Nonhuman species have been shown to be able to use information about the hierarchical structure of serial patterns involving the consequences of their behavior. In the present article, three lines of research are examined that provide evidence for such learning. The first shows that rats are sensitive, not only to the trial by trial sequence of the changing magnitude of reward but also to the monotonic decrease in those rewards. The second line of research shows that in an eight-lever box, rats can divide a complex sequence of required responses into chunks (right, right, left; right, right, left; etc.), defining a "rule." The third line of research demonstrates that when pigeons are trained on a sequence in which there is a monotonically increasing or decreasing response requirement for each reward, the sequences themselves take on additional incentive value leading to suboptimal choice to leave the schedule. Monotonically increasing response requirements take on a relatively negative reward value, whereas monotonically decreasing response requirements take on positive reward value. The three lines of research demonstrate that animals are sensitive not only to the immediate consequences of their behavior but also to the pattern of future consequences.
The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness (NYD) shows that nonhuman animal awareness is an active research area. However, several unresolved challenges identified by Griffin in the 1976 scientific study of animal consciousness continue to deter researchers. We sidestep debate around studies of consciousness and instead explore how studies identified in the NYD address Tinbergen's Four Questions. We found that ontogeny is overlooked in studies of animal consciousness, whereas most studies focus on mechanism. Although our efforts do not resolve long-standing challenges in consciousness research, we do provide a different perspective that may hold prescriptive utility for future research.
In 1976, Donald R. Griffin asked us to consider the question of animal consciousness. Specifically, do animals have mental experiences akin to ours? This question was actually asked more than a century earlier, and the attempts to answer it prompted generations of researchers to adopt a more objective analysis of behavior and cognition. I briefly review the history of this controversy and explain how- by focusing on behavior-significant scientific progress has been accomplished without engaging in mentalistic theorizing.
