Contextualised behavioural measurements of personality differences obtained in behavioural tests and social observations in adult capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella)

Author: Jana Uher, Elsa Addessi, Elisabetta Visalberghi

We applied a new framework for behavioural research on personality differences in 26 adult tufted capuchin monkeys. Using the Behavioural Repertoire x Environmental Situations Approach, we generated systematically 20 non-lexical emic personality constructs that have high ecological validity for this species. For construct operationalisation, we obtained 146 contextualised behavioural measures repeatedly in 15 experimental situations and 2 group situations using computerised and video-assisted methods. A complete repetition after a 2–3-week break within a 60-day period yielded significant test–retest reliability from individual-oriented and variable-oriented viewpoints at different levels of aggregation. In accordance with well-established findings on cross-situational consistency, internal consistency was only moderate. This new and important finding highlights fundamental differences between behavioural approaches and judgment-based approaches to personality differences.

Link to "Journal of Research in Personality"

Multiple research articles on comparative differential and personality psychology

Author: Jana Uher,...

Multiple research articles on comparative differential and personality psychology.

Research into primate personality and social relationships

Link to "Primate Personality Net"

Speaking Up Is Related to Better Team Performance in Simulated Anesthesia Inductions: An Observational Study

Author: Michaela Kolbe, Michael J. Burtscher, Johannes Wacker, Bastian Grande, Renata Nohynkova, Tanja Manser, Donat R. Spahn, Gudela Grote

Thegoal in this study was to test the relationship between speaking up—i.e., questioning, correcting, or clarifying a current procedure—and technical team performance in anesthesia. Hypothesis 1: team members’ higher levels of speaking up are related to higher levels of technical team performance. Hypothesis 2: team members will react to speaking up by either clarifying their procedure or initiating a procedural change. Hypothesis 3: higher levels of speaking up during an earlier phase of teamwork will be related to higher levels of speaking up during a later phase.

This report was previously presented, in part, at the fourth International Workshop: Behavioural Science Applied to Surgery, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; sixth Annual SIOP Conference, Chicago, IL; and 10th International Conference on Naturalistic Decision Making, Orlando, FL. Parts of the raw data were also used for an analysis of interactions of team mental models and monitoring behaviors.

Link to "Anesthesia & Analgesia" journal

Gaze Patterns to a Speaker's Face in Typically Developing and ASD Children

Author: Elician Celine Wartman, Nancy Riccardi, Nancy Rader

To study attention to a speaker in typically developing (TD) children and children with autism (ASD), we tested TD children in three age groups and one group of ASD children. The younger TD children and the ASD children spent less time looking at the speaker than the older TD children. ASD children also spent less time looking at the eyes than the mouth compared to age-similar TD children. These results reveal differences between age-similar TD children and in children with ASD in selective attention to a speaker’s face. The ASD looking pattern was most like that of TD toddlers.

Poster Presentation at EPA, Pittsburg, USA, 2012

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Looking Away from the Speaker's Mouth: A Developmental Shift from Infancy to Preschool

Author: Nancy Rader, Patricial Zukow-Goldring, Elizabeth Stuprich, Michelle Rhoades

Our research examined where infants and children focus their attention when viewing a speaker. We hypothesized that infants would spend more time looking at the speaker’s mouth than the eyes, while preschool children would spend more time looking at the speaker’s eyes than the mouth. Using eye tracking technology, we measured gaze duration to the eyes and mouth of the speaker. The results supported our hypothesis.

Poster Presentation at SRCD, Montreal, Canada, 2011

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Fetal Exposure to Synthetic Oxytocin and Relationship with Prefeeding (PF) Cues Within One Hour Postbirth

Author: Aleeca Bell, Kristin Rankin, Rosemary White-Traut

We introduce a new coding schema of prefeeding (PF) cues to explore whether fetal exposure to synthetic oxytocin (Pitocin) during labor is associated with the infant’s level of prefeeding organization shortly after birth.

Poster Presentation at ICIS, Minneapolis, USA, 2012

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"Follow my lead": What follows after one child's initiative in preschooler triads in a cooperative task?

