Edward S Redhead

• University of Southampton

Spatial navigation problems are regularly reported in older adults and represent a significant challenge to quality of life. This study aimed to understand navigational strategies in older adults using a virtual honeycomb-shaped maze. We have previously shown in this maze that younger individuals, aged 18 to 40, typically adopt a strategy of altern...

Background Emerging literature shows that nostalgia induced by autobiographical reflection and music confers psychological benefits to people living with dementia. Objective Our objective was to test the potential benefits of nostalgic landmarks for people living with Alzheimer's disease. Methods We displayed the landmarks as wall-mounted picture...

Decision-making in animals often involves choosing actions while navigating the environment, a process markedly different from static decision paradigms commonly studied in laboratory settings. Even in decision-making assays in which animals can freely locomote, decision outcomes are often interpreted as happening at single points in space and sing...

Salient landmarks enhance route learning. We hypothesised that semantically salient nostalgic landmarks would improve route learning compared to non-nostalgic landmarks. In two experiments, participants learned a route through a computer-generated maze using directional arrows and wall-mounted pictures. On the test trial, the arrows were removed, a...

Spatial anxiety (i.e., feelings of apprehension and fear about navigating everyday environments) can adversely impact people's ability to reach desired locations and explore unfamiliar places. Prior research has either assessed spatial anxiety as an individual-difference variable or measured it as an outcome, but there are currently no experimental...

Optimal navigation strategies might differ in different environments. In a closed environment (such as a corridor in a building) local cues at junctions would be best to learn a route. In an open environment distal cues allow a person to gain overall orientation, essential for identifying shortcuts and new paths. A lack of flexibility in strategy u...

Prior research indicates that spatial skills, such as Mental Rotation Skills (MRS), are a strong predictor for mathematics achievement. Other studies have shown that MRS can be improved through training. This paper explores whether a well-known puzzle-oriented tool for building houses with 3D cubes is effective in improving performance in a standar...

This study measured the responses of dogs to signals delivered via hand and voice signals. The study sought to determine whether dogs would display differential stimulus control when switching from a compound stimulus (auditory-visual) cue to presentation of only one of its elements. Twelve dogs performed a target behavior in response to a two-elem...

Healthy aging is associated with a decline in memory and executive function, which have both been linked with aberrant dopaminergic signalling. We examined the relationship between cognitive performance and dopamine function of young and aging zebrafish (Danio rerio). We revealed age-related decreases in working memory and cognitive flexibility in...

Numerous neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders are associated with deficits in executive functions such as working memory and cognitive flexibility. Progress in developing effective treatments for disorders may benefit from targeting these cognitive impairments, the success of which is predicated on the development of animal models with valid...

Simple mazes have provided numerous tasks for assessing working memory. The discrete nature of choices in the T-maze has provided a robust protocol with sensitivity to cognitive deficits, whilst the continuous Y-maze reduces manual handling and pre-trial training. We have combined these attributes to develop a new behavioural task for assessing wor...

Previous research suggests that evaluative conditioning(EC) is insensitive to contingency awareness, andinsensitive to extinction and contingency manipulations.Recent studies have tested the generality of these ECresults using physiological (startle reflex) andbehavioural (affective priming) measures of affect ratherthan verbal ratings of liking. T...

Three experiments using a spatial orientation task within a computer generated building examined the factors influencing maintenance of orientation to an external reference frame within a nested environment. Having explored a virtual building, participants were asked to point to an occluded external cue from 4 different rooms. Experiment 1 orientat...

Spatial learning has been shown to follow associative rules by demonstrations of blocking and overshadowing in both watermazes with rats and virtual watermazes with humans. To examine whether Conditioned Inhibition (CI) can also be demonstrated in a real and virtual watermaze task, two studies were run, one with rats and one with humans. In separat...

Two experiments examined the interaction of task difficulty and stereotype threat in a spatial orientation task. Having explored the exterior and interior of a virtual building, participants were placed in a room with an external or internal view and asked to face a previously seen but occluded external target cue. In the internal room participants...

Prior research indicates that spatial skills, such as Mental Rotation Skills (MRS), are a strong predictor for mathematics achievement. Other studies have shown that MRS can be instilled through training and that they are a good predictor of another spatial skill: route learning and wayfinding skills. This paper explores these assumptions and repor...

Human contingency learning studies were used to compare the predictions of configural and elemental theories. In two experiments, participants were required to learn which stimuli were associated with an increase in core temperature of a fictitious nuclear plant. Experiments investigated the rate at which a simple negative patterning discrimination...

In three experiments, we examined whether overshadowing of geometric cues by a discrete landmark (beacon) is due to the relative saliences of the cues. Using a virtual water maze task, human participants were required to locate a platform marked by a beacon in a distinctively shaped pool. In Experiment 1, the beacon overshadowed geometric cues in a...

