Christian Agrillo
President of the Italian Society of Ethology (SIE) and associate editor of the journal Animal Cognition. He published a hundred of papers on cognitive skills of animals, ranging from apes to fish.
Location Padova, Italy
Activity
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"Animal research can only be allowed if it is a truly beneficial and much-needed outcome". This is absolutely true, Nigar!
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Dear Mary and Joy, in the valid cue the perimeter of the right square is larger for a few milliseconds preceding the stimulus. This moves our attention toward the right and then the stimulus appears. We are fast to respond to the onset of this stimulus. In the invalid cue, the stimulus appears in the opposite position (left), therefore we are slower to react...
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Dear Ayshea, you (as well as some colleagues of yours) raised an important issue (we also talk about ethics later). I agree it is important to highlight and I thank you to have shared us your opinion.
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Thanks for your comment, Kayley!
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Dear Jo, the results of these studies have implications for humans too. For instance, in the case of chicks' studies (week 2) you can see that animals studies paved the way to human studies/theories too. In the case of the genetic of dyscalculia (week 4) we observed fish behavior... so, we both observe animal behaviour and infer something from humans.
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Dear Paola, it happens frequently, you expect a given result and.. animals surprise you! Maybe we need to enlarge the investigation of chimps.. a larger sample size but also a different methodology. Thanks for your message!
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Dear Gill, I am very happy to have seen you enjoyed this part of the course!
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Dear Elizabeth, thanks for sharing this. Yes, I do hope this would be interesting for you !!
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Christian Agrillo made a comment
Recent comments have made it necessary for us to address the issue of animal welfare and care when discussing the use of animal models in psychology. We know that this topic could cause certain students distress and this was actually one of our worries while developing the course. However, we still felt it necessary to educate others on this subject,...
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Christian Agrillo replied to jo dene
Dear Jo, thanks for your opinion. I added a comment in this section on the important issue you raised.
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Christian Agrillo replied to Peter Ma
"while assuming that humans behave similarly to other animals (really so?)." We assume so when we adopt an evolutionary perspective (like paleontologists compare bones and make connections among species) but of course some human behaviours might be rarely found in animals (and vice-versa). In most of cases, however, similarities are greater than...
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Totally agree, and indeed this is how it works!
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"In addition to controlled experiments using animals I still believe there is a place for observational research and its analysis." Absolutely agree, Helen, animals can help us but they are not our only 'friends' to shed light on this issue.
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Christian Agrillo replied to Elena Colombo
Yes, you can. It is a longer trip because it is difficult to extinguish a conditioned response, but you can..
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Christian Agrillo replied to Sam lemaire
Dear All, I agree this sounds upsetting; describing historical studies like these, however, is useful to go back to the initial source of knowledge in psychology ("how much animal psychology is?" remember?!). That said, I want to be clear that any ethical committee would not easily accept a study like this, the wind is (correctly) changed.
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Christian Agrillo replied to Keith Pott Turner
Thanks for sharing these deep thoughts, Keith..
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Yes, Helen, understanding the relative contribution of genes and environment is difficult, if not impossible in some cases. In some cases, genes are more important (e.g., in the building blocks of nervous systems) in some others maybe the environment counts more (e.g., the development of musical abilities)... it's a big challenge (and mess) for scientists!
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Not only inborn. There are also studies that suggest that you can slightly improve in pre-verbal numerical abilities by training (Park et al 2013 Psychological Science)
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As far as scientists can see, it seems to be a cognitive deficiency rather than a visual problem.
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Christian Agrillo replied to Lex Muusse
Hi Lex, both mechanisms are at work. The psychological one showed here however applies also to other contexts (for instance in human relationship) , so maybe casino context is more complicated than that explained here but still it is a good example to explain 'intermittent reinforcement' and our tendency not to extinguish the response.
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Christian Agrillo replied to Loris Bozza
Thanks, Loris !
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Totally agree, Lyubov, this should have also impact to education at school.
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@NamiZ Agree, strange feeling!
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Good questions, Helen. I have no response at the moment as this is a new research field with lots of unanswered questions.
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7) Biochemistry studies the chemistry of biological components in general (not only the nervous system); neuroanatomy is the anatomy of the nervous system (spinal cord, brain, cranial nerves, etc); neurobiology is the physiology of neurons (their structure, synapses, glia cells). Is it clearer?
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3) YES, they can resemble them!