Author: Paula Döge, Heidi Keller

Peer interactions play an important role in children‘s everyday life in institutional daycare. Sustaining social interactions requires skills as attending to the interaction partner(s), mastering turn-taking and prosocial behavior (Fabes, Martin & Hanish, 2011). If cooperation is needed to master a task, these skills become even more important.
Peer triads represent a complex setting of interactional possibilities of all three children (Ishikawa & Hay, 2006). Initiatives constitute starting points to analyze how social interaction is negotiated in a cooperative task. By suggesting how to proceed one child offers opportunities for social practices. The other children’s reactions to the initiative are indicative for the involvement and social structure.
We therefore ask:
(1) To what extent and how are initiatives responded to by the other group members?
(2) Are there differences between boy and girl groups?
(3) What behavioral interaction sequence follows each initiative?
Poster Presentation at ISSBD Biennial Meeting, Edmonton, Canada, 2012

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Rationality or Resonance? Eight-month-olds Copy Outcomes Rather Than Actions

Author: Rebecca G. Sperotto, Elma Hilbrink, Elena Sakkalou, Kate Ellis-Davies, Merideth Gattis

Poster Presentation at ICIS, Minneapolis, USA, 2012

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Infants' Attention Patterns to People and Objects: Longitudinal Relations to Cortisol and a-Amylase

Author: Corrine J. Zavala, Kaya de Barbaro, Andrea Chiba, Srikrishna Khandrika, Gedeon O. Deák

The current study aims to relate past animal and adult research on physiologically mediated vigilance to patters of infant attention. Infants at 6, 7 and 12 month performed a gaze- and point-cue following task in a controlled laboratory environment...
(Poster Presentation at ICIS, Minneapolis, USA, 2012).

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The Context of Early Helping Behavior

Author: Audun Dahl, Rachel K. Schuck, C. Jennifer Hung, Alison Hsieh, Joseph J. Campos

Past research tell us little about young children't experiences with helping. The current studies represent two investigations of the context of helping behavior in everyday life during the second year.
(Poster Presentation at ICIS, Minneapolis, USA, 2012).

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Domain Differences in Early Prohibitive Interactions

Author: Audun Dahl, Joseph J. Campos, Elliot Turiel

Are domain differences in social interactions present already in the beginning of the second year, after the onset of walking? Are domain differences limited to verbal justifications provided in response to transgressions, or are such differences also evident in other aspects of prohibitive interactions?
(Poster Presentation at ICIS, Minneapolis, USA, 2012).

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Successful Potsdam early intensive home-training for parents of autistic children - Comparison of training and control waiting group

Author: Helmut Ott, Claire Molnar, Renate Frost, Juliane Höpfner, Asimwe Paehl

Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) benefit from a behavior therapeutical early support in combination with an intensive parental home-training (20h/week for 12 month).

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The Stability of Infant Preferences for Socially Based Attention: Observational, Experimental and Longitudinal Analysis

Author: Kate Ellis-Davies, Elena Sakkalou, Nia Fowler, Elma Hilbrink, Merideth Gattis

The current study aims to explre the stability of social preferences across time and context using mother-infant interactions, experimental tasks and parental reports.
39 mothers were recruited during the last trimester of pregnancy for the First Steps Longitudinal Study. All participants were singletons and born at term.
(Poster Presentation at SRCD Biennial Meeting, Montreal, Canada, 2011).

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Children's coping strategies and stress regulation during the transition from home to child care

Author: Tina Eckstein, Lieselotte Ahnert, Gregor Kappler

For some years, students of behavioral development have acknowledged early childhood as a period during which the main coping strategies in life develop in order to regulate negative emotions. Whilst experimental research in laboratories shows whether and how, young children cope with evoked frustrations or irritations, much less is known about how children deal with significant situations that occur naturally in their daily lives. The present study therefore aims to investigate how children cope when they are taken into child care, wondering whether specific behavioral patterns could be identified that aid children in their struggle to cope with the new environment and how these coping strategies influence the physiological stress regulation as reflected in diurnal cortisol patterns.
(Poster Presentation at SRCD Biennial Meeting, Montreal, Canada, 2011).

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Assessing Joint Engagement in Toddlers: Observations and Ratings Compared

Author: Roger Bakeman, Lauren B. Adamson, P. Brooke Nelson, Nevena Dimitrova

Systematic Observation Takes Time:
Observation of children's social behavior - asking trained and reliable observers to assign behavioral codes to event or time intervals - is a common measurement strategy among behavioral scientists... (Poster Presentation at SRCD Biennial Meeting, Montreal, Canada, 2011).

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Bildungs-moments in the early parent-child-dialog - Early childhood Bildungs-research on the basis of INTERACT analysis

Author: Ursula Horsch

Our goal is to conduct comparative Bildung-research with children with and without disabilities. The research projects Babywatching – infant research (1999-2003), dialogical development in infants (Horsch et al. 2004-2008) as well as the research project early childhood Bildung in hearing impaired children that began in 2008 (Horsch et al. 2008-2011) pursue the questions of early childhood Bildung for the first time within a framework of extensive international studies. They study the connection between the development of relationship and dialog within early parent-child-interactions and the therein possible early Bildungs-processes in the age range of zero to two years. We have used the listening age as a basis for children with hearing loss. Therefore the age limit is elevated by up to two years (Horsch, Scheele, Roth, Schulze, Fürst 2009).

