This study investigated the acquisition of food by hand-reared coyotes, Canis latrans, of different social rank in a familiar area with and without novel objects (safe and potentially unsafe conditions). The first objective was to test the hypothesis that dominant animals are more hesitant than subordinates in approaching food in the presence of a novel stimulus. The results were that dominant pups usually were the first to feed in the absence of novel stimulus, and subordinate pups were the first to feed when novel objects were present.

This research asked whether a contextual stimulus in a visual conditional discrimination task controlled membership in classes of stimuli related hierarchically. Six experiments with nonreading preschool children posed the following question: Does a stimulus juxtaposed with a conditional discrimination task control relations among the stimuli involved in the task? In Experiments I and II, printed instance or concept words were juxtaposed with conditional discrimination tasks involving symbols. Results for eight of nine children demonstrated neither conditional nor equivalence relations between words and symbols. Would conditional discrimination training establish classes of visual stimuli composed of selectively nonequivalent subsets? In Experiment III, subjects from the first two experiments were taught conditional relations, then tested for stimulus class development. Printed words that could have been related transitively were not, apparently due to interference by identical letters in certain words, so no stimulus classes developed. Would the equivalence relations sought in Experiment III develop without a history where printed words were unnecessary to conditional discrimination tasks? For Experiment IV-A, one experimentally naive child was taught the same conditional relations as Experiment III subjects. Two stimulus classes emerged, each containing two subsets that were selectively nonequivalent depending upon trial context. Are direct or transitive stimulus relations more likely to control responding? In experiment IV-B, the subject from Experiment IV-A expressed more direct than transitive relations on modified matching trials. Would interference by identical elements in words be precluded by training conditional relations among words directly? One child in Experiment V was taught conditional relations between concept words and instance words, and instance words and symbols. Results suggested that stimulus class development, which would have answered the question affirmatively, had begun but was incomplete. Would providing auditory labels for some printed words preclude interference by identical elements, allowing nonidentical words to be related transitively? In Experiment VI, one child was taught auditory labels for selected printed words, followed by the same visual conditional discrimination training provided in Experiment III. Two stimulus classes developed, requiring transitive and symmetric relations among printed words.

<p>Denna uppsats belyser empati ur ett troligen helt nytt perspektiv genom att likna empatiprocessen vid den suggestibla som ”den andres” förmedlande av stimu¬lus, vilket av målpersonen mottages, processas och därefter ofta resulterar i en, hos målpersonen, genuint upplevd känsla eller uppfattning. I uppsatsen förslås vidare att empati och suggestibilitet skiljer sig ifrån övrig form av var¬seblivning genom det radikala internaliserandet av stimulus som de ofta ska¬par hos målpersonen. Studiens syfte var att, baserat på detta förslag, utreda om det finns ett samband mellan empati och suggesti¬bilitet. En studie utförd med 42 per¬soner påvisade en tendens till samband mellan suggestibilitet och empati samt att kvinnor var signifikant mer suggestibla än män. Framtida forskning bör fortsatt testa om suggestibilitet kan förklara empati.</p>

Flies use visual cues for a variety of tasks, such as maneuvering through the environment and finding potential mates. Hoverflies, in particular, have very developed eyes and use them to be able to hover mid air and perform fast, elegant movements. The Motion Vision Group, located at the Department of Neuroscience at BMC, Uppsala, studies the motion vision system of the hoverfly brain, using electrophysiology. Experiments are performed by displaying visual stimuli on a screen in front of an immobilized fly, while recording the response from a single neuron with a thin electrode.Until now, the Motion Vision group has been using the open source program VisionEgg to generate the stimuli. VisionEgg is able to display stimuli at high frame rate and has a large set of useful features such as perspective distortion. It also has a lot of drawbacks that makes it desirable to acquire new software. The main drawbacks include it being hard to learn, use and modify, as well as being unable to generate the stimuli needed for some key experiments.This master´s thesis describes the development of software more suited to the lab´s needs. This software should be able to generate some of the stimuli that were impossible to do at the moment, as well as being easy to expand and add upon. The frame rate of the displayed stimuli has to be both high and stable in order to perform high precision experiments.The resulting program is called FlyFly and has been developed iteratively in close cooperation with its end users, ensuring a user friendly end product capable of meeting the lab´s needs. FlyFly is implemented using MatLab and the Psychophysics toolbox with the graphical user interface (GUI) designed with the Guide editor. The GUI is decoupled from the functions drawing the stimuli, making it easy to improve or remove parts altogether. FlyFly is intuitive to use and allows anyone to quickly get started. It allows easy manipulation of series of trials, and supports drawing of multiple objects simultaneously. With the current machine set-up, it displays stimuli at 160 frames per second with few or no dropped frames.FlyFly is currently being used in the lab and will be so for the foreseeable future.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 176-188). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

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Denna uppsats belyser empati ur ett troligen helt nytt perspektiv genom att likna empatiprocessen vid den suggestibla som ”den andres” förmedlande av stimu¬lus, vilket av målpersonen mottages, processas och därefter ofta resulterar i en, hos målpersonen, genuint upplevd känsla eller uppfattning. I uppsatsen förslås vidare att empati och suggestibilitet skiljer sig ifrån övrig form av var¬seblivning genom det radikala internaliserandet av stimulus som de ofta ska¬par hos målpersonen. Studiens syfte var att, baserat på detta förslag, utreda om det finns ett samband mellan empati och suggesti¬bilitet. En studie utförd med 42 per¬soner påvisade en tendens till samband mellan suggestibilitet och empati samt att kvinnor var signifikant mer suggestibla än män. Framtida forskning bör fortsatt testa om suggestibilitet kan förklara empati.