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Full-Text Articles in Organisms
How The Rat Turned White, Kenneth J. Shapiro
How The Rat Turned White, Kenneth J. Shapiro
Kenneth J. Shapiro, PhD
This is the first in a three-part series on the use of animals in psychological research. In it, I describe how animals got into laboratories in the first place, and their purpose and life there. In the second, I will describe animal model research, the strategy whereby psychologists' develop nonhuman animal models to study human psychopathology. In the concluding piece, I will present a critique of this enterprise, using original data I gathered. The three articles are based on a forthcoming book, Animal Models of Human Psychology: Science, Ethics, and Policy.
A Rodent For Your Thoughts: The Animal Model Strategy In Psychology, Kenneth J. Shapiro
A Rodent For Your Thoughts: The Animal Model Strategy In Psychology, Kenneth J. Shapiro
Kenneth J. Shapiro, PhD
In this second of three essays, I describe how the early modern psychologists adopted the strategy of further transforming rats and other species into models of human thought, feeling, and behavior, and, particularly, of disorders of these - in effect taking "a rodent for your thoughts." In the third essay I will provide a critique and empirically-based evaluation of animal model research. Here I indicate what the model strategy in the biomedical sciences, properly understand, is intended to achieve and how, by contrast, particular models are presented to the public and funding agencies. Finally, I describe how they are utilized …
Psychology's Use Of Animals: Current Practices And Attitudes, Kenneth J. Shapiro
Psychology's Use Of Animals: Current Practices And Attitudes, Kenneth J. Shapiro
Kenneth J. Shapiro, PhD
In this chapter, I present a psychology primer for the uninitiated, with special emphasis on psychology's uses of animals. After sketching the scope of the field generally, I review available data on present numbers and species of animals used in psychological research, level of suffering induced and current trends. I also provide several concrete examples of psychological research involving animals. Finally, the chapter concludes with a presentation of attitudes of psychologists toward animals and these practices.
The Ingrown World Of Animal Model Research In Psychology, Kenneth J. Shapiro
The Ingrown World Of Animal Model Research In Psychology, Kenneth J. Shapiro
Kenneth J. Shapiro, PhD
In the previous essay, I described the proper function of models in science as heuristic, as a way of generating hypotheses about the actual object of study. Turning to animal models in psychology, I offered a general characterization of that enterprise using sham feeding, an animal model of the eating disorder called bulimia, as an example. In this final of three essays, I offer an evaluation of this animal model strategy that largely employs the tools of social science. I close with a recommendation and a prediction.
Understanding Dogs Through Kinesthetic Empathy, Social Construction, And History, Kenneth J. Shapiro
Understanding Dogs Through Kinesthetic Empathy, Social Construction, And History, Kenneth J. Shapiro
Kenneth J. Shapiro, PhD
The term, "come into animal presence," she takes from the title of a Denise Levertov poem. The poem, which reads, in part, "What joy when the insouciant armadillo glances at us and doesn't quicken his trotting across the track into the palm bush. What is this joy?" This joy is the possibility of our being in the presence of animals for "(t)he armadillo has some intention to pursue in the palm forest." This joy, to which I invite you here, consists in dwelling in that presence, in inhabiting that intention, that armored but guileless world of the armadillo. I will …
Psychology And Its Animal Subjects, Kenneth J. Shapiro
Psychology And Its Animal Subjects, Kenneth J. Shapiro
Kenneth J. Shapiro, PhD
By way of introducing Psychologists for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PsyETA) to readers of the journal, I have been asked to make some comments about the organization and, from a personal point of view, to suggest some of my own positions and views.
