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…

Suggests some ideas for introducing students to zoos--their learning advantages, the backgrounds of their animals, and their maintenance--including five learning activities. (RK)

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)

Describes five courses involved in the intensive training that dogs and their handlers go through in the Military Dog Studies Branch at Lackland Air Force Base (San Antonio, Texas) in preparation for duties in law enforcement. (HD)

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)

Authors see the provision of an "aesthetic atmosphere" as one of their greatest challenges. One is an art specialist and the other is a principal. Outlines some of the ways in which they have successfully met that challenge. (Editor/RK)

The roles played by veterinary science departments are creditable and important, says this head of a department of veterinary science. Those roles will reflect an absolute increase in participation with veterinary schools on a regional and national basis, and a relative increase in direct involvement in veterinary education. (LBH)

Compared tendencies of adults and rhesus monkeys to escape adaptively when uncertain. In a visual discrimination task using a threshold paradigm, humans and monkeys escaped trials in which they were uncertain of the stimulus. In a similar task with constant stimuli, some humans escaped adaptively, but one escaped infrequently and non-optimally,…

Presents evidence that although patients with semantic deficits can sometimes show good performance on tests or object decisions, this pattern applies when nonsee-objects do not respect the regularities of the domain. Patients with semantic dementia viewed line drawings of a real and chimeric animals side-by-side and were asked to decide which was…

Drawing on the notion of the domain-specificity of recognition, reviews evidence on the effect of language in classification of and reasoning about categories from different domains. Looks at anthropological infant classification, and preschool categorization literature. Suggests the causal nature and indicative power of animal categories seem to…