Learning and memory dysfunction is the most common neuropsychological effect of mesial temporal lobe epilepsy, and because the underlying neurobiology is poorly understood, there are no pharmacological strategies to help restore memory function in these patients. We have demonstrated impairments in the acquisition of an allocentric spatial task, in...

This study explores the benefits of equine-assisted-activities (EAA) to adolescents with emotional, behavioural or learning difficulties, expanding on previous anecdotal evidence by employing quantitative measures and a control activity. Ten adolescent males and one adolescent female attended a racehorse rehabilitation centre, interacting with both...

Human heart rate monitors (HRMs) are frequently used in equine studies to measure heart rate (HR) and interbeat intervals (IBIs). However, to date, the most commonly used HRM (the Polar w system) in horses has not been validated against simultaneously recorded electrocardiogram (ECG) signals during a range of ambulatory conditions. Polar w S810i an...

The study aims were twofold: to determine if owner behaviour affected dog exploratory behaviours in a dog task solving experiment, and, secondly, if this was related to dog attachment security in Ainsworth et al.’s (1978) Strange Situation Test. Dogs (n = 52) were clustered (K = means cluster analysis) into 4 attachment groups (Secure, n = 15; Inse...

Patients who had undergone a unilateral trans-sylvian selective amygdalohippocampectomy as treatment for chronic intractable epilepsy were tested in a virtual Morris Water Maze (MWM) task where they were required to locate a hidden platform as a measure of spatial learning. These individuals' performance on spatial tasks was compared to age-matched...

Canine behaviour problems have serious welfare implications for dog and owner. Canine behavioural development can be divided into eight stages. Of these, the first year is most critical as it is the period when most social and environmental learning occurs, learned behaviour patterns become established and problem behaviours are most likely to beco...

The aim of this study was to determine if owner behavior predicted dog attachment security in Ainsworth et al. (1978) Strange Situation Test. Fifty-two owners/dogs participated in 8 x 3 minute episodes: dog/owner; dog/owner/stranger; dog/stranger; dog alone; and reunions dog/owner. Data was collected through continuous time sampling of owner behavi...

In three experiments human participants received training in a causal judgment task. After learning which patterns were associated with an outcome, participants rated the likelihood of the outcome in the presence of a novel combination of the patterns. The first two experiments used two conditions in which two visual patterns were associated with t...

A growing body of literature indicates that rats prefer to navigate in the direction of a goal in the environment (directional responding) rather than to the precise location of the goal (place navigation). This paper provides a brief review of this literature with an emphasis on recent findings in the Morris water task. Four experiments designed t...

Previous work from our laboratory has demonstrated that rats display a preference for directional responding over place navigation in a wide range of procedural variants of the Morris water task (Hamilton, Akers, Weisend, & Sutherland, 2007; Hamilton et al., 2008). A preference for place navigation has only been observed when the pool is reduced as...

Three computer based experiments, testing human participants in a non-immersive virtual watermaze task, used a blocking design to assess whether two sets of geometric cues would compete in a manner described by associative models of learning. In stage 1, participants were required to discriminate between visually distinct platforms. In stage 2, add...

Significant similarities exist between the neural and behavioural features of environmentally and drug-induced stereotypy. For example, exposure to dopamine agonists, such as amphetamine, induces stereotypy and causes alterations in midbrain neurophysiology similar to those observed following chronic stress. An additional behavioural feature of the...

Horses displaying an oral stereotypy were tested on an instrumental choice paradigm to examine differences in learning from non-stereotypic counterparts. Stereotypic horses are known to have dysfunction of the dorsomedial striatum, and lesion studies have shown that this region may mediate response-outcome learning. The paradigm was specifically ap...

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Horses that display stereotypic (repetitive, idiosyncratic and invariant response patterns) behavior have been shown to have differences in central nervous system physiology. Specifically, they have been found to have sensitized striatal dopaminergic pathways. Pharmacological sensitization of the striatum has been shown to lead to an accelerated sh...

In three experiments participants were shown patterns in association with the occurrence of an outcome. In one condition these patterns shared a common feature. Ratings for the likelihood of the outcome were higher in the presence of a novel combination of patterns than for individual patterns and this “summation effect” was reduced by the addition...

Previous work from our laboratory has demonstrated that rats display a preference for directional responding over true place navigation in the Morris water task. The present study evaluated the range of situations in which this preference is observed and attempted to identify methods that favor navigation to the precise location of the escape platf...

A total of 41 participants explored a novel square-shaped environment containing five identical boxes each hiding a visually distinct object. After an initial free exploration the participants were required to locate the objects first in a predetermined and subsequently in an optional order task. Two distinct exploration strategies emerged: Partici...