Differential Microglial Activation Following Immune Challenge In Peripubertal And Adult Outbred Mice, David J. Placzek
Differential Microglial Activation Following Immune Challenge In Peripubertal And Adult Outbred Mice, David J. Placzek
Masters Theses
Pubertal development is a time of growth and development in the brain, leading to high sensitivity during this period. Past research in our lab has shown that shipping female inbred and outbred mice during pubertal development alters their sensitivity to steroid hormones in adulthood, thus affecting sexual receptivity, cognition, depression-like behavior, and anxiety-like behavior. Here, we test the hypothesis that mice treated with lipopolysaccharide during pubertal development would have more active microglia, the brain's immune cells, after injection than mice treated with lipopolysaccharide in adulthood. No significant interactions were observed between treatment and age between any brain area measured, suggesting …
Construct Validity Of Animal-Assisted Therapy And Activities: How Important Is The Animal In Aat?, Lori Marino
Construct Validity Of Animal-Assisted Therapy And Activities: How Important Is The Animal In Aat?, Lori Marino
Lori Marino, PhD
Animal-assisted therapy and animal-assisted activities involve a nonhuman animal as a key therapeutic agent in some kind of intervention that may range from highly specified, as in AAT, to more casual, as in AAA. In this review I address the question: How important is the animal in animal therapy? In other words, does the recent literature strongly support the notion that a live animal, as opposed to another novel stimulating component, is specifically necessary for therapeutic success. Two meta-analyses and 28 single empirical studies were reviewed in order to address this issue. I conclude that the effects of AAT and …
Are Apes’ Responses To Pointing Gestures Intentional?, Olivia Sultanescu, Kristin Andrews
Are Apes’ Responses To Pointing Gestures Intentional?, Olivia Sultanescu, Kristin Andrews
Kristin Andrews, PhD
This paper examines the meaningfulness of pointing in great apes. We appeal to Hannah Ginsborg’s conception of primitive normativity, which provides an adequate criterion for establishing whether a response is meaningful, and we attempt to make room for a conception according to which there is no fundamental difference between the responses of human infants and those of other great apes to pointing gestures. This conception is an alternative to Tomasello’s view that pointing gestures and reactions to them reveal a fundamental difference between humans and other apes.
Towards A New Paradigm Of Non-Captive Research On Cetacean Cognition, Lori Marino, Toni Frohoff
Towards A New Paradigm Of Non-Captive Research On Cetacean Cognition, Lori Marino, Toni Frohoff
Lori Marino, PhD
Contemporary knowledge of impressive neurophysiology and behavior in cetaceans, combined with increasing opportunities for studying free-ranging cetaceans who initiate sociable interaction with humans, are converging to highlight serious ethical considerations and emerging opportunities for a new era of progressive and less-invasive cetacean research. Most research on cetacean cognition has taken place in controlled captive settings, e.g., research labs, marine parks. While these environments afford a certain amount of experimental rigor and logistical control they are fraught with limitations in external validity, impose tremendous stress on the part of the captive animals, and place burdens on populations from which they are …
Beyond Anthropomorphism: Attributing Psychological Properties To Animals, Kristin Andrews
Beyond Anthropomorphism: Attributing Psychological Properties To Animals, Kristin Andrews
Kristin Andrews, PhD
In the context of animal cognitive research, “anthropomorphism” is defined as the attribution of uniquely human mental characteristics to non-human animals. Those who worry about anthropomorphism in research are confronted with the question of which properties are uniquely human. As animals, humans and non-human animals1 share a number of biological, morphological, relational, and spatial properties. In addition, it is widely accepted and humans and animals share some psychological properties such as the ability to fear or desire. These claims about the properties animals share with humans are often the products of empirical work.
A Role For Folk Psychology In Animal Cognition Research, Kristin Andrews
A Role For Folk Psychology In Animal Cognition Research, Kristin Andrews
Kristin Andrews, PhD
If we consider that the field of animal cognition research began with Darwin’s stories about clever animals, we can see that over the 150 years of work done in this field, there has been a slow swing back and forth between two extreme positions. One extreme is the view that other animals are very much like us, that we can use introspection in order to understand why other animals act as they do, and that no huge interpretive leap is required to understand animal minds. On the other extreme we have the view that other animals are utterly different from …