Is transfer of acquired coordination of head and forepaw movements possible in dogs?
Dogs were trained to tonic elevation of the forepaw and to use a lever to lift and maintain in position a food-containing cup during eating, this being accompanied by inclination of the head towards the feeder. In the conditions used here, the pretraining situation was that dogs would elevate the paw with an anticipatory upward movement of the lowered head; when the head tilted to the feeder, the paw flexed. The effect of special training, in which the initial coordination of the head and paw movements were remodeled, was that the animals maintained the paw elevated with the head in the lowered position. Dogs trained to perform the operant response with one paw did not transfer the acquired reaction when the "working" paw was changed. After the first training, the initial coordination was changed only between movements of the head and the "working" limb, but not between head movements and the non-trained paw. Remodeling of the initial movement coordination of the head with the second paw also occurred only as a result of the learning process.
Pavlova
O G
OG
Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow.
D000818:Animals; D003216:Conditioning, Operant / Q000502:physiology; D004285:Dogs; D005552:Forelimb / Q000502:physiology*; D019416:Head Movements / Q000502:physiology*; D007858:Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D009048:Motor Skills / Q000502:physiology*; D014163:Transfer, Psychology / Q000502:physiology*