Abstract
based on exclusion have been investigated in different species because of its emergent nature, leading to evidence of rudimentary symbolic behavior in non-verbal organisms. Simple discrimination procedures provide a simple method to investigate exclusion performance, in which each trial consists of the simultaneous presentation of two stimuli, one with a positive function (S+) and one with a negative function (S-). In exclusion probe trials, an undefined stimulus (UnS) is presented with a familiar S - , and choices based on exclusion may lead to choosing the UnS, excluding the previously known S - . Novelty control trials (S + /UnS) are also conducted to assess the possible preference for the UnS. In this case, if performance is not controlled by novelty, then the subjects must choose the S + and not the UnS. The present study investigated exclusion performance in visual simple simultaneous discrimination tasks in eight dogs. The results indicated that seven of eight dogs showed evidence of exclusion performance (p < .05). These findings corroborate the literature that shows that dogs are capable of responding by exclusion, suggesting that potentially symbolic behavior may rely on basic behavioral learning and conditioning principles.
Highlights
Exclusion performance may be considered an emergent repertoire in which an individual chooses an undefined comparison stimulus upon an undefined sample (Dixon, 1977)
In a conditional discrimination task, some stimuli serve as samples, and others serve as comparisons
Baseline Training All of the dogs met the learning criteria established for each baseline training, with some variation in the total number of training sessions required for each animal
Summary
Exclusion performance may be considered an emergent repertoire in which an individual chooses an undefined comparison stimulus upon an undefined sample (Dixon, 1977). The aforementioned studies involved conditional discrimination tasks, but investigating exclusion performance is possible in less complex tasks, such as simple discrimination In this case, an individual is trained to differentially respond to stimuli presented in pairs (A1/A2, B1/B2, C1/C2, and so on), in which choosing the stimuli from one set (e.g., set 1) leads to reinforcing consequences, whereas choosing stimuli from another set (e.g., set 2) produces no consequences. The authors argued that responses to the UnS1 in the second test would reflect authentic inferential reasoning by exclusion because the UnS1 had become a part of the positive stimuli class, together with the positive items trained during baseline, whereas responding to the UnS2 would indicate possible control by novelty In this case, in addition to investigating responding by exclusion, the authors investigated learning outcomes from exclusion trials, such as including the UnSs in the positive class. To reach more definitive conclusions about exclusion performance in dogs, the present study sought to replicate the procedure of Costa and Domeniconi (2009) with specific topography of responses shaped before training and expanding the number of subjects
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