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Articles 1 - 11 of 11
Full-Text Articles in Psychology
Animal Welfare And Individual Characteristics: A Conversation Against Speciesism, Marc Bekoff, Lori Gruen
Animal Welfare And Individual Characteristics: A Conversation Against Speciesism, Marc Bekoff, Lori Gruen
Marc Bekoff, PhD
It seems impossible for a human being not to have some point of view concerning nonhuman animal (hereafter animal) welfare. Many people make decisions about how humans are permitted to treat animals using speciesist criteria, basing their decisions on an individual's species membership rather than on that animal's individual characteristics. Although speciesism provides a convenient way for making difficult decisions about who should be used in different types of research, we argue that such decisions should rely on an analysis of individual characteristics and should not be based merely on species membership. We do not argue that the concept of …
Constructive And Deconstructive Tool Modification By Chimpanzees (Pan Troglodytes), Amanda E. Bania, Stephany Harris, Hannah R. Kinsley, Sarah T. Boysen
Constructive And Deconstructive Tool Modification By Chimpanzees (Pan Troglodytes), Amanda E. Bania, Stephany Harris, Hannah R. Kinsley, Sarah T. Boysen
Sarah Boysen, PhD
Nine chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) were tested for their ability to assemble or disassemble the appropriate tool to obtain a food reward from two different apparatus. In its deconstructed form, the tool functioned as a probe for one apparatus. In its constructed form, the tool functioned as a hook, appropriate for a second apparatus. Each subject completed four test trials with each apparatus type. Tool types were randomized and counter-balanced between the two forms. Results demonstrated that adult and juvenile chimpanzees (N = 7) were successful with both tool types, while two infant chimpanzees performed near chance. Off-line video analyses revealed …
Laterality Influences Cognitive Performance In Rainbowfish Melanotaenia Duboulayi, Anne-Laurence Bibost, Culum Brown
Laterality Influences Cognitive Performance In Rainbowfish Melanotaenia Duboulayi, Anne-Laurence Bibost, Culum Brown
Culum Brown, PhD
Cerebral lateralization has been suggested to convey a selective advantage to individuals by enhancing their cognitive abilities. Few, however, have explicitly compared the cognitive ability of animals with strongly contrasting laterality. Here, we examined the influence of laterality on learning performance in the crimson spotted rainbowfish, Melanotaenia duboulayi, using a classical conditioning paradigm. We also compared the learning ability of wild caught and captive-reared fish to examine the influence of rearing environment on cognitive performance. Laterality was established by observing which eye fish preferred to use while viewing their mirror image. Subjects were then conditioned to associate the appearance of …
Cognitive And Psychiatric Predictors To Psychosis In Velocardiofacial Syndrome: A 3-Year Follow-Up Study, Kevin Antshel, Robert Shprintzen, Wanda Fremont, Anne Higgins, Stephen Faraone, Wendy Kates
Cognitive And Psychiatric Predictors To Psychosis In Velocardiofacial Syndrome: A 3-Year Follow-Up Study, Kevin Antshel, Robert Shprintzen, Wanda Fremont, Anne Higgins, Stephen Faraone, Wendy Kates
Robert J. Shprintzen
Objective: To predict prodromal psychosis in adolescents with velocardiofacial syndrome (VCFS). Method: 70 youth with VCFS, 27 siblings of youth with VCFS and 25 community controls were followed from childhood (Mean age = 11.8 years) into mid-adolescence (mean age 15.0 years). Psychological tests measuring intelligence, academic achievement, learning/memory, attention and executive functioning as well as measures of parent and clinician ratings of child psychiatric functioning were completed at both time point. Results: Major depressive disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder diagnoses increased in the VCFS sample. With very low false positive rates, the best predictor of adolescent prodromal …
Pantomime In Great Apes: Evidence And Implications, Ann E. Russon, Kristin Andrews
Pantomime In Great Apes: Evidence And Implications, Ann E. Russon, Kristin Andrews
Kristin Andrews, PhD
We recently demonstrated, by mining observational data, that forest-living orangutans can communicate using gestures that qualify as Pantomime. Pantomimes, like other iconic gestures, physically resemble their referents. More elaborately, pantomimes involve enacting their referents. Holding thumb and finger together at the lips and blowing between them to mean balloon is one example. Here we sketch evidence of pantomime in other great apes, methodological concerns, and sophisticated cognitive capabilities that great ape pantomimes suggest.
