Analysis of exclusion responding in a dog trained in simple discrimination tasks

Abstract

In studies of animal cognition, the selection pattern of an undefined stimulus conditionally to an undefined sample when the other stimuli available are experimentally defined has caught the researchers attention. Among the species recently studied in research about exclusion responding, the canine species has been highlighted. Other results showing this same response pattern with dogs has been published especially in the international literature. The present study tested a methodology for investigating exclusion respon-ding with one dog. Simultaneous simple discrimination trainings were carried out with objects in a structured situation, similar to the domestic context of this species. After establishing a differential responding for three stimuli pairs, it was introduced two different kinds of exclusion probes, three trials of each kind. Results showed that the animal chose the new stimulus in the first kind of probe trial and showed variability on its choices for the second kind of probe trials. Considering that the shaping of one specific animal response may lead to a different data analysis it could be suggested that future studies define just one response as the correct one. These data contribute to the generality of exclusion responding principle and, yet, they endorse the canine species potential to participate on this kind of investigation.Keywords: exclusion responding, simple discrimination, dogs, animal cognition.