Human contingency learning was used to compare the predictions of configural and elemental theories. In three experiments, participants were required to learn which indicators were associated with an increase in core temperature of a fictitious nuclear plant. Experiments 1 and 2 investigated the rate at which a triple-element stimulus (ABC) could b...

Three computer-based experiments which tested human participants in a non-immersive virtual watermaze task sought to determine factors which dictate whether the presence of a visual platform disrupts locale learning and taxon learning. In Experiment 1, the visible platform disrupted locale but not taxon learning based on viewpoint-independent and v...

A series of experiments was designed to explore the cognitive mechanisms involved in optimal foraging models by using the behavioural controls of operant methodology. Rats were trained to press one of two levers to obtain reinforcement on a progressive variable-interval schedule, which modelled food patch depletion; the schedule was reset by pressi...

E-learning often involves exploration of the information space that is somewhat similar to the exploration of space in the real world. Initial paths taken in any environment (be it a physical, virtual, or any other type) will not only guide the discoveries of what the environment contains, but also formulate the underlying organising principles. Th...

This study investigated the strength of association between owner demographics, dog characteristics, owner attitude, owner-dog interactions and dog weight profiles in a random population of dog owners. In this correlation study, the variables were weight definition, as categorised by dog owners, dog and owner characteristics, food and exercise leve...

People explore and navigate in physical and virtual environments. Do we acquire and utilize spatial information differently in front of a monitor screen than actually moving in real spaces? In this paper, we present an experiment where strategy pattern formation during free spatial exploration was compared between two environments: a real room and...

Stabled horses often present with abnormal repetitive behaviours (ARBs). Recent research has examined the possibility that ARBs may be the result of neurological change, brought about by environmentally induced, chronic under stimulation. The studies have typically correlated behavioural data from affected species with existing lesion studies and n...

The effectiveness of environmental enrichment on reducing stereotypic behaviour in two captive vicugna (Vicugna vicugna) Abstract Environmental enrichment by increasing foraging behaviour and providing food item choice are widely practised and generally accepted as effective methods for reducing stereotypic behaviour in captive animals. In this stu...

The experiment investigated whether there would be a difference in behaviour between the effects of long-term tethering without exercise, long-term tethering with exercise and group pen housing on sled dogs. Siberian husky sled dogs from a commercial sled-dog kennel (n=9), were exposed to four different housing conditions and filmed to record behav...

Aggressive behaviour in dogs has become a major topic of scientific research in Northern Europe and USA. It ranks among the top problems presented to animal behaviour therapists. Research into the influence of owner/dog interactions on the development of aggression has yielded contradictory results. However in Animal Behaviour Therapy the influence...

Animal Behaviour Therapy is an expanding applied area that is rapidly gaining recognition as a distinct field of professional development. It refers to animals kept as companions or as working animals, in homes, zoological collections or laboratories. It relates to the prevention and resolution of behaviours that are deemed problematical. Problem b...

Increasing foraging behaviour and promoting substrate choice as methods for reducing stereotypy in captive animals are widely practised and generally accepted as effective. In the present study we examined the efficacy of offering foraging patch and substrate choice in an attempt to reduce motor stereotypy in two captive vicugna (F1 and F2). Browse...

Problem behaviour may have a physiological basis; it may be conditioned to inappropriate stimuli; or it may be abnormal in terms of frequency or duration of display, known as stereotypic behaviour (SB), that is considered functionless (Mason, 1991). However, repetitive, invariant behaviours that are resistant to change are also characteristic of no...

Pigeons received autoshaping with 2 stimuli, A and B, presented in adjacent regions on a television screen. Conditioning with each stimulus was therefore accompanied by stimulation that was displaced from the screen whenever the other stimulus was presented. Test trials with AB revealed stronger responding if this displaced stimulation was similar...

In this paper a series of studies and theoretical proposals about how preexposure to environmental cues affects subsequent spatial learning are reviewed. Traditionally, spatial learning had been thought to depend on gestaltic non-associative processes, and well established phenomena such as latent learning or instantaneous transfer have been taken...

In two experiments rats were pre-exposed to the landmarks surrounding a Morris pool while they swam to a platform with a beacon attached to it. They were then required to escape from the pool by finding the platform, without the beacon, in a new position. When the platform remained in the same place for each pre-exposure session, but was moved from...

In this paper a series of studies and theoretical proposals about how preexposure to environmental cues affects subsequent spatial learning are reviewed. Traditionally, spatial learning had been thought to depend on gestaltic non-associative processes, and well established phenomena such as latent learning or instantaneous transfer have been taken...

It has been proposed that the hippocampal formation is necessary for the acquisition of tasks that require the use of configural representations for their solution, including spatial learning and negative patterning. Tests of this influential view have, however, yielded conflicting results. For example fornix or hippocampal lesions, which reliably...

