APA PsycNET Our Apologies! - The following features are not available with your current Browser c... more APA PsycNET Our Apologies! - The following features are not available with your current Browser configuration. - alerts user that their session is about to expire - display, print, save, export, and email selected records - get My ...
Stable personality-like influences on behavior have been documented in nonhuman animals (S. D. Go... more Stable personality-like influences on behavior have been documented in nonhuman animals (S. D. Gosling, 2001), but little is known about such influences within explicitly social contexts. The authors tested whether individuals of a socially complex avian species, Carolina chickadees (Poecile carolinensis), show consistent behavioral profiles when their social context changes. Consistency was tested using 7 groups of chickadees, each group comprising 2 female-male pairs. The 2 pairs from each group were isolated from one another until the male birds were switched between the pairs. The authors made several measures before and after the male switch, including measures of affiliative and agonistic behavior, self-maintenance behavior, and vocalizations. The authors observed strong behavioral consistency despite the major change in social context, suggesting that personality can influence this fundamental social relationship.
A hundred years ago, the Journal of Comparative Psychology began being published and currently st... more A hundred years ago, the Journal of Comparative Psychology began being published and currently stands as the longest-running science journal devoted to the study of animal behavior. In that same year, 1921, a paper was published in the Journal of Philosophy that was foundational to our field of study-"Giving up Instincts in Psychology" by Zing-Yang Kuo. This brief essay discusses some of the main arguments of Kuo's article and how they have extended into today's thinking and empirical work on behavioral development. The essay emphasizes his ideas about the need to study neophenotypes to understand the range of behavioral possibilities and to assess nonobvious sources of experience in the development of species-typical behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
Researchers and artists have long been interested in visual illusions because they illustrate the... more Researchers and artists have long been interested in visual illusions because they illustrate the interesting, complicated, and constrained ways in which we perceive the world. Although we may not be familiar with the names of the many different visual illusions that exist (e.g., the Necker cube, the Müller-Lyer illusion, and the Hermann grid illusion, to name a few), people with typically functioning will certainly have seen many of these. We have known for centuries that humans perceive these illusions. We have known for the past few decades that nonhuman mammals can perceive these illusions, and very recent work has revealed that birds and fish perceive some of these illusions, though sometimes in a way opposite to how our own species does. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
Demonstrating cetacean communicative cultures requires documenting vocal differences among conspe... more Demonstrating cetacean communicative cultures requires documenting vocal differences among conspecific groups that are socially learned and stable across generations. Evidence to date does not provide strong scientific support for culture in cetacean vocal systems. Further, functional analyses with playbacks are needed to determine whether observed group differences in vocalizations are meaningful to the animals themselves.
Social associations within mixed-species bird flocks can promote information flow about food avai... more Social associations within mixed-species bird flocks can promote information flow about food availability and provide predator avoidance benefits. The relationship between flocking propensity, foraging habitat quality, and interspecific competition can be altered by human-induced habitat degradation. Here we take a close look at sociality within two ecologically important flock-leader (core) species, the Carolina chickadee (Poecile carolinensis) and tufted titmouse (Baeolophus bicolor), to better understand how degradation of foraging habitat quality affects mixed-species flocking dynamics. We compared interactions of free ranging wild birds across a gradient of foraging habitat quality in three managed forest remnants. Specifically, we examined aspects of the social network at each site, including network density, modularity, and species assortativity. Differences in the social networks between each end of our habitat gradient suggest that elevated levels of interspecific associati...
One approach that is starting to reveal interesting variation in social interactions assesses how... more One approach that is starting to reveal interesting variation in social interactions assesses how familiarity of individuals affects their behavior toward one another. This was studied by Prior, Smith, Dooling, and Ball (2020) with a model songbird species, zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata). This work is important in that it reveals how fundamental simple familiarity-repeated social experience with another individual-is to communication and interaction in social species. More work is now needed, and in a wide range of species exhibiting a wide range of variation in social behavior, to assess the extent to which variation in familiarity is the bridge that links social interactions to social relationships in groups of animals. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
Traffic noise likely reaches a wide range of species and populations throughout the world, but we... more Traffic noise likely reaches a wide range of species and populations throughout the world, but we still know relatively little about how it affects anti‐predator behavior of populations. We tested for possible effects of traffic noise on responses to predator acoustic cues in Carolina chickadees (Poecile carolinensis), tufted titmice (Baeolophus bicolor), and white‐breasted nuthatches (Sitta carolinensis) near 14 independent feeding stations in eastern Tennessee. We compared anti‐predator calling and seed‐taking behavior in response to playbacks of predator stimuli (screech owl calls) at sites naturally exposed to traffic noise and at sites that faced relatively little traffic noise. The screech owl call playback was designed to simulate the approach of this dangerous predator to a feeder being used by these small songbirds. We found that chickadees responded consistently to the owl stimuli across different levels of traffic noise. However, titmice, and nuthatches exhibited differen...
