scholarly journals Social Referencing in the Domestic Horse

Animals ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Schrimpf ◽  
Marie-Sophie Single ◽  
Christian Nawroth
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Social Referencing ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Emotional Information ◽  
Test Arena ◽  
Novel Object ◽  
Domestic Species ◽  
Emotional Cues ◽  
Novel Objects ◽  
Negative Condition

Dogs and cats use human emotional information directed to an unfamiliar situation to guide their behavior, known as social referencing. It is not clear whether other domestic species show similar socio-cognitive abilities in interacting with humans. We investigated whether horses (n = 46) use human emotional information to adjust their behavior to a novel object and whether the behavior of horses differed depending on breed type. Horses were randomly assigned to one of two groups: an experimenter positioned in the middle of a test arena directed gaze and voice towards the novel object with either (a) a positive or (b) a negative emotional expression. The duration of subjects’ position to the experimenter and the object in the arena, frequency of gazing behavior, and physical interactions (with either object or experimenter) were analyzed. Horses in the positive condition spent more time between the experimenter and object compared to horses in the negative condition, indicating less avoidance behavior towards the object. Horses in the negative condition gazed more often towards the object than horses in the positive condition, indicating increased vigilance behavior. Breed types differed in their behavior: thoroughbreds showed less human-directed behavior than warmbloods and ponies. Our results provide evidence that horses use emotional cues from humans to guide their behavior towards novel objects.

scholarly journals Exploratory behaviour towards novel objects is associated with enhanced learning in young horses

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Janne Winther Christensen ◽  
Line Peerstrup Ahrendt ◽  
Jens Malmkvist ◽  
Christine Nicol
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Intrinsic Factor ◽  
Learning Performance ◽  
Exploratory Behaviour ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Novel Object ◽  
Learning Tasks ◽  
Novel Objects ◽  
Young Horses ◽  
The Impact

AbstractThe mechanisms underlying individual variation in learning are key to understanding the development of cognitive abilities. In humans and primates, curiosity has been suggested as an important intrinsic factor that enhances learning, whereas in domesticated species research has primarily identified factors with a negative effect on cognitive abilities, such as stress and fearfulness. This study presents the first evidence of a link between object-directed curiosity and learning performance in young horses in two very different learning tasks (visual discrimination and pressure-release). We exposed young horses (n = 44) to standardised novel object tests at 5 months and 1 year of age and found consistency in responses. Standard indicators of fearfulness (e.g. heart rate and alertness) were unrelated to learning performance, whereas exploratory behaviour towards the novel objects correlated to performance in both learning tasks. Exploratory behaviour was unreinforced in the novel object tests and likely reflects the animal’s intrinsic motivation (i.e. curiosity), suggesting that this trait is favourable for learning performance. In addition to the insights that these results provide into cognition in a domesticated species, they also raise questions in relation to fostering of curiosity in animals and the impact that such manipulation may have on cognitive abilities.

scholarly journals Disfluencies signal reference to novel objects for adults but not children

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 581-609 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah J. OWENS ◽  
Justine M. THACKER ◽  
Susan A. GRAHAM
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Novel Object ◽  
Filled Pauses ◽  
Novel Objects ◽  
Novel Targets ◽  
The Way ◽  
Familiar Objects

AbstractSpeech disfluencies can guide the ways in which listeners interpret spoken language. Here, we examined whether three-year-olds, five-year-olds, and adults use filled pauses to anticipate that a speaker is likely to refer to a novel object. Across three experiments, participants were presented with pairs of novel and familiar objects and heard a speaker refer to one of the objects using a fluent (“Look at the ball/lep!”) or disfluent (“Look at thee uh ball/lep!”) expression. The salience of the speaker's unfamiliarity with the novel referents, and the way in which the speaker referred to the novel referents (i.e., a noun vs. a description) varied across experiments. Three- and five-year-olds successfully identified familiar and novel targets, but only adults’ looking patterns reflected increased looks to novel objects in the presence of a disfluency. Together, these findings demonstrate that adults, but not young children, use filled pauses to anticipate reference to novel objects.

scholarly journals Feature Deformation Meta-Networks in Image Captioning of Novel Objects

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (07) ◽  
pp. 10494-10501
Author(s):  
Tingjia Cao ◽  
Ke Han ◽  
Xiaomei Wang ◽  
Lin Ma ◽  
Yanwei Fu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Image Features ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Image Captioning ◽  
Novel Object ◽  
Detection Model ◽  
Novel Objects ◽  
Visual Concepts ◽  
Set Sharing ◽  
Ablation Study ◽  
Object Features

This paper studies the task of image captioning with novel objects, which only exist in testing images. Intrinsically, this task can reflect the generalization ability of models in understanding and captioning the semantic meanings of visual concepts and objects unseen in training set, sharing the similarity to one/zero-shot learning. The critical difficulty thus comes from that no paired images and sentences of the novel objects can be used to help train the captioning model. Inspired by recent work (Chen et al. 2019b) that boosts one-shot learning by learning to generate various image deformations, we propose learning meta-networks for deforming features for novel object captioning. To this end, we introduce the feature deformation meta-networks (FDM-net), which is trained on source data, and learn to adapt to the novel object features detected by the auxiliary detection model. FDM-net includes two sub-nets: feature deformation, and scene graph sentence reconstruction, which produce the augmented image features and corresponding sentences, respectively. Thus, rather than directly deforming images, FDM-net can efficiently and dynamically enlarge the paired images and texts by learning to deform image features. Extensive experiments are conducted on the widely used novel object captioning dataset, and the results show the effectiveness of our FDM-net. Ablation study and qualitative visualization further give insights of our model.