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Short Communication - Adult gaze influences infant attention and object processing: implications for cognitive neuroscience

Author: Vincent M. Reid, Tricia Striano

Infants follow others’ gaze toward external objects from early in ontogeny, but whether they use others’ gaze in processing information about objects remains unknown. In Experiment 1, 4-month-old infants viewed a video presentation of an adult gazing toward one of two objects. When presented with the same objects alone a second time, infants looked reliably less at the object to which the adult had directly gazed (cued object). This suggests that the uncued object was perceived as more novel than the object previously cued by the adult’s gaze. In Experiment 2, adult gaze was not directed towards any object. In this control experiment, infants looked at both objects equally in the test phase. These findings show that adult eye gaze biases infant visual attention and information processing. Implications of the paradigm for cognitive neuroscience are presented and the results are discussed in terms of neural structures and change over ontogeny.

Link to Publication at Infancy Research Website

Sympathy Through Affective Perspective Taking and Its Relation to Prosocial Behavior in Toddlers

Author: Amrisha Vaish, Malinda Carpenter, Michael Tomasello

In most research on the early ontogeny of sympathy, young children are presented with an overtly distressed person and their responses are observed. In the current study, the authors asked whether  young children could also sympathize with a person to whom something negative had happened but who was expressing no emotion at all. They showed 18- and 25-month-olds an adult either harming  another adult by destroying or taking away her possessions (harm condition) or else doing something similar that did not harm her (neutral condition). The “victim” expressed no emotions in either condition. Nevertheless, in the harm as compared with the neutral condition, children showed more concern and subsequent prosocial behavior toward the victim. Moreover, children’s concerned looks during the harmful event were positively correlated with their subsequent prosocial behavior. Very young children can sympathize with a victim even in the absence of overt emotional signals, possibly by some form of affective perspective taking.

Link to Publication at APA - American Psychological Association

An Augmented Toy and Social Interaction in Children with Autism

Author: Steve Hinske, William Farr and Nicola Yuill

An Augmented Knights Castle (AKC) play set was adapted so that children with autism can configure programmable elements. This is compared with a non-configurable AKC and when the AKC set is switched-off. When the system is configurable, and when it is switched on, less solitary play and more cooperative play occur. Digital toys, and their configurability are key factors in design for children with autism allowing greater individual control and more socially oriented behaviour. We suggest that tangibles provide a safety net for encouraging social interaction as they allow for a broad range of interaction styles.

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Father-infant interaction patterns as precursors of children's later externalizing behavior problems

Author: P. Trautmann-Villalba, M. Gschwendt, M. H. Schmidt, M. Laucht

This study examined the extend to which fathers' and infants' interaction behavior were related to children's externalizing behavior problems at age 8 and 11 years...

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Maternal bond and mother-child interaction in severe postpartum psychiatric disorders: Is there a link?

Author: P. Trautmann-Villalba, Ch. Hornstein, E. Hohm, E. Rave, S. Wortmann-Fleischer, M. Schwarz

Mothers in the puerperium are vulnerable to a wide spectrum of postpartum psychiatric disorders. One of the central psychological processes of the puerperium is the development of an emotional relationship with the baby. The bond on the infant as well as the interaction with the baby are two aspects of the mother-infant relationship that can be disturbed by mothers with postpartum psychiatric disorders...

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Do as I do: 7-month-old infants selectively reproduce others' goal

Author: J. Kiley Hamlin, Elizabeth V. Hallinan, Amanda L. Woodward

In this study, they tested whether 7-month-old infants would selectively imitate the goal-relevant aspects of an observed action. Infants saw an experimenter perform an action on one of two small toys and then were given the opportunity to act on the toys. Infants viewed actions that were either goal-directed or goal-ambiguous, and that represented either completed or uncompleted goals. Infants reproduced the goal of the experimenter only in those cases where the action was goal-directed, in both the complete and incomplete goal conditions. These results provide the first evidence that infants as young as 7 months of age selectively imitate actions based on their goal-directedness, and that they are able to analyze the goals of even uncompleted actions. Even during the first year of life, infants' sensitivity to goal-directed action is expressed not only in their responses in visual habituation procedures, but also in their overt actions.

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Relations between Early Regulatory Disorders and Maternal Play Strategies

Author: Helene Gudi

Self-regulation, a complex construct, has been defined as the infants' growing capacities to calm on their own, tolerate frustrations, adapt to transitions, initate and cease activities according to situational demands, modulate their state of arousal, and regulate their emotions and behaviors...