APA PsycNET Our Apologies! - The following features are not available with your current Browser c... more APA PsycNET Our Apologies! - The following features are not available with your current Browser configuration. - alerts user that their session is about to expire - display, print, save, export, and email selected records - get My ...
Stable personality-like influences on behavior have been documented in nonhuman animals (S. D. Go... more Stable personality-like influences on behavior have been documented in nonhuman animals (S. D. Gosling, 2001), but little is known about such influences within explicitly social contexts. The authors tested whether individuals of a socially complex avian species, Carolina chickadees (Poecile carolinensis), show consistent behavioral profiles when their social context changes. Consistency was tested using 7 groups of chickadees, each group comprising 2 female-male pairs. The 2 pairs from each group were isolated from one another until the male birds were switched between the pairs. The authors made several measures before and after the male switch, including measures of affiliative and agonistic behavior, self-maintenance behavior, and vocalizations. The authors observed strong behavioral consistency despite the major change in social context, suggesting that personality can influence this fundamental social relationship.
A hundred years ago, the Journal of Comparative Psychology began being published and currently st... more A hundred years ago, the Journal of Comparative Psychology began being published and currently stands as the longest-running science journal devoted to the study of animal behavior. In that same year, 1921, a paper was published in the Journal of Philosophy that was foundational to our field of study-"Giving up Instincts in Psychology" by Zing-Yang Kuo. This brief essay discusses some of the main arguments of Kuo's article and how they have extended into today's thinking and empirical work on behavioral development. The essay emphasizes his ideas about the need to study neophenotypes to understand the range of behavioral possibilities and to assess nonobvious sources of experience in the development of species-typical behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
Researchers and artists have long been interested in visual illusions because they illustrate the... more Researchers and artists have long been interested in visual illusions because they illustrate the interesting, complicated, and constrained ways in which we perceive the world. Although we may not be familiar with the names of the many different visual illusions that exist (e.g., the Necker cube, the Müller-Lyer illusion, and the Hermann grid illusion, to name a few), people with typically functioning will certainly have seen many of these. We have known for centuries that humans perceive these illusions. We have known for the past few decades that nonhuman mammals can perceive these illusions, and very recent work has revealed that birds and fish perceive some of these illusions, though sometimes in a way opposite to how our own species does. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
Demonstrating cetacean communicative cultures requires documenting vocal differences among conspe... more Demonstrating cetacean communicative cultures requires documenting vocal differences among conspecific groups that are socially learned and stable across generations. Evidence to date does not provide strong scientific support for culture in cetacean vocal systems. Further, functional analyses with playbacks are needed to determine whether observed group differences in vocalizations are meaningful to the animals themselves.
Social associations within mixed-species bird flocks can promote information flow about food avai... more Social associations within mixed-species bird flocks can promote information flow about food availability and provide predator avoidance benefits. The relationship between flocking propensity, foraging habitat quality, and interspecific competition can be altered by human-induced habitat degradation. Here we take a close look at sociality within two ecologically important flock-leader (core) species, the Carolina chickadee (Poecile carolinensis) and tufted titmouse (Baeolophus bicolor), to better understand how degradation of foraging habitat quality affects mixed-species flocking dynamics. We compared interactions of free ranging wild birds across a gradient of foraging habitat quality in three managed forest remnants. Specifically, we examined aspects of the social network at each site, including network density, modularity, and species assortativity. Differences in the social networks between each end of our habitat gradient suggest that elevated levels of interspecific associati...
One approach that is starting to reveal interesting variation in social interactions assesses how... more One approach that is starting to reveal interesting variation in social interactions assesses how familiarity of individuals affects their behavior toward one another. This was studied by Prior, Smith, Dooling, and Ball (2020) with a model songbird species, zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata). This work is important in that it reveals how fundamental simple familiarity-repeated social experience with another individual-is to communication and interaction in social species. More work is now needed, and in a wide range of species exhibiting a wide range of variation in social behavior, to assess the extent to which variation in familiarity is the bridge that links social interactions to social relationships in groups of animals. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
Traffic noise likely reaches a wide range of species and populations throughout the world, but we... more Traffic noise likely reaches a wide range of species and populations throughout the world, but we still know relatively little about how it affects anti‐predator behavior of populations. We tested for possible effects of traffic noise on responses to predator acoustic cues in Carolina chickadees (Poecile carolinensis), tufted titmice (Baeolophus bicolor), and white‐breasted nuthatches (Sitta carolinensis) near 14 independent feeding stations in eastern Tennessee. We compared anti‐predator calling and seed‐taking behavior in response to playbacks of predator stimuli (screech owl calls) at sites naturally exposed to traffic noise and at sites that faced relatively little traffic noise. The screech owl call playback was designed to simulate the approach of this dangerous predator to a feeder being used by these small songbirds. We found that chickadees responded consistently to the owl stimuli across different levels of traffic noise. However, titmice, and nuthatches exhibited differen...
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