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.

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 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.

scholarly journals Context-Aware Zero-Shot Recognition

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (07) ◽  
pp. 11709-11716
Author(s):  
Ruotian Luo ◽  
Ning Zhang ◽  
Bohyung Han ◽  
Linjie Yang
Keyword(s):  
Conditional Random Field ◽  
Object Relation ◽  
Visual Context ◽  
Context Aware ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Learning Framework ◽  
Shot Detection ◽  
Learning Techniques ◽  
Novel Objects ◽  
Problem Setting

We present a novel problem setting in zero-shot learning, zero-shot object recognition and detection in the context. Contrary to the traditional zero-shot learning methods, which simply infers unseen categories by transferring knowledge from the objects belonging to semantically similar seen categories, we aim to understand the identity of the novel objects in an image surrounded by the known objects using the inter-object relation prior. Specifically, we leverage the visual context and the geometric relationships between all pairs of objects in a single image, and capture the information useful to infer unseen categories. We integrate our context-aware zero-shot learning framework into the traditional zero-shot learning techniques seamlessly using a Conditional Random Field (CRF). The proposed algorithm is evaluated on both zero-shot region classification and zero-shot detection tasks. The results on Visual Genome (VG) dataset show that our model significantly boosts performance with the additional visual context compared to traditional methods.

scholarly journals Curious creatures: a multi-taxa investigation of responses to novelty in a zoo environment

PeerJ ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. e4454 ◽  
Author(s):  
Belinda A. Hall ◽  
Vicky Melfi ◽  
Alicia Burns ◽  
David M. McGill ◽  
Rebecca E. Doyle
Keyword(s):  
Total Duration ◽  
Single Species ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Stationary Object ◽  
Object A ◽  
Barbary Sheep ◽  
Captive Populations ◽  
Novel Objects ◽  
Geochelone Elegans ◽  
Different Characteristics

The personality trait of curiosity has been shown to increase welfare in humans. If this positive welfare effect is also true for non-humans, animals with high levels of curiosity may be able to cope better with stressful situations than their conspecifics. Before discoveries can be made regarding the effect of curiosity on an animal’s ability to cope in their environment, a way of measuring curiosity across species in different environments must be created to standardise testing. To determine the suitability of novel objects in testing curiosity, species from different evolutionary backgrounds with sufficient sample sizes were chosen. Barbary sheep (Ammotragus lervia) n = 12, little penguins (Eudyptula minor) n = 10, ringtail lemurs (Lemur catta) n = 8,red tailed black cockatoos (Calyptorhynchus banksia) n = 7, Indian star tortoises (Geochelone elegans) n = 5 and red kangaroos (Macropus rufus) n = 5 were presented with a stationary object, a moving object and a mirror. Having objects with different characteristics increased the likelihood individuals would find at least one motivating. Conspecifics were all assessed simultaneously for time to first orientate towards object (s), latency to make contact (s), frequency of interactions, and total duration of interaction (s). Differences in curiosity were recorded in four of the six species; the Barbary sheep and red tailed black cockatoos did not interact with the novel objects suggesting either a low level of curiosity or that the objects were not motivating for these animals. Variation in curiosity was seen between and within species in terms of which objects they interacted with and how long they spent with the objects. This was determined by the speed in which they interacted, and the duration of interest. By using the measure of curiosity towards novel objects with varying characteristics across a range of zoo species, we can see evidence of evolutionary, husbandry and individual influences on their response. Further work to obtain data on multiple captive populations of a single species using a standardised method could uncover factors that nurture the development of curiosity. In doing so, it would be possible to isolate and modify sub-optimal husbandry practices to improve welfare in the zoo environment.

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.

Response To Novel Objects in Three Lower Primates : Greater Galago, Slow Loris, and Owl Monkey

Behaviour ◽  
1970 ◽  
Vol 37 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 55-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annette Ehrlich
Keyword(s):  
Home Cage ◽  
Primate Species ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Slow Loris ◽  
Spatial Features ◽  
Owl Monkey ◽  
Novel Objects ◽  
Owl Monkeys ◽  
Initial Object ◽  
Test Objects

AbstractExploratory behavior, defined as response to novel objects, was measured in representatives of three lower primate species -greater galago, slow loris, and owl monkey. Test apparatus was a two-compartment cage; animals could choose between remaining on the familiar, home cage side or entering the novel side which contained six manipulable objects. Galagos spent the most time in contact with objects and the least time in retreat to the home cage. Owl monkeys and lorises were less responsive to the test objects but, while lorises actively explored spatial features of the new environment, owl monkeys remained inactive. For all species: i) the greatest degree of responsiveness to novel objects occurred during the first 5 min. of the 15-min. session. 2) initial object contacts were made with the nose; these were brief and were followed by lengthier contacts with mouth and hands. 3) occurrence of the various behavioral categories (object contacts, active responses, inactive responses, and retreat) followed a consistent pattern.

Infants' acceptance of phonotactically illegal word forms as object labels

2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (6) ◽  
pp. 1400-1411 ◽  
Author(s):  
ENA VUKATANA ◽  
SUZANNE CURTIN ◽  
SUSAN A. GRAHAM
Keyword(s):  
Word Learning ◽  
Learning Task ◽  
Training Phase ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Complex Interplay ◽  
Learning Abilities ◽  
Sound System ◽  
Word Forms ◽  
Novel Objects ◽  
Novel Words

AbstractWe investigated 16- and 20-month-olds' flexibility in mapping phonotactically illegal words to objects. Using an associative word-learning task, infants were presented with a training phase that either highlighted or did not highlight the referential status of a novel label. Infants were then habituated to two novel objects, each paired with a phonotactically illegal Czech word. When referential cues were provided, 16-, but not 20-month-olds, formed word–object mappings. In the absence of referential cues, infants of both ages failed to map the novel words. These findings illustrate the complex interplay between infants' developing sound system and their word learning abilities.

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