Defensive burying as an ethological approach to studying anxiety: Influence of juvenile methamphetamine on adult defensive burying behavior in rats
Publication date: February 2018Source: Learning and Motivation, Volume 61Author(s): E.M. Anderson, M.L. McWaters, L.M. McFadden, L. MatuszewichAbstractThe defensive burying test is an ethological approach that has both pharmacological and physiological validity in studying rodent anxiety-like behaviors. The defensive burying test measures the naturally occurring behavior of displacing bedding toward a noxious stimulus. Exposure to psychostimulants can alter anxiety behaviors in children and adults, however few studies have investigated the long-term effects of chronic juvenile stimulant exposure on anxiety behaviors in adu...
Source: Learning and Motivation - July 10, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Editorial Board
Publication date: February 2018Source: Learning and Motivation, Volume 61Author(s): (Source: Learning and Motivation)
Source: Learning and Motivation - July 10, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Ethological approaches to studying psychological phenomena
Publication date: February 2018Source: Learning and Motivation, Volume 61Author(s): Douglas G. Wallace (Source: Learning and Motivation)
Source: Learning and Motivation - July 10, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Behavioral and neural subsystems of rodent exploration
Publication date: February 2018Source: Learning and Motivation, Volume 61Author(s): Shannon M. Thompson, Laura E. Berkowitz, Benjamin J. ClarkAbstractAnimals occupy territories in which resources such as food and shelter are often distributed unevenly. While studies of exploratory behavior have typically involved the laboratory rodent as an experimental subject, questions regarding what constitutes exploration have dominated. A recent line of research has utilized a descriptive approach to the study of rodent exploration, which has revealed that this behavior is organized into movement subsystems that can be readily quanti...
Source: Learning and Motivation - July 10, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Homeward bound: The capacity of the food hoarding task to assess complex cognitive processes
Publication date: February 2018Source: Learning and Motivation, Volume 61Author(s): Shawn S. Winter, Philip A. Blankenship, Max L. MehlmanAbstractFood hoarding is an adaptive behavior that functions to reduce the risk of predation. Rats are central-place hoarders that remove food from its sources and store or consume it at a nest or refuge location. Food hoarding is a spontaneous behavior that experimenters have taken advantage of to assess various aspects of cognition. The food hoarding task involves an outward segment where the rat leaves a refuge to search for food, upon finding food they have to decide if it will be ea...
Source: Learning and Motivation - July 10, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Reprint of “Sequential organization of movement kinematics is associated with spatial orientation across scales and species”
Publication date: February 2018Source: Learning and Motivation, Volume 61Author(s): Douglas G. WallaceAbstractA large part of an animals’ behavioral repertoire involves non-conditioned or spontaneously occurring behaviors (e.g., exploration, food hoarding, food protection, food handling). These behaviors are highly organized sequences of movement. In general, these movement sequences alternate between periods of fast linear speeds with little change in heading and periods of slow linear speeds with larger change in heading. This sequential organization or movement segmentation can be quantified as the correlation between...
Source: Learning and Motivation - July 10, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Social order: Using the sequential structure of social interaction to discriminate abnormal social behavior in the rat
We present a simple approach to the quantification of behavioral sequences that requires minimal additional analytical steps after individual behaviors are coded. We implement this approach to identify altered social behavior in rats exposed to alcohol during prenatal development, and show that the frequency of several pairwise sequences of behavior discriminate controls from ethanol-exposed rats when the frequency of individual behaviors involved in those sequences does not. Thus, the approach described here may be useful in detecting subtle deficits in the social domain and identifying neural circuits involved in the org...
Source: Learning and Motivation - July 10, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Insights from rodent food protection behaviors
Publication date: February 2018Source: Learning and Motivation, Volume 61Author(s): Megan Marie Martin St. PetersAbstractThis review aims to provide an update on the current state of research in food protection behaviors. This includes a detailed description of food protection behaviors, theoretical considerations, neuroscientific results, a separate examination of robbers’ behaviors, and some suggestions on future studies. The goal is to provide a succinct overview of food protection behaviors while showcasing their usefulness through an ethologically gestalt lens in which to examine underlying systems of interest not o...
Source: Learning and Motivation - July 10, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
String-pulling for food by the rat: Assessment of movement, topography and kinematics of a bilaterally skilled forelimb act
Publication date: February 2018Source: Learning and Motivation, Volume 61Author(s): Ashley A. Blackwell, Jenny R. Köppen, Ian Q. Whishaw, Douglas G. WallaceAbstractA variety of behavioral tests have been developed to assess skilled forelimb function in the rat, including tests that assess use of a single limb in reaching for food and placing it in the mouth for eating. The present study describes bilateral hand use in string-pulling to obtain a food reward. The movement consists of alternating forelimb movements in which a limb is advanced to grasp a string and withdraw it toward the body in order to retrieve a food rewar...