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Learning from mother's face

Author: Margarete I. Bolten, Silvia Schneider

An experimental examination of the transgenerational transmission of anxiety.

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Dialogue and Education in the Preverbal Period - A Study on the Situation of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Infants in the Early Educational Process

Author: Ursula Horsch

From the very first day of life parents are in close contact with their child. They introduce as well other people as the world to their newborn in a mutually dialogical way. Proceeding hand in hand they pass on basic dialogical competences. The research project Dialogic Development of Infants (Horsch et al. 2004 – 2007) addresses the broad dialogic development of parents and infants within the first 18 months of life. Our objective is to describe these preverbal dialogs.

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Partners in Dialogue - A Single Case Study Referring to the Development of Spoken and Sign Language of a Child with CHARGE Syndrome

Author: Ursula Horsch, Andrea Scheele

The increasing possibilities of medical care effects rare syndromes as reasons for severe disabilities. One of these rare syndromes is CHARGE Syndrome with aprevalence of 1:12 000. In Germany there is no research referring this syndrome.In the following, selected results of a twelve months long single casestudy referring dialogical development between a father and his 2.5 years old son with CHARGE Syndrome are presented. The focus is especially on the development of spoken and sign language within the dialogue between the two partners.

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Dialogic Development of Infants Turns as basic patterns of the dialogue in the parent-infant-dyad

Author: Research Project Horsch et al.

Abstract: Some aspects of the theoretical background: From the very first day of life parents are in close contact with their child and introduce both other people and the worldto their newborn in a mutually dialogic way. Proceeding hand in hand they pass on basic dialogic competences. Our research project “Dialogic Development of Infants” addresses the broad dialogic development of parents and infants within the first 18 months of life. First of all, I want to explain what we mean when we talk about dialogues between parents and infants. What is dialogical in the relationship between parents and infant?

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Early Dialogues as Basic Patterns of Early Education

Author: Research Project Horsch, Roth, Scheele and Werding

Abstract: From the very first day of life parents are in close contact with their child and introduce both - other people and the world to their newborn in a mutually dialogic way.

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Unwilling Versus Unable - Infants’ Understanding of Intentional Action

Author: Tanya Behne, Malinda Carpenter, Josep Call and Michael Tomasello

Abstract: Infants experienced a female adult handing them toys. Sometimes, however, the transaction failed, either because the adult was in various ways unwilling to give the toy (e.g., she teased the child with it or played with it herself) or else because she was unable to give it (e.g., she accidentally dropped it). Infants at 9, 12, and 18 months of age reacted with more impatience (e.g., reaching, looking away) when the adult was unwilling to give them the toy than when she was simply unable to give it. Six-month-olds, in contrast, showed no evidence of this differentiation. Because infants’ behavioral responses were appropriately adapted to different kinds of intentional actions, and because the adult’s actions sometimes produced results that did not match her goal (when having accidents or failed attempts), these findings provide especially rich evidence that infants first begin to understand goal-directed action at around 9 months of age.

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A micro-analytic evaluation of parents watching a nondiagnostic ultrasound-based video of their fetus at mid-gestation

Authors: Stadlmayr W., Boukydis C., Bichsel S. et.al.

How pregnant women in difficult psycho-social circumstances experience foetal ultra-sound exams has been used for counselling1. Few studies have addressed the parental interaction, i.e. the couples’ behaviour while watching their fetus during US examinations.

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A Study on Designer’s Mental Process of Information Categorization in the Early Stages of Design

Author: Jieun Kim, Carole Bouchard, Jean-Francois Omhover, Ameziane Aoussat, Laurence Moscardini, Aline Chevalier, Charles Tijus, Francois Buron

Paper at ISADR (International Association of Societies of Design Research) 2009, Seoul, Korea
This research explores how designers mentally categorize design information during early sketching in the early stages of design. With the purpose of identifying various types of mental information and related cognitive operations, the empirical study has been conducted with 8 experienced product designers through the concurrent verbalization. The qualitative and quantitative analysis of the results is also presented....

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Context dependent gender role self-concept activation

Author: Ursula Athenstaedt

Abstract: The research investigated changes of gender role self-concept (GRS) in dependence of situational aspects and, additionally, its relevance for communication behavior. GRS is defined as the amount of self-ascribed attributes and behaviors that are assumed to be more typical for men or women...