Brain Activity And Medical Diagnosis: An Eeg Study, Laila M. Ribas, Fábio T. Rocha, Neli R. Ortega, Armando F. Rocha, Eduardo Massad
Brain Activity And Medical Diagnosis: An Eeg Study, Laila M. Ribas, Fábio T. Rocha, Neli R. Ortega, Armando F. Rocha, Eduardo Massad
Armando F Rocha
Despite new brain imaging techniques that have improved the study of the underlying processes of human decision-making, to the best of our knowledge, there have been very few studies that have attempted to investigate brain activity during medical diagnostic processing.The main purpose of this paper was to investigate brain electroencephalography (EEG) activity associated with diagnostic decision-making in the realm of veterinary medicine using X-rays as a fundamental auxiliary test. The principal component analysis revealed four patterns that accounted for 85% of the total variance in the EEG activity recorded while veterinary doctors read a clinical history, examined an X-ray image …
Dot Polarity In Dynamic Glass Patterns, Dawn Vreven, Timothy Petersik, Jim Dannemiller, Jamie Schrauth
Dot Polarity In Dynamic Glass Patterns, Dawn Vreven, Timothy Petersik, Jim Dannemiller, Jamie Schrauth
Dawn L Vreven
Each frame of a Glass pattern consists of a random placement of dots and a spatially shifted copy of this pattern. Thus, each dot has a partner, forming dot-pair dipoles. When shown in succession, motion is perceived along the axis of the spatial shift. The perception of motion in dynamic Glass patterns is believed to be a two-stage process: first, local orientation detectors respond to the orientation signal in the dot-pair dipole; and second, global detectors integrate local orientation signals. We examined the ability to detect rotation in dynamic Glass patterns whose dipoles contained a) the same polarity, b) opposite …
Integration Of Speed Signals In The Direction Of Motion, Dawn Vreven, Preeti Verghese
Integration Of Speed Signals In The Direction Of Motion, Dawn Vreven, Preeti Verghese
Dawn L Vreven
Speed discrimination tasks were used to examine the spatial and temporal characteristics of the integration mechanism involved when signals are extended in the direction of motion. We varied the aspect ratio of a signal patch whose speed differed from the background, while holding the area of the signal patch constant, so that the signal patch could be either extended in the direction of motion or extended orthogonal to the direction of motion. Speed discrimination thresholds decreased dramatically as the signal patch was extended in the direction of motion. The spatial and temporal integration regions were larger than would be expected …
Detecting Structure In Glass Patterns: An Interocular Transfer Study, Dawn Vreven, Jarrod Berge
Detecting Structure In Glass Patterns: An Interocular Transfer Study, Dawn Vreven, Jarrod Berge
Dawn L Vreven
Glass patterns are visual stimuli used here to study how local orientation signals are spatially integrated into global pattern perception. We measured a form aftereffect from adaptation to both static and dynamic Glass patterns and calculated the amount of interocular transfer to determine the binocularity of the detectors responsible for the perception of global structure. Both static and dynamic adaptation produced significant form aftereffects and showed a very high degree of interocular transfer, suggesting that Glass-pattern perception involves cortical processing beyond primary visual cortex. Surprisingly, dynamic adaptation produced significantly greater interocular transfer than static adaptation. Our results suggest a functional …
On The Number Of Trials Necessary For Stabilization Of Error-Related Brain Activity Across The Life Span, Jason Themanson, Matthew Pontifex, Mark Scudder, Michael Brown, Kevin O'Leary, Chien-Ting Wu, Charles Hillman
On The Number Of Trials Necessary For Stabilization Of Error-Related Brain Activity Across The Life Span, Jason Themanson, Matthew Pontifex, Mark Scudder, Michael Brown, Kevin O'Leary, Chien-Ting Wu, Charles Hillman
Jason R. Themanson, Ph.D
The minimum number of trials necessary to accurately characterize the error-related negativity (ERN) and the error positivity (Pe) across the life span was investigated using samples of preadolescent children, college-age young adults, and older adults. Event-related potentials and task performance were subsequently measured during a modified flanker task. Response-locked averages were created using sequentially increasing errors of commission in blocks of two. Findings indicated that across all age cohorts ERN and Pe were not significantly different relative to the within-participants grand average after six trials. Further, results indicated that the ERN and Pe exhibited excellent internal reliability in preadolescent children …
Brain Nerve Conduction Velocity Is A Valid And Useful Construct For Studying Human Cognitive Abilities: A Reply To Saint-Amour Et Al, Andrew Johnson, T. Reed, Philip Vernon
Brain Nerve Conduction Velocity Is A Valid And Useful Construct For Studying Human Cognitive Abilities: A Reply To Saint-Amour Et Al, Andrew Johnson, T. Reed, Philip Vernon
Andrew M. Johnson
No abstract provided.