Novel Tool Development and the Dynamics of Control: The Rodent Touchscreen Operant Chamber as a Case Study

Sullivan, Jacqueline A.

doi:10.1017/psa.2022.63

Cited by 4 publications

References 15 publications

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Introduction: Practices, Strategies, and Methodologies of Experimental Control in Historical Perspective

Schickore

2024

Archimedes

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The introduction distinguishes four distinct strands in the history of experimental control. The first is the historical development of control practices to stabilize and standardize experimental conditions. The second is the emergence and career of the comparative design in experimentation, understood as a way of generating and securing knowledge of cause-effect relations. The third involves the unfolding, both in philosophy of science and in the sciences themselves, of methodological discussions on control practices and designs in experimental practice. The fourth is the history of the term “(experimental) control.” The introduction describes how the contributions to this volume address these aspects of experimental control.

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Introduction: Practices, Strategies, and Methodologies of Experimental Control in Historical Perspective

Schickore

2024

Archimedes

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Controlling Away the Phenomenon: Maze Research and the Nature of Learning

Arnet

2024

Archimedes

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Following maze research in animal behavior studies through the twentieth century, I explore “control” as an extended historical process involving the successive stabilization or removal of bits and scraps of the world to arrive at the pure form of a phenomenon of interest. Early behaviorist investigation of maze learning aimed to strip environmental cues from maze design to study context-free learning. Exemplifying this tendency is the famous 1907 “Kerplunk” experiment of Watson and Carr, in which they concluded that rats could ultimately learn a maze as one long bodily response unspooling in a successive series of actions, rather than basing their movement through the maze on external sensory stimuli. Supporting this context-free research program was a conceptual understanding of learning as something singular and general. With later, more ecological, accounts of animal behavior, however, it was argued that these early control practices had nullified the rich interrelation between organism and environment that makes advanced learning possible. The result was a deflated and distorted understanding of animal learning. Researchers had, in short, controlled away the phenomenon. This case highlights the tension between the object of inquiry and the object of control, and illustrates how novelty emerges in reinterpreting as central to the phenomenon of interest that which was previously merely interference.

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Information-seeking in mice (Mus musculus) during visual discrimination: study using a distractor elimination paradigm

Hataji,

Goto

2024

Anim Cogn

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Some animals seek information to solve problems when they do not know the answer. Information-seeking behavior has become a key focus in studies of animal metacognition, providing insights into how animals monitor their own knowledge states. This behavior is thought to be a form of metacognitive control. Nevertheless, research on such metacognitive control has been biased toward specific taxa, such as primates, and has not been conducted in rodents, which are the most common experimental animals. This study examined whether mice exhibit information-seeking behavior during two visual discrimination tasks and what factors influence this behavior. We trained mice to discriminate between stimuli differing in luminance or orientation, with more minor differences increasing task difficulty. An information-seeking option was introduced during these tasks, allowing mice to eliminate distractor stimuli and ensure a correct response. The results indicated that mice sought information more frequently during difficult discriminations than easier ones. However, subsequent generalization tests revealed that the mice relied on environmental cues to utilize the information-seeking option. These findings suggest that information-seeking behavior in mice may not solely reflect metacognitive processes, and further investigation is needed to explore alternative explanations.

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Novel Tool Development and the Dynamics of Control: The Rodent Touchscreen Operant Chamber as a Case Study

Cited by 4 publications

References 15 publications

Introduction: Practices, Strategies, and Methodologies of Experimental Control in Historical Perspective

Introduction: Practices, Strategies, and Methodologies of Experimental Control in Historical Perspective

Controlling Away the Phenomenon: Maze Research and the Nature of Learning

Information-seeking in mice (Mus musculus) during visual discrimination: study using a distractor elimination paradigm

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