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2) By increasing their axonal diameter to 1 mm or more, cephalopods have been able to increase the speed of propagation of action potentials. Due to the physical constraint imposed by the skull and vertebrae, vertebrates had to find an alternative solution. This was achieved by introducing the myelin sheath, which leads action potentials to propagate at speeds...
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1) Yes, it is a general assumption. Personally, I don't agree with it but it's a general trend.
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Yes, this is the way drugs work, changing the entrance of ions inside neurons.
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Great summary!
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Dear Helen, I am sorry if this was harder. This issue is important in psychology but I acknowledge that it requires previous knowledge (e.g., basic knowledge in physiology). I hope you may successfully follow the rest of the week!
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Christian Agrillo replied to Amelie Farwell
Yes, it is, but it is difficult to say it was a 'true' experiment. Looks more a single case with several anecdotical evidence. Surely these were useful for the evolution of psychology, still they often remain "anecdotical".
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Sure, Barry, but when scientists studied it for the first time RMI functional scans could not be done at all. Just it. At present, nobody would do this experiment with rabbits in this way. Hope this is clearer now.
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Christian Agrillo replied to Peter Ma
Thanks for the feedback. I will take note of this and consider inserting a glossary for technical terms. Thanks again!
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Christian Agrillo replied to Helen B
Good point. Scientists often study adults but age is not the main independent variable, so we still do not know to much how learning mechanisms change as a function of age in many species. More generally, it is known there is inter-individual variability in learning abilities but we don't know often why (genes? Environmental factors? Personality?)
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Does this mean the cats were not allowed to lie down? If they could lie down, they could see horizontal lines...
RESPONSE: Clever observation: they can move inside, so sometimes they lie down. The most correct way to say would be: "they were limited in the possibility to see horizontal lines".
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I understand this; luckily enough, nobody can do these kinds of studies anymore in this way.
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Older animals, including humans , can learn to utilize other parts of their neural system to compensate for damage?
RESPONSE: I am afraid that adult/old individuals are limited in their capacity to use other neural circuits to compensate damaged neurons. As you know, neural plasticity is larger when we are born/juveniles, then it becomes more and more rigid.
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Would this be limb-jointed motion, or would a snake or worm also be recognized?
Response: interesting issue. There are also studies on biological motion in aquatic species, so you can study also with organisms without legs, for instance, or snake-like animals. -
Exactly, here we showed only chicks but in general several species could be useful to address these questions
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Say, instead of the same number of spots on the left & right panels, if we show eight on the left & two on the right, how will the chicks respond & what will the outcome suggest instead?
Response: NOT DONE, BUT WOULD BE INTERESTING.f walking vs rotating where rotating is also a form of animate motion, then the distinction is not clear, right?
Response:... -
Walking hen: it might be but in other control studies scientists used another regular movement (but not biological motion) and they still preferred the walking hen.
Pitch and tones were almost the same in the two auditory stimuli but just arranged in a way to produce consonant / dissonant chords.
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OK, can you find a solution (or some tips) about experiment 2 after reading the other comments here ? :-)
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Christian Agrillo replied to Peter Ma
100% Agree, Peter !
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Yes, for experiment 2 time spent near the two stimuli could be ok, anyway!
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Christian Agrillo replied to Helen B
The impact of culture on the perception of visual illusions is a very interesting field. Cultural psychologists found we are differently susceptible to some size illusions (e.g., Ebbinghaus illusion) depending on the society in which we live. In this case, there is no study on cross-cultural differences in the solitaire illusion but I agree with you it would...
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Good point, Helen, the choice of the biologically relevant stimulus change as a function of the species. If a species did not show a particular interest to select the larger amount of food one may choose a different type of stimulus (e.g., sexual partners?)
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Good point, Peter.. sometimes we observe animal behaviour for 'basic science', just to know their 'mind'. And still we continue to test them also after several studies. However, when I say "I would say that behavioural studies help animals to defend their rights, not the opposite" I did not mean to say that we totally stop studying them, I said that testing...
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1) Yes, a choice for stimulus A or B may imply perception /no-perception of illusory motion but to be precise alternative explanations may explain this result (although we must acknowledge that the control stimulus is made exactly by the same material for this reason the two stimuli are controlled for several physical parameters like brightness, complexity of...
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Christian Agrillo replied to Peter Ma
Dear Peter,
1) why do you think so? I mean, in nature of course we cannot control spatial arrangement of food items and in a lab you can test vulnerable species with the Solitaire pattern to know something more about their perceptual system. However, this laboratory study should not penalize these species.. am I missing your point maybe?
