Purpose of study was to investigate the applicability of Piaget's theory and methods to the study of conservation in nonhumans. Two out of four subject monkeys achieved stringent and statistically significant performance criteria in sameness-difference judgment tests and showed significant generalization in the fewest possible trials. (Author/SB)

Findings are consistent with behavior observed in rhesus monkeys reared under similar conditions, thereby broadening the base from which to extrapolate to human development. (Authors)

Article adapted from "Signals in the Wind, by Dietrich Burkhardt, et. al.

Describes an animal laboratory course using male Siamese fighting fish which is inexpensive, compact, and permits students to conduct a wide variety of behavioral investigations. (Author/CK)

Attempts to define "creative categorization" using animal behavior and human perception as examples. (RK)

Describes some experiments with monkeys that "can provide us with vital and unexpected information about the organization of the human brain", according to Dr. James H. Dewson, a Stanford University scientist. (Editor/RK)

An environmental magazine answers 10 questions about wildlife that readers often write and ask. Questions address the behavior of animals and evolutionary reasons for biological adaptations suggested by research. (LZ)

Addresses irrational fears of snakes and how an understanding of snakes can alleviate this fear. For example, the survival methods of the Eastern Hognose snake, which inhabits upland hillsides and woodland meadows, include impersonating a cobra and playing dead. Although this snake looks and acts dangerous, it is quite harmless to humans. (LP)

Working memory, the ability to temporarily retain task-relevant information across a delay, is frequently investigated using delayed matching-to-sample (DMTS) or delayed Go/No-Go tasks (DGNG). In DMTS tasks, sample cues instruct the animal which type of response has to be executed at the end of a delay. Typically, performance decreases with…

The equilibrium phenomenon of matching behavior traditionally has been studied in stationary environments. Here we attempt to uncover the local mechanism of choice that gives rise to matching by studying behavior in a highly dynamic foraging environment. In our experiments, 2 rhesus monkeys ("Macacca mulatta") foraged for juice rewards by making…

McSweeney and Weatherly (1998) argued that differential habituation to the reinforcer contributes to the behavioral interactions observed during multiple schedules. The present experiment confirmed that introducing dishabituators into one component of a multiple schedule increases response rate in the other, constant, component. During baseline,…

Environmental familiarization is a learning phenomenon embedded within most tasks used to study learning and motivation. Given its prevalence there is surprisingly little systematic behavioral research on factors affecting familiarization. The six experiments reported in the present report used rats' tendency to interact more with a novel object…

Fetal and infant rats can learn to avoid odors paired with illness before development of brain areas supporting this learning in adults, suggesting an alternate learning circuit. Here we begin to document the transition from the infant to adult neural circuit underlying odor-malaise avoidance learning using LiCl (0.3 M; 1% of body weight, ip) and…