Describes the variety of formal and informal educational programs being developed by zoos and aquariums in the United States and suggests methods of increasing the educational utility of these facilities. (AL)

Substances that deliver chemical messages between same/different species are called semiochemicals. Surveyed are three types of semiochemicals (pheromones, allomones, and kairomones), types of organisms involved, and specific chemicals used to carry the various kinds of messages. (JN)

Assesses dimensions of the threatened-species problem (by contrast with the way it has been handled in the past) and suggests some directions for urgent research if the problem is to be confronted in its proper scope and scale. Among topics addressed are the biological, genetic, and ecological attributes of species. (JN)

A test is described in which three psychotropic drugs were evaluated for their effects on pregnant rats. Behavioral changes are given. (SA)

Experiments related to studying innate responsiveness to auditory stimuli in various infant organisms establish that animals have innate perceptual knowledge. (SA)

Three experiments, employing conditioned suppression in rats, examined the extent to which pretraining on one element of a compound stimulus blocked conditioning to the other element when some feature of the reinforcer was changed on compound trials. (Editor)

The research reported here was directed at evaluating whether or not the effectiveness of a Pavlovian unconditioned stimulus (US) in promoting associative learning is reduced if the US is shortly preceded by another occurrence of the same US. (Author)

Stimulus analyzer theory as proposed by Sutherland and Mackintosh (1971) makes the unique prediction that the first-experienced reinforcement schedule will influence resistance to extinction more than subsequent schedules. Results presently reported of runaway acquisition and extinction indicate the opposite: C-P consistently produce substantially…

Recent data indicate that the form of the conditioned response (CR) may often be substantially influenced by the characteristics of the conditioned stimulus (CS) as well as by those of the unconditioned stimulus (US). Here five experiments examine the influence of CS characteristics on the form of the Pavlovian CR anticipatory to a food US in…

Examines the effects of cage size on stereotyped and normal locomotion and on other abnormal behaviors in singly caged animals, whether observed abnormal behaviors tend to co-occur, and if the development of an abnormal behavior repertoire leads to reduction in the number of normal behavior categories. (Author/RK)

Presents three experiments that explore whether inescapable shock of long duration and moderate intensity (LoShk) produces an avoidance-escape deficit (called an interference effect) by causing animals to learn to respond less actively or by causing them to learn to be "helpless". (Editor)

Several experiments tested the occurrence of the "Kamin effect", i.e., the deficit in performance of an incompletely learned avoidance task, in terms of discrimination (choice) behavior by rats. (Editor/RK)

Repeated, isolated presentations of a stimulus typically reduce the subsequent ability of that cue to become an effective conditioned stimulus. This phenomenon is known as the latent inhibition effect. Four experiments investigate this effect. (Editor/RK)