2) Yes, this is a... -
Christian Agrillo replied to Elena Colombo
Great experimental set up! Only a main comment:
You don't need to have both a reward and a punishment. You may have simply a reward for the positive stimulus (and nothing else for the other stimulus) or a punishment for the negative stimulus (and nothing else for the other stimulus).
A would suggest to use a reward as it is not appropriate anymore to use... -
Christian Agrillo replied to Sam lemaire
Sam, this is a very (deep) and respectful thought. Thanks for having shared with you. Whether possible, animals should not be involved in research, I agree. And I also agree that in some cases ABA is not effective. So, thanks for this clarification for all the students!
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"Unfortunately, such research may open the possibility of behavioral modification in humans, and even some kind of biological terror weapon (as well as helpful medical treatments for memory loss)". Absolutely agree, Tavis
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Dear Lana, this is a big issue! It could be damaged the spinal cord, or the cortex involved in motor activity. Changes in ion diffusions are related to drug use, for instance; some drugs may increase/reduce the entrance of some ions into the neurons, either exciting or inhibiting their activity.
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Christian Agrillo replied to Sam lemaire
Hi Sam,
Yes, little Albert helped a lot but this was a "single case" study, very often with anecdotical evidence. So little Albert might have paved the way in this field but it is difficult to claim that important empirical evidence comes from the observation of this child. -
Ok, so can you summary which is your task? What is the task for chicks?
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Can you explain it with more details?
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This could be a good point of starting .... and then? :-)
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@IreneWinNandar OK, no problem. I know this is a general problem. In case please comment on what other participants say (the ones that have pets and do the experiment). Thanks.
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It is not a myth in humans (also for human sexuality), although mixed results are found in the literature. Less evidence is available for animals, so I cannot tell anything about the interesting issue of "birth-order" and personality in animals..
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Yes, that would be interesting. Just difficult for a home-made experiment, but nice idea! ;)
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Good question, Valepi, sometimes it is difficult to 'leave' that animal... we must behave like doctors in a hospital: Patients come and we study them objectively. We should avoid creating an affective bond, but I know it is not always possible..
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Kathyrin, I am happy to see you enjoyed this part and also very happy to see you are so active in the course!!!
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It is. I also was impressed by my own eyes as I was one of the authors of those works on guppies... thanks again to be here, Lyubov!
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I am happy to see you enjoyed this part, and please continue to comment or make questions as soon as you can ! (you can also comments on other participants' comments, of course)
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I am happy to see you enjoyed this part and, above all, I am terribly happy to see you are so active! Please, keep going in this way until the end of the course.
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Great work, Elena! Yes, previous experience in animals studies can always affect the performance of subjects. In this case, Liuba was trained to touch a target. Still, you find a clever solution. Do you know? There are no studies on this illusion in dogs... your results seem to be promising, maybe because of Liuba in the future scientist will deepen this issue...
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"I did seem to see the movement, but not when I was looking directly at a particular circle, the illusion seemed more peripheral in vision." Yes, the illusion is particularly evident when you move your eyes from one point to another, at least in humans..
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If they avoid dynamic stimuli, it can still work. In this case - if they perceive some sort of Rotating Snake illusion- they should AVOID the illusory pattern and then select the control stimulus. just try and see what happens!
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OK, no problem. I know this is a general problem. In case please comment on what other participants say (the ones that have pets and do the experiment). Thanks.
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OK, no problem. I know this is a general problem. In case please comment on what other participants say (the ones that have pets and do the experiment). Thanks.
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OK, no problem. I know this is a general problem. In case please comment on what other participants say (the ones that have pets and do the experiment). Thanks.
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OK, no problem. I know this is a general problem. In case please comment on what other participants say (the ones that have pets and do the experiment). Thanks.
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Christian Agrillo replied to Heidi Walter
You saw "A" before the big "E"? Don't worry, there is huge inter-individual variability about it. And global-to-local precedence also vary as a function of stimulus size, inter-item distance (distance of the single As), distance from the monitor, etc. So it is normal!
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Christian Agrillo replied to Valepi Banda
You saw "A" before the big "E"? Don't worry, there is huge inter-individual variability about it. And global-to-local precedence also vary as a function of stimulus size, inter-item distance (distance of the single As), distance from the monitor, etc. So it is normal!
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Christian Agrillo replied to Tavis Reddick
Good question, unfortunately without an answer as far as I know :(
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Yes, in terms of rights, the lack of a consent is a big issue. I totally agree with you. Anaesthesia is great, but as you said, is a bit stressful for the animals. In the scientific community we are improving year after year in term of animal welfare, we also do several experiments to improve animal welfare. Still we use free choice tests and training...
