Comparative Psychology

Papini, Mauricio R.

doi:10.1002/9780470756973.ch10

Cited by 12 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 71 publications

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“…We no longer live in a scientific world of monolithic theoretical institutions, but rather one featuring a web of interconnected, specialist subfields. Papini ( 2011 , p. 211) beautifully captured this idea in saying: “As a field, comparative psychology is almost interdisciplinary by definition…[and] demands not only knowledge of psychological theories and techniques, but an understanding of behavioral neuroscience, comparative neurology, behavioral ecology, developmental biology, and evolutionary theory.” This echoes the suggestion of Shettleworth ( 2009 , p. 216) that “exploiting and nourishing those connections, and teaching our students to do the same, is an essential part of the future of the field.” The answer that thus seems obvious to us is that the next generation of comparative psychologists will come from the same constituent fields as the experts that comprise or complement the discipline, in perhaps only a slightly more skewed manner than they already always have.…”

Section: What's In a Name?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Commentary: A crisis in comparative psychology: where have all the undergraduates gone?

McMillan

Sturdy

2015

Front. Psychol.

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Section: What's In a Name?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Commentary: A crisis in comparative psychology: where have all the undergraduates gone?

McMillan

Sturdy

2015

Front. Psychol.

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“…As learning and memory organization appear to have emerged in a long distant evolutionary past, they utilize vital and deeply rooted neural mechanisms and extend across broad phylogenetic divisions (Giurfa & Sandoz, 2012;Menzel & Benjamin, 2013). Despite the phenomena's broad taxonomic distribution, much of our knowledge regarding learning comes from only a small number of vertebrate species (Mackintosh, 1974;Papini, 2008). Unfortunately, the neural complexities associated with the vertebrate brain present significant challenges for research into the biological mechanisms of learning, and argue for the inclusion of alternate, more accessible model organisms.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Operant avoidance learning in crayfish, Orconectes rusticus: Computational ethology and the development of an automated learning paradigm

Bhimani

Huber

2015

Learn Behav

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Research in crustaceans offers a valuable perspective for studying the neural implementation of conserved behavioral phenomena, including motivation, escape, aggression, and drug-sensitive reward. The present work adds to this literature by demonstrating that crayfish successfully learn to respond to spatially contingent cues. An integrated video-tracking system automatically delivered a mild electric shock when a test animal entered or remained on a substrate paired with punishment. Following a few instances of shock delivery, crayfish quickly learned to avoid these areas. Comparable changes in substrate preference were not exhibited by yoked controls, but locomotion differed significantly from both pre-conditioning levels and from those of their masters receiving shock in a contingent fashion. The results of this work provide valuable insights into the principles governing avoidance learning in an invertebrate system and provide a behavioral template for exploring the neural changes during associative learning. Serving as a case study, this project introduces a new computer framework for the automated control of learning paradigms. Based on routines contained within the JavaGrinders library (free download at iEthology.com), it integrates real-time video tracking with robotic interfaces, and provi des a suitable fr amewor k f or implementing automated learning paradigms.

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“…Animal cognition research covers a wide range of topics, from how animals learn and remember to how they make decisions and how they interact with other individuals. By studying a wide number of questions in an equally wide range of species, the field broadly aims to understand the mechanisms, functions and the evolution of cognition (although exact definitions depended on context, for example see Beran et al, (2014), Olmstead & Kuhlmeier, (2015) and Shettleworth (2009) for 'comparative cognition' and for 'comparative psychology' see Call et al, (2017) and Papini, (2003)). However, studying animal minds-that are in principle unobservable-is challenging (Allen & Bekoff, 1999;Stevens, 2010), and the process is shaped by a variety of assumptions about minds, animals, and knowledge (Andrews & Monsó, 2021), as well as the history of the field itself.…”

Section: The Hidden Side Of Animal Cognition Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Hidden Side of Animal Cognition Research: Scientists’ Attitudes Toward Bias, Replicability and Scientific Practice

Farrar¹,

Ostojić²,

Clayton³

2021

Preprint

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Animal cognition research aims to understand animal minds by using a diverse range of methods across an equally diverse range of species. Throughout its history, the field has sought to mitigate various biases that occur when studying animal minds, from experimenter effects to anthropomorphism. Recently, there has also been a focus on how common scientific practices might affect the reliability and validity of published research. Usually, these issues are discussed in the literature by a small group of scholars with a specific interest in the topics. This study aimed to survey a wider range of animal cognition researchers to ask about their attitudes towards classic and contemporary issues facing the field. Two-hundred and ten active animal cognition researchers completed our survey, and provided answers on questions relating to bias, replicability, statistics, publication, and belief in animal cognition. Collectively, researchers were wary of bias in the research field as a whole, but less so in their own work. Despite sometimes (39.7% of responses) or often (38.8% of responses) hoping for one result over another, researchers reported that they could often (45.8% of responses) or always (38.4% of responses) detach from any biases to perform objectively fair tests of animal cognition. Over 70% of researchers endorsed Morgan’s canon as a useful principle but many caveated this in their free-text responses, and researchers self-reported that a median of 80% of their studies had been published. Their free-text responses suggested a stronger publication bias against negative and inconclusive results, and results that questioned “preferred” theories. Researchers rarely reported having performed questionable research practices themselves — however they thought that other researchers sometimes (52.7% of responses) or often (27.9% of responses) perform them. Researchers near unanimously agreed that replication studies are important but too infrequently performed in animal cognition research, and 44.7% of researchers agreed that their own area (44.7% of responses), or other areas (73.0% of responses) of research could experience a ‘replication crisis’ if replication studies were performed. Consistently, participants’ free-text responses provided a nuanced picture of the challenges animal cognition research faces, and highlighted many possible improvements. Overall, these data provide a picture of active researchers’ beliefs about the animal cognition research processes that can be used to inform debates on where and how the field can improve.

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Comparative Psychology

Cited by 12 publications

References 71 publications

Commentary: A crisis in comparative psychology: where have all the undergraduates gone?

Commentary: A crisis in comparative psychology: where have all the undergraduates gone?

Operant avoidance learning in crayfish, Orconectes rusticus: Computational ethology and the development of an automated learning paradigm

The Hidden Side of Animal Cognition Research: Scientists’ Attitudes Toward Bias, Replicability and Scientific Practice

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