Development of Desirable Behaviors in Dog-Assisted Interventions.

Dog-assisted interventions (DAI) are those that include specially trained dogs in human health services. Often, the training methods employed to train animals for DAI are transmitted between trainers, so the latest scientific research on dog learning and cognition is not always taken into account. The present work aims to evaluate the impact that the main theories on the evolution of the dog have had both in promoting different training methods and in the relevance of behavior in the evolution of the skills of actual dogs. Then, an integrative method for the training of dogs is presented. This method takes into account the research on dog learning mechanisms and cognition processes, and effectively promotes the development of desirable behaviors for DAI during the dog's ontogeny.

Where association ends. A review of associative learning in invertebrates, plants and protista, and a reflection on its limits.

Since the beginning of the 21st century, the Minimal Cognition approach has emerged vigorously, focusing on the study of the adaptive behavior of the simplest organisms, including bacteria, assuming that they are sentient and information-processing entities. Although Minimal Cognition has occasionally used Pavlovian methods to try to demonstrate Associative Learning, neither the Psychology of Learning nor the Comparative Psychology traditions are prominent in the movement. However, the Psychology of Learning approach, with its highly sophisticated experimental designs, has done a great deal of research on Associative Learning in animals and carried out several studies on plants and unicellular organisms. The present work offers a comprehensive review of these experimental results, among invertebrates, plants and unicellular organisms (paramecia and the amoeba Physarum policephalum) showing that, while there are increasing instances of Associative Learning in many invertebrate phyla (and also many phyla with no data) there is no adequate evidence of it in unicellular protists (despite more than a century of experiments with paramecia and amoeba) or in plants (despite recent results that so claim). We then consider the alternative offered by Minimal Cognition and suggest some complementary ideas, from a Comparative Developmental Psychology approach, which we call "Minimal Development." (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Blocking in rats, humans and snails using a within-subjects design.

The present research investigated the blocking effect in three different species, rats, humans and snails in formally equivalent tasks using a within-subjects design. Experiment 1 demonstrated the blocking effect in a context-flavour aversive conditioning preparation in rats: Animals failed to associate a flavour with an illness episode when it was presented in a context in which the illness was already predicted by other cues. Experiment 2 replicated this blocking effect in humans assessing their ability to learn a goal location in a virtual environment: Participants failed to learn the location of the goal in reference to a spatial cue presented alongside other pre-trained spatial cues that already indicated its location. Finally, in Experiment 3, snails failed to associate an odour with the presentation of food in the presence of other odours that already reliably predicted its presentation. The present study offers a start point for systematic comparisons between vertebrate and invertebrate species in formally equivalent tasks that produce univocal demonstrations of the blocking effect.

Associative learning phenomena in the snail (Helix aspersa): conditioned inhibition.

Two experiments using garden snails (Helix aspersa) showed conditioned inhibition using both retardation and summation tests. Conditioned inhibition is a procedure by which a stimulus becomes a predictor of the absence of a relevant event--the unconditioned stimulus (US). Typically, conditioned inhibition consists of pairings between an initially neutral conditioned stimulus, CS(2), and an effective excitatory conditioned stimulus, CS(1), in the absence of the US. Retardation and summation tests are required in order to confirm that CS(2) has acquired inhibitory properties. Conditioned inhibition has previously been found in invertebrates; however, these demonstrations did not use the retardation and summation tests required for an unambiguous demonstration of inhibition, allowing for alternative explanations. The implications of our results for the fields of comparative cognition and invertebrate physiological models of learning are discussed.

Blocking of conditioning of tentacle lowering in the snail (Helix aspersa).

Experiment 1 established the effectiveness of an appetitive conditioning of odours procedure with snails (Helix aspersa) that was subsequently used for the study of blocking. In this important phenomenon, the conditioning of a CS1 (where CS is the conditioned stimulus) prior to conditioning of a compound, CS1CS2, blocked the conditioning to the CS2. Experiments 2a, 2b, and 2c demonstrated this associative effect using three different experimental controls. Experiments 3a and 3b replicated the blocking effect and allowed us to reject an explanation of blocking based on generalized effects of several treatments of diverse stimuli in blocking and control groups (the pseudoblocking effect). The implications of these results for the study of invertebrate cognition by means of conditioning techniques are discussed.

Conditioning of tentacle lowering in the snail (Helix aspersa): acquisition, latent inhibition, overshadowing, second-order conditioning, and sensory preconditioning.

In a series of related experiments, we studied associative phenomena in snails (Helix aspersa), using the conditioning procedure of tentacle lowering. Experiments 1A and 1B demonstrated a basic conditioning effect in which the pairing of an odor (apple) as the conditioned stimulus (CS) with the opportunity to feed on carrot as the unconditioned stimulus (US) made snails exhibit increased levels of tentacle lowering in the presence of the CS. Experiments 2 and 3 showed that the magnitude of the conditioning was reduced when snails were exposed to the CS prior to the conditioning trial (a latent inhibition effect). Experiment 4 examined the effects produced by pairing a compound CS (apple-pear) with food presentations and demonstrated the existence of an overshadowing effect between the two odors. Experiment 5 revealed that pairing one CS with another previously conditioned stimulus increased tentacle lowering to the new CS (a second-order conditioning effect). Finally, Experiment 6 showed that pairing two odors prior to conditioning of one of them promoted an increase in tentacle lowering in response to the other (a sensory preconditioning effect). The results are discussed in terms of an associative analysis of conditioning and its implications for the study of cognition in invertebrates.