Animal Behavior: Inter-individual Interactions, Learning, and Cognition Flashcards

Flashcards covering inter-individual interactions, dominance, communication signals, facility design for livestock, associative and social learning, motivation, emotions, and animal cognition.

Conspecific

An animal belonging to the same species as another animal.

Dominance

The predictable relationship between a pair of conspecifics where one animal learns to dominate the other (subordinate), and the subordinate tends to avoid confrontation.

Ritualization of Aggressive Behavior

A result of social hierarchy that avoids the need for injurious interactions and physical aggression through standardized displays.

Communication

An action on the part of one organism that alters the probability of a behavior occurring in another organism in a manner that is adaptive to either one or both participants.

Discrete Signals

Communication signals that show little variability in intensity and duration, such as those used for species or group identity.

Graded Signals

Communication signals that vary in intensity or duration as the relative arousal or motivation of the animal changes, such as in aggressive behavior.

Tetrachromatic Vision

The vision system of most birds, which includes four types of cone photoreceptors enabling them to detect wavelengths in the near ultraviolet range ($300\text{--}400\,nm$).

Dichromatic Vision

A vision system using two types of cones; most mammals have this, including dogs, who have 'blue' and 'red' but miss 'green' cones.

Pheromones

Chemical signals that consist of more than one compound and trigger a social response in members of the same species.

Flight Zone

The area around an animal that, when entered suddenly by a person, causes the animal to move away or bolt.

Point of Balance

A location (usually at the shoulder) where a handler standing behind it causes the animal to move forward, and standing in front of it causes the animal to back up.

Classical (Pavlovian) Conditioning

A learning process where a neutral (conditioned) stimulus is repeatedly paired with an unconditioned stimulus until the neutral stimulus alone evokes a conditioned response.

Instrumental (Operant) Conditioning

A form of learning where an animal's active behavior is instrumental for obtaining consequences (rewards or avoiding punishments).

Positive Reinforcement ($+R$)

Adding a stimulus to the environment ($+$) following a behavior that results in an increase in the rate of that behavior.

Negative Reinforcement ($-R$)

Removing a stimulus from the environment ($-$) following a behavior that results in an increase in the rate of that behavior.

Positive Punishment ($+P$)

Adding a stimulus to the environment ($+$) following a behavior that results in a decrease in the rate of that behavior.

Negative Punishment ($-P$)

Removing or delaying a stimulus from the environment ($-$) following a behavior that results in a decrease in the rate of that behavior.

Contiguity

A principle in associative learning stating that the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli must occur fairly close in time for learning to take place.

Contingency

The requirement in learning that a conditioned stimulus must reliably predict or be followed by an unconditioned stimulus.

Social Facilitation

An improvement in the performance of a task simply due to the presence of others, without necessarily learning a new behavior.

Social Enhancement

An increase in the tendency to interact with an object (stimulus enhancement) or location (local enhancement) due to the presence of another individual.

Social Learning

A behavior acquired through social transmission, such as watching a demonstrator, that persists even when the demonstrator is absent.

Imitation

A specific form of social learning where an animal matches the exact topography of a demonstrator's behavior to achieve a goal.

Emulation

A form of social learning where an observer sets out to achieve the same goal as a demonstrator but may not duplicate the exact actions.

Motivation

Mechanistic internal states that vary in magnitude and explain why an animal is currently performing a particular behavior pattern.

Homeostasis

The maintenance of an animal's physiological state at a stable equilibrium.

Negative Feedback

The process whereby the execution of a behavior pattern reduces the motivation to perform it.

Stereotypic Behavior

Repetitive behaviors that often arise from attempts to perform highly motivated normal behavior patterns in environments where the animal is powerless to effect change.

Emotion

An organized psychophysiological reaction to news about ongoing relationships with the environment, involving behavioral, physiological, and experiential facets.

Affective Neuroscience

The field of study that investigates the neural mechanisms of emotion.

Empathy

The ability to understand and share the feelings of another individual.

Theory of Mind

A cognitive ability where an individual believes mental states play a causal role in behavior and infers those states in others by observing their actions.

Object Permanence

The cognitive understanding that a hidden object continues to exist even when it is out of sight.

Serial Order Effects

The tendency for items at the beginning and end of a list to be remembered better than those in the middle.

FAS Scale

The Fear, Anxiety, and Stress spectrum used for canine behavioral assessment in veterinary settings, ranging from $0$ (relaxed) to $5$ (severe signs/aggression).