Reasoning by exclusion in the kea (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Nestor notabilis</Emphasis>)

Reasoning by exclusion, i.e. the ability to understand that if there are only two possibilities and if it is not A, it must be B, has been a topic of great interest in recent comparative cognition research. Many studies have investigated this ability, employing different methods, but rarely exploring concurrent decision processes underlying choice behaviour of non-human animals encountering inconsistent or incomplete information. Here, we employed a novel training and test method in order to perform an in-depth analysis of the underlying processes. Importantly, to discourage the explorative behaviour of the kea, a highly neophilic species, the training included a large amount of novel, unrewarded stimuli. The subsequent test consisted of 30 sessions with different sequences of four test trials. In these test trials, we confronted the kea with novel stimuli that were paired with either the rewarded or unrewarded training stimuli or with the novel stimuli of previous test trials. Once habituated to novelty, eight out of fourteen kea tested responded to novel stimuli by inferring their contingency via logical exclusion of the alternative. One individual inferred predominantly in this way, while other response strategies, such as one trial learning, stimulus preferences and avoiding the negative stimulus also guided the responses of the remaining individuals. Interestingly, the difficulty of the task had no influence on the test performance. We discuss the implications of these findings for the current hypotheses about the emergence of inferential reasoning in some avian species, considering causal links to brain size, feeding ecology and social complexity.     

Freud und die pränatale und perinatale Dimension des seelischen Erlebens

The tradition of psychoanalysis is burdened with fractures and splitting, the consequences of which have not yet, in my opinion, been adequately reflected. This concerns in particular the time-relatedness of some psychoanalytical concepts and the experiential importance of earliest experiences with the mother before and during birth. A fundamental reason for the incomplete apprehension of the reality of prenatal and perinatal experiences lies in the era-dependent and personally related limitations of Freud’s possibilities of insight, which were not adequately reflected in consideration of his great discoveries and from loyalty. The fractures mentioned were often compromise-like “solutions” relating to differing perceptions but also meant, more than had been realized, a loss of substantial insights. The consequence of this situation is that nowadays we have a variety of schools and groups with partial insights, which are, however, often arbitrarily generalized for the sake of group identity. This article is an attempt at a reflection of this situation and its background.     

Standardized Goals and Performance Feedback Aggregated Beyond the Work Unit: Optimizing the Use of Engineered Labor Standards and Electronic Performance Monitoring

Electronic performance monitoring can monitor employee performance, while providing proximal goals and immediate feedback. A warehouse management system was enhanced to depict goal and performance on handheld wireless computers to improve order selection in an auto-parts aftermarket distribution center. Upon the onset of the intervention of an engineered labor standard and electronic performance monitoring, performance immediately increased by 24 units picked per hour per person and was maintained for the duration of the study, an increase of 12.9%. Evidence from this study suggests that performance goals and feedback can be aggregated beyond the work-unit level without decreasing the effectiveness of the intervention.     

The role of motivation and volition in economic decisions: Evidence from eye movements and pupillometry

Economic decisions usually involve high stakes, real consequences, and some degree of personal risk. This article explores the impact of motivational and volitional states on economic decision processes in an incentivized lottery choice task. We investigated the patterns of decision time, choice, information search, and pupil dilation dependent on an experimental manipulation of motivation and volition, that is, the deliberative and the implemental mindset. The results indicated that choice preferences in economic decisions were robust and remained unaffected by motivational and volitional states, but decision processes were notably impacted. Decision makers in a deliberative state of mind searched for information more extensively and made slower decisions than the baseline. The implemental mindset was associated with more attention paid to the probability attributes of the gambles relative to the deliberative mindset. Furthermore, we observed that gamble outcomes that entailed no win at all (i.e., zero outcomes) played an important role for information search. These outcomes were largely disregarded in terms of predecisional information search but elicited pupillary responses similar to very high outcome lotteries. These results inform the current debate about the zero effect in risky choice. We also discuss the potential of eye-tracking studies of risky choice to dissolve ambiguities concerning the contributions of effort and arousal to modulating pupillary response. Implications for theoretical advances in decision research are discussed.     

Radial-arm-maze behavior of the red-footed tortoise (Geochelone carbonaria)

The radial-arm maze is an established method for testing an animal's spatial win-shift behavior. Research on mammals, birds, and fish has shown that the mastery of this task is commonly mediated, to different degrees, by two types of strategy: those based on external cues and those based on response stereotypy. In the present study we trained four red-footed tortoises (Geochelone carbonaria) to navigate an eight-arm radial maze while providing different levels of access to visual room cues. The results indicate that response stereotypy is the more prevalent mechanism in these tortoises, although navigation based on landmarks can also occur if learned initially. The findings suggest that tortoise spatial navigation may be more similar to that observed in mammals and birds than previously thought.     

Brief owner absence does not induce negative judgement bias in pet dogs

Humans in a negative emotional state are more likely to judge ambiguous stimuli as negative. In recent years, similar judgement biases have been found in some non-human animals that were exposed to long-term or short-term treatments aimed at influencing their affective states. Here we tested pet dogs in the presence and absence of their owners in a judgement bias test with an established go/no-go procedure. Even though owner absence is thought to induce a state of anxiety in dogs that have formed an attachment bond with their primary caretakers, we found no difference between the dogs' responses to ambiguous stimuli in the presence or absence of their owners. This result may be explained by the absence of anxiety in dogs that are accustomed to brief periods of separation from their owners, or by a sensitivity limit of the customary judgement bias tests in non-human animals when only a moderate, short-term state of anxiety is induced. In addition, we found significant differences between individuals and populations in the responses to ambiguous stimuli, which give impetus for further research.