Oral Presentation (4) February 20

As behavioural scientists we often assume that, given the correct stimuli or experimental procedure, everything the animal knows will be expressed in behaviour seamlessly. For instance, the knowledge produced, processed and represented by cognitive processes is measured by the observation of behaviour.
A number of mental disorders in humans are characterised by the severing or degradation of the individual's ability to express knowledge in action (e.g. a Tourette's patient knows that it is socially inappropriate to twirl in a circle whenever they walk through a door, but is unable to stop themselves from doing so). Symptoms in these disorders closely resemble an extremely common abnormal behaviour in captive animals called stereotypy.
I will present a number of experiments arguing that, as in human patients, stereotypy is correlated with a general disinhibition of behaviour and concomitant behavioural inflexibility. Thus, stereotypy is correlated with impaired performance on extinction learning, alterations in the timing of responses, alterations in the sequencing of behaviour, hyperactivity, and most importantly a dissociation of knowledge and action. Thus stereotypic animals fail to express knowledge they possess in the behavioural responses they make. Furthermore, when the captive environment is altered to alleviate stereotypy, an individual's change in stereotypy is correlated with the observed change in measures of general disinhibition and behavioural flexibility.
Thus, stereotypy in caged animals shows fundamental similarities with stereotypy in human mental illness. The behaviour is similarly indicative of a degradation of the individual's ability to properly select action and hence to express knowledge, learning, and cognitive processes in behaviour. Furthermore the severity of this degradation is influenced by the design of the captive environment. Thus, abnormal behaviour and caging conditions can fundamentally affect the outcome of cognitive experiments. Strategies for avoiding or controlling for this confound will be addressed.

GARNER, Joseph P.
Animal Science,
University of California
Davis, CA 95616, USA
jpgarner@ucdavis.edu