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Driving behavior pattern analysis for elderly people

Author: Guan-Lun Chen, Jia-Yuarn Guo, Chia-Tso Huang

Abstract: The study aims at evaluating factors associated with driving patterns and self-reported driving difficulty, with particular attention to vision and cognitive impairment. This study uses cross-sectional data from 10 elderly participants (65 years old or older) and 10 young participants along with simulation program, and comparison is by putting on mobile eye tractor. Neurocognitive tests, driving simulation, and road tests provide complementary sources of evidence to evaluate driver safety. No single test is sufficient to determine who should drive and who should not. Finally, we compare the concentration ability and reaction ability between elderly and young participants.

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Casestudy: Portable lab - know-how in a briefcase / MyBOOM relies on Mangold technology

Author: Thorsten Voß

Abstract: Why Westphalian Internet service provider MyBOOM relies on Mangold technology.

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When the Fingers do the Talking: A Study of Group Participation with Varying Constrains to a Tabletop Interface

Author: Paul Marshall, Eva Hornecker, Richard Morris, Nick Sheep Dalton and Yvonne Rogers

Abstract: A user study is presented that investigates how different configurations of input can influence equity of participation around a tabletop interface. Groups of three worked on a design task requiring negotiation in four interface conditions that varied the number (all members can act or only one) and type (touch versus mice) of input. Our findings show that a multi-touch surface increases physical interaction equity and perceptions of dominance, but does not affect levels of verbal participation. Dominant people still continue to talk the most, while quiet ones remain quiet. Qualitative analyses further revealed how other factors can affect how participants contribute to the task. The findings are discussed in terms of how the design of the physicaltechnological set-up can affect the desired form of collaboration.

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Behavioural Analysis of the Tower Controller Activity

Author: Ella Pinska and Marc Bourgois

Abstract: In this paper we report on an initial study concerning the importance of direct observation for control tower activity. The results confirm that looking outside of the window is the most frequent and longest activity of the tower controller, occuoying him for roughly 30-40% of the time. Two other significant activities were scanning radar image and strips. The change of attention between these three information sources is frequent but not in a defined order.

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Virtual cognitive model for Miyazawa Kenji based on speech and facial images recognition

Author: Hamido Fujita, Jun Hakura and Masaki Kurematsu

Abstract: In this paper we a representing a virtual interactive model based on cognitive model of Miyazawa Kenji. We created a computer model based on cognitive thinking of Kenji literature on story telling. The user can interact in real time with Virtual Kenji. The facial gestures been collected and analyzed through Motion capture system consists of six camera. These six cameras set to collect all emotional facial gestures of people who read and practice an recorded assigned Kenji manuscripts for experiment. Each person has 50 markers of 5 mm size attached to all parts of the face (lips, mouth, eyebrow, moustache, eyelash, forehead). The emotional linkage between these facials parts and cognitive emotion been analyzed and recorded. We have proposed a database; called as Facial recognition database based on FACS model, Also we have correspondingly, speech synthesis part that would analyze the emotional part of human speech. These synthesized two parts are been re-constructed on hologram that represents the cognitively the character of Kenji virtual model who has a face with gestures harmonize with a speech and facial images generated by the system. Also, the system interacts with the human user based on collected observed response on human user and inference by the system in real time.

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Labeling of Gestures in SmartKom − Concept of the Coding System

Author: Silke Steininger

The SmartKom project is concerned with the development of an intelligent computer−user interface that allows a user to communicate almost naturally with an adaptive and self−explanatory dialogue system. Among other things the system will be able to analyze the gestural input of the user. To train a gesture analyzer, data is required, preferably realistic data. One of the tasks of our institute in the project is the collection and annotation of such data. Since the machine does not yet exist the data collection is done with help of so called Wizard of Oz−experiments: The system is simulated by humans (the "wizards") and the subjects are made believe that they interact with an existing machine. We record the subjects (video and audio) as they solve short tasks. The recordings are labeled off−line with respect to the gestures that the subjects used.

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Evaluating Software Support for Video Data Capture and Analysis in Collaborative Design Studies

Author: Linda Candy, Zafer Bilda, Mary Lou Maher and John S. Gero

Abstract: In order to understand the implications of introducing new digital tools into design practice, research into how designers work collaboratively using both traditional and digital media is being undertaken. For that purpose it is necessary to gather large quantities of empirical data and this poses problems as to how to manage and analyse that data effectively. This paper describes the evaluation of a software system for capturing and analysing video data in the context of collaborative design studies. These studies will generate large amounts of data and support for its management and analysis is vital to the successful completion of the work. In order to find a match to our specific requirements, we conducted a survey from which the software application, INTERACT was identified. A study of its use and suitability was carried out in conditions as near as possible to the intended research. We found that INTERACT met our requirements and provided significant efficiency gains for the analysis of the data.