Orienting to third-party conversations

2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 273-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
CARMEN MARTÍNEZ-SUSSMANN ◽  
NAMEERA AKHTAR ◽  
GIL DIESENDRUCK ◽  
LORI MARKSON
Keyword(s):  
Third Party ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Novel Object ◽  
Neutral Information ◽  
The Third ◽  
Gaze Patterns ◽  
New Information ◽  
Novel Objects ◽  
The Third Party

ABSTRACTChildren as young as two years of age are able to learn novel object labels through overhearing, even when distracted by an attractive toy (Akhtar, 2005). The present studies varied the information provided about novel objects and examined which elements (i.e. novel versus neutral information and labels versus facts) toddlers chose to monitor, and what type of information they were more likely to learn. In Study 1, participants learned only the novel label and the novel fact containing a novel label. In Study 2, only girls learned the novel label. Neither girls nor boys learned the novel fact. In both studies, analyses of children's gaze patterns suggest that children who learned the new information strategically oriented to the third-party conversation.

Investigation into methodologies of the ‘standard’ human approach test for sows

1999 ◽  
Vol 1999 ◽  
pp. 178-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. M. Forde ◽  
J. N. Marchant ◽  
H. A. M. Spoolder
Keyword(s):  
Short Duration ◽  
Specific Response ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Test Arena ◽  
Testing Environment ◽  
Considerable Debate ◽  
Novel Objects ◽  
Level Of Motivation

The ‘standard’ human approach test has been used extensively since the early 1980's to assess fear responses in most farmed species. However, in recent years, there has been considerable debate questioning its efficacy given the short duration of the familiarisation period and the suitability of the location of the testing environment, i.e. the home pen versus a novel arena (Pedersen, 1997). It is possible that the test simply reflects an animal's level of motivation to explore the novel arena and any novel objects therein rather than a specific response to the presence of a human. This work addresses both the length of acclimatisation period and the location of the test arena.

The pragmatics of discovery constrains children’s tendency to map novel labels onto novel objects

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 251-274
Author(s):  
Jenna L. Wall ◽  
William E. Merriman
Keyword(s):  
Inhibitory Control ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Novel Object ◽  
Sense Modality ◽  
Visible Object ◽  
Novel Objects ◽  
Modality Shift ◽  
Test Objects ◽  
Metacognitive Ability

When taught a label for an object, and later asked whether that object or a novel object is the referent of a novel label, preschoolers favor the novel object. This article examines whether this so-called disambiguation effect may be undermined by an expectation to communicate about a discovery. This expectation may explain why 4-year-olds do not show the disambiguation effect if a sense modality shift occurs between training and test. In Study 1, 3- and 4-year-olds learned a label for a visible object, then examined two hidden objects manually and predicted which one they would be asked about. Only the older group predicted that they would be asked about the object that matched the visible object. Study 1 also included a test of the standard disambiguation effect, where both the training and test objects were visible. Both 3- and 4-year-olds showed a weaker disambiguation effect in this test when the matching object was unexpected rather than expected. In Study 2, both age groups predicted they would be asked about this object when it was unexpected. In Study 3, both age groups showed a stronger disambiguation effect when allowed to communicate about this object before deciding which object was the referent of a novel label. Metacognitive ability predicted the strength of this disambiguation effect even after controlling for age and inhibitory control. The article discusses various explanations for why only 4-year-olds abided by the pragmatics of discovery in the test of the cross-modal disambiguation effect, but both 3- and 4-year-olds abided by it in the test of the standard disambiguation effect.

Mutual exclusivity and phonological novelty constrain word learning at 16 months

2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (5) ◽  
pp. 933-950 ◽  
Author(s):  
EMILY MATHER ◽  
KIM PLUNKETT
Keyword(s):  
Word Learning ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Mutual Exclusivity ◽  
Novel Object ◽  
Preferential Looking ◽  
Novel Objects

ABSTRACTStudies report that infants as young as 1 ; 3 to 1 ; 5 will seek out a novel object in response to hearing a novel label (e.g. Halberda, 2003; Markman, Wasow & Hansen, 2003). This behaviour is commonly known as the ‘mutual exclusivity’ response (Markman, 1989; 1990). However, evidence for mutual exclusivity does not imply that the infant has associated a novel label with a novel object. We used an intermodal preferential looking task to investigate whether infants aged 1 ; 4 could use mutual exclusivity to guide their association of novel labels with novel objects. The results show that infants can successfully map a novel label onto a novel object, provided that the novel label has no familiar phonological neighbours. Therefore, as early as 1 ; 4, infants can use mutual exclusivity to form novel word–object associations, although this process is constrained by the phonological novelty of a label.

