[ExI] puzzle - animal consciousness

[William Flynn Wallace]

Studies are decades old, and I am not a rat psychologist, but I'll try:

the rat climbs a rope, goes through the left opening, jumps to the right
platform, paws the middle lever, etc.  for several more tasks.  Key is to
start at the end with the last task and work backwards - nothing but
positive reinforcement, often secondary so as not to stop the rat, which he
would do if you gave him food.  I was astounded when I read this study.  It
does take hours and hours and hours.

With a dog, you would establish a sec. reinf. with, say, a simple clicker.
Click and give him a small treat.  Animal trainers do something similar.
So the animal doesn't get a treat every time.

As to how far in time a dog can get conditioned - do things the third day -
I have no idea.


On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 3:20 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

>
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>
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> *From:* extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:
> extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On Behalf Of *William Flynn
> Wallace
> *Sent:* Tuesday, May 20, 2014 1:09 PM
> *To:* ExI chat list
>
> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] puzzle - animal consciousness
>
>
>
> >…Well, Hell!  What is sequence but the order in which the trained dogs
> run an obstacle course? Perhaps the owners are shouting commands?
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> Ja, the trainer goes thru and gives both auditory and visual cues.  My
> notion is that dogs can do sequences, but not as effectively as humans.  I
> don’t really know of demonstrations of a dog’s ability to do a sequence of
> tasks, but I know rats do: they are trained to run mazes.  It would be
> interesting to see a dog vs a rat in learning similar but scaled mazes.
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>  >… But the dogs aren't stopping at each one to wait for directions…
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> Part of the criteria for judging is in how seamless the dog transitions
> from one task to the next.
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> >… I'll have to bet that 'no dogs can sequence' is very wrong…
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> Agreed, as stated is wrong.  So how good can dogs get at sequencing?  Can
> you get a dog to do a task every third day, for instance?  Or two tasks on
> alternate days?  Or train a dog to hit a lever every hour on a chime, a red
> lever then two blue levers, in that repeating pattern?
>
>
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> >…  Dogs are smarter than rats and lab rats can learn very complicated
> sequences of tasks…
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>
> Cool, have you examples please?
>
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> spike
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