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Comparing Collaborative Design Behavior in Remote Sketching and 3D Virtual Worlds

Author: Mary Lou Maher, Zafer Bilda and David Marchant

Abstract: The aim of this study is to compare two architects’ collaborative design behaviour while using a shared whiteboard application in one design session and a 3D virtual world in a second design session. Our preliminary analysis shows that designers spend more time discussing design ideas while sketching and more time creating the design model and inspecting spatial relationships while in a 3D virtual world.

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Example using the MangoldVision Eye Tracker in Augmented Reality Based E-Commerce Platform

Authors: Min-Chai Hsieh and Hao-Chiang Lin

This Taiwanese presentation shows an example of using the MangoldVision Eye Tracker in studies on an augmented reality based e-commerce platform.

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Studies on Visual Illusion Figures using the MangoldVision Eye Tracker

Authors: Mei-Chi Chen and Hao-Chiang Lin

This Taiwanese presentation shows an application of the MangoldVision Eye Tracker in psychological studies on Visual Illusion Figures.

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Proceeding studies on behavior - not only a challenge for professional tools

Author: Pascal Mangold

Abstract: The following insights are based on my company’s long term empirical experience as system developer in the field of behavioral research. The paper discusses several aspects of data collection and analysis in day to day studies on behavior. It points out the necessity of using specialized software tools in behavioral research. It shows why video recordings are very beneficial for analysis and not only for documentation purpose. It discusses the advantages of using structured coding schemas instead of taking notes only. Finally the possibilities of the INTERACT software tool environment are sketched.

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Practice Based Research: A Guide

Author: Linda Candy

Abstract: Practice-based Research is an original investigation undertaken in order to gain new knowledge partly by means of practice and the outcomes of that practice. In a doctoral thesis, claims of originality and contribution to knowledge may be demonstrated through creative outcomes in the form of designs, music, digital media, performances and exhibitions. Whilst the significance and context of the claims are described in words, a full understanding can only be obtained with direct reference to the outcomes.

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Aping expressions: Chimpanzees produce distinct laugh types when responding to laughter of others

Author: M. Davila Ross, B. Allcock, C. Thomas, K.A. Bard

Humans have the ability to replicate the emotional expressions of others even when they undergo different emotions. Such distinct responses of expressions, especially positive expressions, play a central role in everyday social communication of humans and may give the responding individuals important advantages in cooperation and communication...

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Responding to inequities: Gorillas try to maintain their competitive advantage during play fights

Author: E.J.C. van Leeuwen, E. Zimmermann, M. Davila Ross

Human respond to unfair situations in various ways. Experimental research has revealed that non-human species also respond to unequal situations in the form of inequity aversions when they have the disadvantage...

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Investigation of distances covered by fattening pigs measured with VideoMotionTracker

Author: Julia Brendle, Steffen Hoy

The investigation was carried out with altogether 144 pigs kept in groups of 6 or 12. Every pen was equipped with perforated floor. Water and the in-house compound feed with different elements depending on the fattening period were available ad libitum during the whole fattening period. At the beginning of each fattening period all pigs were weighed and the individual rank place was calculated based on 72 h continuous infrared video-recordings. At the beginning, in the middle and at the end of the fattening period the distances covered by focus animals during 24 h were measured using the VideoMotionTracker (VMT) software tool (Mangold). The VideoMotionTracker is a software solution to allow tracking animals on a video recording using the PC mouse or a touch-screen terminal to measure distances that were covered. This measurements on pigs resulted in highly significant differences between the covered distances at the different fattening stages (at the beginning: 582 m; in the middle: 391 m; at the end: 261 m on average). Fattening pigs kept in groups of 12 each covered longer distances during the fattening period compared with pigs kept in groups of 6 (459 m versus 333 m). The differences between the means were highly significant (p < 0.001). On average female pigs covered a longer distance than castrated male pigs (443 m versus 349 m).

The factor rank position did not show any significant influence on the covered distance of each focus animal. Pigs with high rank positions on average covered 399 m whereas pigs with low rank positions covered with 393 m a marginally shorter distance. Furthermore the interaction between fattening period and rank position was examined but did not show any significance either. The influence of the factor pen within group size was highly significant (p < 0.001) and the parameters live weight and covered distances were negatively correlated.