scholarly journals Goats prefer positive human emotional facial expressions

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (8) ◽  
pp. 180491 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Nawroth ◽  
Natalia Albuquerque ◽  
Carine Savalli ◽  
Marie-Sophie Single ◽  
Alan G. McElligott
Keyword(s):  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Emotional Facial Expressions ◽  
Test Arena ◽  
Emotional Cues ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Impact

Domestication has shaped the physiology and the behaviour of animals to better adapt to human environments. Therefore, human facial expressions may be highly informative for animals domesticated for working closely with people, such as dogs and horses. However, it is not known whether other animals, and particularly those domesticated primarily for production, such as goats, are capable of perceiving human emotional cues. In this study, we investigated whether goats can distinguish human facial expressions when simultaneously shown two images of an unfamiliar human with different emotional valences (positive/happy or negative/angry). Both images were vertically attached to a wall on one side of a test arena, 1.3 m apart, and goats were released from the opposite side of the arena (distance of 4.0 m) and were free to explore and interact with the stimuli during the trials. Each of four test trials lasted 30 s. Overall, we found that goats preferred to interact first with happy faces, meaning that they are sensitive to human facial emotional cues. Goats interacted first, more often and for longer duration with positive faces when they were positioned on the right side. However, no preference was found when the positive faces were placed on the left side. We show that animals domesticated for production can discriminate human facial expressions with different emotional valences and prefer to interact with positive ones. Therefore, the impact of domestication on animal cognitive abilities may be more far-reaching than previously assumed.

scholarly journals Novelty at second glance: A critical appraisal of the novel-object paradigm based on meta-analysis

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Takola ◽  
E. T. Krause ◽  
C. Müller ◽  
H. Schielzeth
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Standardized Testing ◽  
Time Interval ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Food Label ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Novel Object ◽  
Novel Objects ◽  
Individual Consistency

ABSTRACTThe study of consistent individual differences in behaviour has become an important focus in research on animal behaviour. Behavioural phenotypes are typically measured through standardized testing paradigms and one frequently used paradigm is the novel object test. In novel object tests, animals are exposed to new (unknown) objects and their reaction is quantified. When repeating trials to assess the temporal consistency of individual differences, researchers face the dilemma of whether to use the same or different ‘novel’ objects, since the same stimulus can result in habituation, while exposure to different objects can result in context-dependent responses. We performed a quantitative assessment of 254 effect sizes from 113 studies on novel-object trials to evaluate the properties of this testing paradigm, in particular the effect of object novelty and time interval between novel-object trials on estimates of individual consistency. We found an increase of sample sizes and an increase of estimates of repeatabilities with time. The vast majority of short-term studies (<one month) used different novel objects, while long-term studies (>one month) used either the same or different novel objects about equally often. The average estimate for individual consistency was r = 0.47 (short-term r = 0.52, long-term r = 0.44). Novelty, time interval between trials and their interaction together explained only 3% of the total heterogeneity. Overall, novelobject trials reliably estimate individual differences in behaviour, but results were very heterogeneous even within the same study species, suggesting susceptibility to unknown details in testing conditions. Most studies that measure novel-object responses in association with food label the trait as neophobia, while novel-object trials in a neutral context are labelled variously as boldness/shyness, exploratory behaviour or neophobia/neophilia. Neophobia/neophilia is also the term most specific to novel object presentations. To avoid ambiguity, we suggest object neophobia/neophilia as the most specific label for novel-object responses.

scholarly journals Relationships between Thoroughbreds’ Contribution in the Pedigree and the Level of Fearfulness and Performance in Warmblood Stallions

2018 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 288-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Budzyńska Monika ◽  
Kamieniak Jarosław ◽  
Marciniak Beata ◽  
Sołtys Leszek
Keyword(s):  
Heart Rate ◽  
Performance Tests ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Novel Object ◽  
Percentage Contribution ◽  
Object Based ◽  
Novel Objects ◽  
Potential Factor ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Fear Reactivity

Abstract The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that Thoroughbred (TB) ancestors blood percentage in a pedigree is a potential factor differentiating the level of fearfulness (based on behavior and heart rate (HR)) and performance scores in warmblood stallions. A total of 267 three-year-old warmblood stallions were subjected to the novel-object based test during their participation in the performance tests’ program. The effect of ancestors percentage contribution in the pedigree was analyzed by taking into account horses of four TB (<25.01, 25.01-50.00, 50.01-75.00, >75.00%) ancestor groups. It was found that the stallions with a higher proportion (>75.00%) of TB blood revealed higher values of HR measured at the riding hall just before the start of the fearfulness test. The results showed that the higher proportions of TB ancestors blood in the stallions’ pedigree were correlated with the higher values for total time to pass novel objects when led by a handler during the fearfulness test. Negative correlations were found between the TB percentage and the scores for character and trot evaluated by the trainer as well as rideability evaluated by the test rider. The fi ndings imply that a high proportion of Thoroughbreds in the pedigree may negatively infl uence some performance traits and increase fear reactivity in warmblood stallions.

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