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Interesting, Tavis. As you said, in the case of behavioural studies - like most of the studies summarized in this course - the issue of stress/pain is less relevant than biomedical research (which is not the goal of this course), as observing a choice between two stimuli for 15 minutes (e.g., piece of food) is poorly stressing.
I just don't agree with...
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That would be lovely. When possible, we need to avoid testing animals, there is no reason to involve them in a study if we can get the same conclusions in other ways. The problem is that this is not always possible, unfortunately.
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Totally agree, pain must be always avoided.
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I agree with you, Elena, no animal wants to spend a life as a subjecy. Lucky enough, in many cases, scientists just observe animals' response in a test lasting 10-15 minutes (e.g., free choice tests). Then they don't do any other experiment for the rest of their life (and live with their owners, in a national park, etc).
Even in the case of training studies,... -
Christian Agrillo replied to Kathryn Merrett
I am interested in knowing something more about what you refer here in the 'pros and cons' section: can you explain it better / with more details?
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Christian Agrillo replied to Malia C
Correct, Malia: free choice tests have high ecological validity, they permit to understand how an animal reacts in nature in front of the stimuli presented by the experimenters (in most of the cases, food or companions). Training procedure has not high ecological validity but you can control for confounding variables better)
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Christian Agrillo replied to Elena Colombo
Yes, free choice tests are important to show animal response to biologically relevant stimuli, but it is harder to study complex cognitive skills with food or social companions as stimuli (lots of confounding variables)
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Christian Agrillo replied to Elena Colombo
Absolutely agree, Elena!
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Christian Agrillo replied to Tavis Reddick
This is correct, Tavis!
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Christian Agrillo replied to Nami Z
@TavisReddick Interesting issue, rarer than the traditional studies using free choice tests and training procedures. Indeed the classical example is always Japanese macaques. In this sense, in a short course I did not include also this type of learning.
That said, it is an interesting mixture... you observe a behaviour in nature but this is the result of... -
Fully agree. We need to know the sensory modality of animals first. We need to understand which sensory information is captured by the retina or hears etc. This is not easy at all and in some cases (thinks for instance the rare case of blind cavefish) comparative neurophysiology did not study in detail a given species. In short, it is always complicated if we...
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Here I am referring to the capacity to generalize the SAME cognitive rule to novel stimuli, just to ensure that animals do not solve the task by using pattern recognition (e.g., iconic memory). The one you refer in your comments is a more complex cognitive skill that consists in the capacity "to learn how to learn", the tendency to become faster to learn...
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Yes, of course, dozens of papers using training procedures used Skinner box, especially in the past, I agree with you.
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Absolutely, it is one of the hardest things. Where possible, we need to use a strict criterion, and possibly also present novel stimuli where the same discriminative rule could be applied (to see whether they can generalize the rule to novel stimuli)
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The novelty is showing for the very first time 16 dots (after the habituation phase of 8 dots)
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Dear Tavis, I agree with your arguments. Indeed replication is one of the most important aspects in science. As you said we need to use a strict protocol to test animals and we need to describe it clearly in our papers otherwise other scientists cannot replicate our experiment.
Also for what concerns the choice of hypotheses, it is not easy and requires...
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Hi Silvia, thanks to be here. I hope you will find the course interesting. Hear you soon!
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Welcome to the course! Honestly, I had not the pale idea of what the text means, I needed to copy and paste in google translation to see the English version, but then it sounded clear to me. So, if you cannot write directly in English no problem at all. I can copy and past your text and have a fast translation! Hear you soon and thanks to be here !
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Dear Kathryn, thanks for being here and for your high motivation. I am very glad you see you participate so much with comments, this is the right way to do a MOOC. I will reply as much as possible to all comments of all of you. I hope you will enjoy the rest of the course. Hear you soon!
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Dear Alina, thanks for being here. I hope you will find this course interesting... yes, animal studies were fundamental, here I outlined some examples but surely the list would exceed the size of a MOOC! Hear you soon
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Dear Tavis, thanks for your interest. I am happy to hear you appreciate some ethics info at the beginning of the course, these are indeed fundamental in this field. We cannot work in the last decades without taking into account animal welfare (stress, pain..). I hope you will like the course!
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Dear Nami, thanks for your interest. Your job is so full of responsabilities, I admire you! I hope this course will provide us with some insights into the role of animal studies in modern psychology, including clinical psychology. Hear you soon!