Link to "Applied Animal Behaviour Science" website

A dual function of echolocation: bats use echolocation calls to identify familiar and unfamiliar individuals

Author: Silke L. Voigt-Heucke, Michael Taborsky, Dina K.N. Dechmann

Bats use echolocation for orientation during foraging and navigation. However, it has been suggested that echolocation calls may also have a communicative function, for instance between roost members. In principle, this seems possible because echolocation calls are species specific and known to differ between the sexes, and between colonies and individuals for some species. We performed playback experiments with lesser bulldog bats, Noctilio albiventris, to which we presented calls of familiar/unfamiliar conspecifics, cohabitant/noncohabitant heterospecifics and ultrasonic white noise as a control. Bats reacted with a complex repertoire of social behaviours and the intensity of their response differed significantly between stimulus categories. Stronger reactions were shown towards echolocation calls of unfamiliar conspecifics than towards heterospecifics and white noise. To our knowledge, this is the first time that bats have been found to react to echolocation calls with a suite of social behaviours. Our results also provide the first experimental evidence for acoustical differentiation by bats between familiar and unfamiliar conspecifics, and of heterospecifics. Analysis of echolocation calls confirmed significant individual differences between echolocation calls. In addition, we found a nonsignificant trend towards group signatures in echolocation calls of N. albiventris. We suggest that echolocation calls used during orientation may also communicate species identity, group affiliation and individual identity. Our study highlights the communicative potential of sonar signals that have previously been categorized as cues in animal social systems.

Link to "Animal Behaviour" website

Genetic Architecture of Tameness in a Rat Model of Animal Domestication

Author: Frank W. Albert...

Abstract of the main publication: A common feature of domestic animals is tameness—i.e., they tolerate and are unafraid of human presence and handling. To gain insight into the genetic basis of tameness and aggression, we studied an intercross between two lines of rats (Rattus norvegicus) selected over.60 generations for increased tameness and increased aggression against humans, respectively. We measured 45 traits, including tameness and aggression, anxiety-related traits, organ weights, and levels of serum components in .700 rats from an intercross population. Using 201 genetic markers, we identified two significant quantitative trait loci (QTL) for tameness. These loci overlap with QTL for adrenal gland weight and for anxiety-related traits and are part of a five-locus epistatic network influencing tameness. An additional QTL influences the occurrence of white coat spots, but shows no significant effect on tameness. The loci described here are important starting points for finding the genes that cause tameness in these rats and potentially in domestic animals in general.

Link to Genetics website

Rapid facial mimicry in orangutan play

Author: Marina Davila Ross, Susanne Menzler and Elke Zimmermann

Abstract: Emotional contagion enables individuals to experience emotions of others. This important empathic phenomenon is closely linked to facial mimicry, where facial displays evoke the same facial expressions in social partners. In humans, facial mimicry can be voluntary or involuntary, whereby its latter mode can be processed as rapid as within or at 1 s. Thus far, studies have not provided evidence of rapid involuntary facial mimicry in animals.
This study assessed whether rapid involuntary facial mimicry is present in orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus; NZ25) for their open-mouth faces (OMFs) during everyday dyadic play. Results clearly indicated that orangutans rapidly mimicked OMFs of their playmates within or at 1 s. Our study revealed the first evidence on rapid involuntary facial mimicry in non-human mammals. This finding suggests that fundamental building blocks of positive emotional contagion and empathy that link to rapid involuntary facial mimicry in humans have homologues in non-human primates.

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Responding to inequities: gorillas try to maintain their competitive advantage during play fights

Author: Edwin Van Leeuwen, Elke Zimmermann and Marina Davila Ross

Abstract: Humans respond to unfair situations in various ways. Experimental research has revealed that non-human species also respond to unequal situations in the formof inequity aversions when they have the disadvantage. The current study focused on play fights in gorillas to explore for the first time, to our knowledge, if/how non-human species respond to inequities in natural social settings. Hitting causes a naturally occurring inequity among individuals and here it was specifically assessed how the hitters and their partners engaged in play chases that followed the hitting. The results of this work showed that the hitters significantly more often moved first to run away immediately after the encounter than their partners. These findings provide evidence that non-human species respond to inequities by trying to maintain their competitive advantages. We conclude that non-human primates, like humans, may show different responses to inequities and that they may modify them depending on if they have the advantage or the disadvantage. 

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Kin recognition in the grey mouse lemur (Microcebus murinus)

Author: Institute of Zoology, University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover / Lab course: Experimental Behavioural Biology

Abstract: Kin recognition is a prerequisite for kin selection. Kin selection has been theorized as a driving force behind the evolution of group-living in primates. vocal recognition of kin has been observed in haplorhine primates (Rendall, 2004) and in the diurnal, gregarious strepsirrhine, Lemur catta (Nunn, 2000). Much less research has been done on the vocalizations of the nocturnal, solitarily foraging strepsirrhines. Our study is the first to test for vocal recognition of kin in a nongregarious strepsirrhine. Mouse lemurs are small-boiled, nocturnal, solitarily foraging strepsirrhine primates that have dispersed social networks (Braune et al., 2008). We have testet whether M. murinus females respond differently to and whistles, an alarm call (Braune et al., 2008), and trills, advertisement calls, given by their father and by unrelated males.  

