Numerical discrimination by rats (Rattus norvegicus) using body and vibrissal touch.

Davis, Hank; MacKenzie, Kimberley A.; Morrison, Sandra

doi:10.1037/0735-7036.103.1.45

Cited by 27 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 30 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The present results involve the use of rat subjects rather than the avians employed in the original work (Marold, 1939). Much historical work on "counting animals " was performed with birds-although with few exceptions (e.g., Pepperberg, 1987), rats have begun to appear as subjects more frequently in the modem literature (e.g., Capaldi & Miller, 1988;Davis & Bradford, 1986;Davis, MacKenzie, & Morrison, 1989). Because of obvious differences in the foraging behavior of these two animal groups, it was not a forgone conclusion that the positive results previously found with birds would be replicated with rats.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Numerically restricted food intake in the rat in a free-feeding situation

Davis

Bradford

1991

Animal Learning & Behavior

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Numerically restricted food intake in the rat in a free-feeding situation

Davis

Bradford

1991

Animal Learning & Behavior

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…Although there has been research on numerical competence in auditory (Starkey et al 1983), tactile (Davis et al 1989;Riggs et al 2006) and chemical (Carazo et al 2009;Thomas and Simmons 2010) channels, most of the literature on numerical competence pertains to vision (Dehaene 1992;Burr and Ross 2008;Brady et al 2011). It is striking that the literature on animal numerical competence does not include salticid spiders, as these small predators have intricate vision-based behaviour and the capacity to classify prey by sight into multiple categories (Nelson and Jackson 2011;Harland and Jackson 2001).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

The role of numerical competence in a specialized predatory strategy of an araneophagic spider

Nelson

Jackson

2012

Anim Cogn

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Although a wide range of vertebrates have been considered in research on numerical competence, little is known about the role of number-related decisions in the predatory strategies of invertebrates. Here, we investigate how numerical competence is expressed in a highly specialized predatory strategy adopted by the small juveniles of Portia africana when practicing communal predation, with the prey being another spider, Oecobius amboseli. Two or more P. africana juveniles sometimes settle by the same oecobiid nest and then share the meal after one individual captures the oecobiid. Experiments were designed to clarify how these predators use number-related cues in conjunction with non-numerical cues when deciding whether to settle at a nest. We used lures (dead spiders positioned in lifelike posture) arranged in a series of 24 different scenes defined by the type, configuration and especially number of lures. On the whole, our findings suggest that P. africana juveniles base settling decisions on the specific number of already settled conspecific juveniles at the nest and express a preference for settling when the number is one instead of zero, two or three. By varying the size of the already settled juveniles and their positions around the nest, we show that factors related to continuous variables and stimulus configuration are unlikely explanations for our findings.

show abstract

“…Apparently rats can discriminate the number of reinforced runs in a runway (Capaldi & Miller, 1988;Burns, Goettl, & Burt, 1995), the number of touches to their body (Davis, MacKenzie, & Morrison, 1989), the number of auditory tones (Davis & Albert, 1986;Breukelaar & Dalrymple-Alford, 1998), the number of electrical foot shocks (Davis & Memmott, 1983), and the number of lined tunnels in an open field (Davis & Bradford, 1986;Suzuki & Kobayashi, 2000). These studies controlled some physical aspects of the stimuli, such as total duration of a tone or spatial positions of tunnels, to prevent them from being used as effective discriminative cues.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Acquisition and Limited Transfer of Numerical Discrimination of Object Stimuli in Rats

Kamijo

Taniuchi

2014

Psychol Rec

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A series of experiments explored rats' ability to learn abstract ordinal position of object stimuli to investigate their numerical competence. Three of four Long-Evans rats, trained to respond to the third of six objects in a line, reliably learned this task in three different trials with three different stimulus objects. As the objects' spatial location was changed trial-by-trial, spatial position of stimuli could not serve as an effective discriminative cue. In the first transfer test, trials with three novel objects were used as probe tests to the original training. In the second test, rats were trained with all six objects, and then given three novel test stimuli. During the transfer test period, rats maintained good performance with training stimuli, whereas most responses to probe tests were at chance level, showing limited transfer of counting behavior to novel stimuli. Results are discussed in terms of stimulus-specific learning and domainrestricted concept learning.

show abstract

Numerical discrimination by rats (Rattus norvegicus) using body and vibrissal touch.

Cited by 27 publications

References 30 publications

Numerically restricted food intake in the rat in a free-feeding situation

Numerically restricted food intake in the rat in a free-feeding situation

The role of numerical competence in a specialized predatory strategy of an araneophagic spider

Acquisition and Limited Transfer of Numerical Discrimination of Object Stimuli in Rats

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About