Conditional learning and responding by exclusion in dogs

• Grant number: 12/22730-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: May 01, 2013
• End date: February 28, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Experimental Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Deisy das Graças de Souza
• Grantee: Marina Castana Fenner
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

Exclusion is a basic behavioral process in which, given an unfamiliar sample stimulus, an individual (human or nonhuman) selects comparison stimulus also unfamiliar. Due to this very stable behavior pattern, this behavioral process is used in teaching procedures that promote learning without errors. In order to extend the generality of data, this study aims to replicate the original experiment about exclusion with dogs as experimental subjects. An automatic equipment will be used for presenting stimuli and recording operant responses. In each trial, two visual stimuli will be presented as comparisons and a verbal command will be presented as sample. In Phase 1, B1 will be presented as S+ in response to the Y1 verbal command, while B2 and B3 will be alternately presented as S-. In Phase 2 (exclusion probes), Y2 and Y3 will be alternately presented as samples and the comparison pairs will be composed by B1 and B2 or B1 and B3. Finally, in Phase 3 (discrimination probes), B2 and B3 will be presented as comparisons in the same trial while Y2 and Y3 will be alternately presented as samples. The results will be analyzed in order to identify whether the procedure promoted: (1) reasoning by exclusion; and (2) learning by exclusion. If exclusion trials performed in Phase 2 are insufficient for conditional relations learning to occur, a fourth phase will be held in order to train them using a procedure of differential reinforcement in the mold used for the Y1B1 relation. Positive results would suggest that exclusion is a basic process shared by different species.