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Food preference in two mouse lemur species (Microcebus lehilahytsara & Microcebus murinus)

Author: Institute of Zoology, University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover / Lab course: Experimental Behavioural Biology

Abstract: Two different species of mouse lemurs (Microcebus lehilahytsara and M. murinus) were tested for their food preferences. Four different food items were presented in a two paired choice test to find the most adequate reward for upcoming behavioural tests.  

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Acoustic cues of caller identity and affect intensity in communication calls of tree shrews (Tupaia belangeri)

Author: Institute of Zoology, University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover / Lab course: Experimental Behavioural Biology

Abstract: Comparative studies on the vocalisation of humans and animals have shown that structural and temporal variations in communication sounds serve several functions, such as to reliably transmit the affective state and individuality of the sender. These variations within a call type are named acoustic cues and are ghoutght to be important factors in the communication process of social living animals. In the present study, we have examined attention calls of tree shrews (Tupaia belangeri) for acoustic cues conveying the affective state and/or individuality of the sender. Any general physiological activation of the nervous system in a tree shrew leads to defined changes in its behavioural patterns. When aroused, it raises its tail/ruffles its tail hair and sometimes utters attention calls (von Holst, 1977). Tree shrews utter these calls in their natural habitat, when they are confronted with new environmental stimuli (Emmons, 2000).  

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Personality in the behaviour of great apes - temporal stability, cross-situational consistency

Author: Jana Uher, Jens B. Asendorpf and Josep Call

Abstract: Using a multidisciplinary approach, the present study complements ethological behaviour measurements with basic theoretical concepts, methods and approaches of the personality psychological trait paradigm. Its adoptability and usefulness for animal studies is tested exemplarily on a sample of 20 zoo-housed great apes (five of each of the following species): bonobos, Pan paniscus; chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes verus; gorillas, Gorilla gorilla gorilla; and orang-utans, Pongo pygmaeus abelii. Data on 76 single trait-relevant behaviours were recorded in a series of 14 laboratory based situations and in two different group situations. Data collection was repeated completely after a break of two weeks within a 50-day period. All behaviour records were sufficiently reliable. Individual- and variable-oriented analyses showed high/substantial temporal stability on different levels of aggregation. Distinctive and stable individual situational and response profiles clarified the importance of situations and of multiple trait-relevant behaviours. The present study calls for a closer collaboration between personality psychologists and behavioural biologists to tap the full potential of animal personality research.  

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Personality assessment in the Great Apes: Comparing ecologically valid behavior measures, behavior ratings, and adjective ratings

Author: Jana Uher and Jens B. Asendorpf

Abstract: Three methods of personality assessment (behavior measures, behavior ratings, adjective ratings) were compared in 20 zoo-housed Great Apes: bonobos (Pan paniscus), chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus), gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla), and orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus abelii). To test a new bottom-up approach, the studied trait constructs were systematically generated from the species’ behavioral repertoires. The assessments were reliable, temporally stable, and showed substantial cross-method coherence. In most traits, behavior ratings mediated the relations between adjective ratings and behavior measures. Results suggest that high predictability of manifest behavior is best achieved by behavior ratings, not by adjectives. Empirical evidence for trait constructs beyond current personality models points to the necessity of broad and systematic approaches for valid inferences on a species’ personality structure.

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Cooperative Activities in Young Children and Chimpanzees

Author: Felix Warneken, Frances Chen and Michael Tomasello

Abstract: Human children 18 – 24 months of age and 3 young chimpanzees interacted in 4 cooperative activities with a human adult partner. The human children successfully participated in cooperative problem-solving activities and social games, whereas the chimpanzees were uninterested in the social games. As an experimental manipulation, in each task the adult partner stopped participating at a specific point during the activity. All children produced at least one communicative attempt to reengage him, perhaps suggesting that they were trying to reinstate a shared goal. No chimpanzee ever made any communicative attempt to reengage the partner. These results are interpreted as evidence for a uniquely human form of cooperative activity involving shared intentionality that emerges in the second year of life.

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Computer Supported Measurement of Distance Moved by Rabbits a day by Mangold Video Motion Tracker

Author: Steffen Hoy, Justus Liebig University of Gießen

Abstract: Because of several reasons it was necessary to develop and to test a new software solution to analyze the distance moved by farm animals in the field.  

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• Psychological Research on the Net: A very nice list of recent publications in Psychology