most studies have used visual stimuli. There is evidence that rats can acquire complex forms of olfactory stimulus control, and the present study explored the possibility that identity matching might be facilitated in rats if olfactory stimuli were used. Four rats were…