It has been proposed that the hippocampal formation is necessary for the acquisition of tasks that require the use of configural representations for their solution, including spatial learning and negative patterning. Tests of this influential view have, however, yielded conflicting results. For example fornix or hippocampal lesions, which reliably...

In 3 experiments rats were preexposed to the landmarks that surround a Morris pool by being placed on a submerged platform within the pool. They were then required to escape from the pool by swimming to the platform, which was in a location that had not been used during preexposure. Preexposure facilitated subsequent escape from the pool, provided...

In 3 experiments rats were preexposed to the landmarks that surround a Morris pool by being placed on a submerged platform within the pool. They were then required to escape from the pool by swimming to the platform, which was in a location that had not been used during preexposure. Preexposure facilitated subsequent escape from the pool, provided...

In three experiments, rats received appetitive conditioning with two unconditioned stimuli (US+ and US*) that supported a similar conditioned response. Stimulus A was first paired with US+, and then, for a second stage of training, the compound AB was paired with US*. Subsequent test trials with A revealed an abnormally strong conditioned response....

Rats were required to swim to a hidden platform in order to escape from a Morris pool, after they had been exposed to the landmarks around the pool by swimming to a platform that had a beacon attached to it. The platform occupied a different place for the test trials than for the preexposure trials. Escape from the pool was facilitated if the landm...

Five experiments examined the factors that determine whether or nor summation will occur when experimental stimuli are presented on a television screen for autoshaping with pigeons. In Experiment 1 there were periods when the television screen was illuminated white and periods when it was dark. When conditioning was conducted during the white perio...

In 5 autoshaping experiments pigeons received 3 stimuli, A, B, and C, for a discrimination in which food was presented after the simultaneous compounds AC and BC, but not after the simultaneous compound ABC. The ease with which this discrimination was mastered was facilitated by presenting C continuously throughout each session (Experiment 1), by p...

In 5 autoshaping experiments pigeons received 3 stimuli, A, B, and C, for a discrimination in which food was presented after the simultaneous compounds AC and BC, but not after the simultaneous compound ABC. The ease with which this discrimination was mastered was facilitated by presenting C continuously throughout each session (Experiment 1), by p...

Four experiments examined the effects of a partial reinforcement schedule on extinction using appetitive Pavlovian conditioning. Extinction was slower after partial than after continuous reinforcement when the schedules were administered to different groups (Experiment 1). The opposite result was found in Experiments 2 and 3 when both schedules wer...

In three experiments, rats in a swimming pool were trained to find a submerged platform with a beacon attached to it. For some rats this beacon unambiguously identified the location of the platform; for others the beacon was made ambiguous by placement of an identical beacon in a different part of the pool. Test trials, in the absence of the platfo...

In 4 experiments, pigeons received autoshaping with various combinations of three stimuli, A, B, and C, before test trials in which responding during all three stimuli, ABC, was compared with that during a three-element control compound, DEF, which had been consistently paired with food. Pairing A, B, and C individually with food resulted in simila...

In Experiment 1, rats received an A+AX degrees discrimination in which food was presented after Stimulus A by itself but not after a simultaneous compound of A with Stimulus X. AX was then paired with food in a 2nd stage, followed by test trials with A alone. Responding on the test trials with A was more vigorous than during a control stimulus that...

In Experiment 1, rats received an A⁺AX° discrimination in which food was presented after Stimulus A by itself but not after a simultaneous compound of A with Stimulus X. AX was then paired with food in a 2nd stage, followed by test trials with A alone. Responding on the test trials with A was more vigorous than during a control stimulus that had be...

Rats in Experiment 1 received a negative patterning discrimination in which food was delivered after either of two auditory stimuli when they were presented individually, but not when they were presented in compound. The stimuli were of different intensity. The discrimination between the compound and the stimulus of lower intensity was acquired mor...

The role played by similarity in discrimination learning was examined in four experiments using compound stimuli. In Experiment 1, pigeons received training in which food was presented after stimulus A, compound AB, but not compound ABC—A+ BC+ ABCo. The A+ ABCo discrimination was acquired more readily than was the BC+ ABCo discrimination. In the re...

In 3 experiments, the effect of adding an irrelevant stimulus to a discrimination was examined. In Exp 1, a group of pigeons received autoshaping with an A+ Bo discrimination in which 1 stimulus signaled food, A+, and a simultaneous compound of A with another stimulus, B, signaled the absence of food, ABo. A 2nd group received similiar training, ex...

This chapter presents a series of experiments which used autoshaping with pigeons to examine the extent to which changes in attention can influence acquisition of a conditional discrimination. In one set of experiments, pigeons received a conditional discrimination in which some stimuli, but not others, were relevant to its solution. Subsequent tra...