Source: Learning and Motivation - July 10, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Use of the parallel beam task for skilled walking in a rat model of cerebral ischemia: A qualitative approach
Publication date: February 2018Source: Learning and Motivation, Volume 61Author(s): Brian Ficiur, Jamshid Faraji, Gerlinde A.S. MetzAbstractThe parallel beam task (PBT), in which animals walk across two elevated parallel beams, is commonly used to assess motor deficits in laboratory rodents. Performance of the PBT challenges postural balance, inter-limb coordination and skilled walking abilities, and is typically assessed by quantitative measures such as number of foot slips and/or successful traversals. We proposed that including qualitative movement analysis of skilled walking would increase resolution and sensitivity of...
Source: Learning and Motivation - July 10, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Examining the influence of CS duration and US density on cue-potentiated feeding through analyses of licking microstructure
Publication date: February 2018Source: Learning and Motivation, Volume 61Author(s): Alexander W. JohnsonAbstractIn the current study, groups of mice were trained with either short (20 s) or long (120 s) conditioned stimulus (CS) durations associated with different rates of sucrose unconditioned stimulus (US) delivery, to examine whether different behavioral forms of cue-potentiated feeding in sated mice would be evoked. In training mice received presentations of an auditory CS for 20 s during which a sucrose US was delivered at a density of 1/9 s (Group-20-s). A second group of mice received an auditory...
Source: Learning and Motivation - July 10, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Reprint of: Using video modeling with voiceover instruction plus feedback to train implementation of stimulus preference assessments
Publication date: Available online 25 June 2018Source: Learning and MotivationAuthor(s): Casey L. Nottingham, Jason C. Vladescu, Antonia R. Giannakakos, Lauren K. Schnell, Joshua L. LipschultzAbstractBehavior analysts frequently use stimulus preference assessments to identify putative reinforcers for consumers with autism spectrum disorder. The current study evaluated the effect of video modeling with voiceover instruction and on-screen text (VMVOT) and performance feedback to train staff to implement the multiple-stimulus-without-replacement, paired-stimulus, and single-stimulus preference assessments. Generalization prob...
Source: Learning and Motivation - July 10, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Evaluation of renewal mitigation of negatively reinforced socially significant operant behavior
Publication date: August 2018Source: Learning and Motivation, Volume 63Author(s): Michael E. Kelley, Corina Jimenez-Gomez, Christopher A. Podlesnik, Andrew MorganAbstractRenewal is a relapse phenomenon that occurs when previously treated target behavior re-emerges as a result of context change. Typically, a target response is reinforced in Context A, extinguished in Context B, and then re-emerges in Context A - despite the continuation of the extinction procedure. In the current study, we initially reinforced inappropriate mealtime behavior or aggression in Context A across three children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Dis...
Source: Learning and Motivation - July 10, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Effects of extended extinction and multiple extinction contexts on ABA renewal
Publication date: August 2018Source: Learning and Motivation, Volume 63Author(s): Kirra A. Krisch, Siavash Bandarian-Balooch, David L. NeumannAbstractThe return of fear following exposure therapy suggests that extinction does not result in a permanent unlearning of the association between a conditional stimulus (CS) and an unconditional stimulus (US). One proposed mechanism of return of fear is ABA renewal in which a CS is paired with a US in context A, presented alone in context B, and followed by test trials in context A. The current study examined the effects of extended extinction and multiple extinction contexts on AB...
Source: Learning and Motivation - July 10, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
Relapse of conditioned taste aversion in rats exposed to constant and graded extinction treatments
Publication date: August 2018Source: Learning and Motivation, Volume 63Author(s): Sadahiko Nakajima, Takaya Ogai, Ayano SasakiAbstractIn a generalized bait-shyness preparation of rats, the graded extinction procedure was not effective in preventing the relapse of conditioned aversion to a target taste. The present study is a replication of this finding in a conventional taste aversion preparation using a sodium chloride (NaCl) solution as the conditioned stimulus (CS) and an injection of poisonous lithium chloride (LiCl) as the unconditioned stimulus (US). After aversive conditioning of salty taste by a CS-US pairing, its ...
Source: Learning and Motivation - July 10, 2018 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research
