American Psychological Association Division 6

Graphic with descriptions of the four award nominations

The Society for Behavioral Neuroscience and Comparative Psychology (APA Division 6) seeks to recognize individuals whose scholarship and service have made meaningful contributions to advance our field.

All nominations are due by Mon., December 8!

apadivisions.org/division-6/awards

Division 6 is SEEKING a Newsletter Editor!
The role serves for a three-year term and is responsible for the publication of the Behavioral Neuroscientist and Comparative Psychologist (BNCP) in Spring, Summer, and Fall.

For more information contact Div6 Secretary Will Whitham, will.whitham@etamu.edu

Summary infographic of the Journal for Comparative Psychology article, Beyond the Information (Not) Given: Associative Mechanisms Versus Representations of Uncertainty in Extinction in Laboratory Rats (Rattus norvegicus)

Gasalla et al. manipulated the dipper mechanism & found behavior that was aligned more with these associative accounts. The importance of the sucrose dipper in these kinds of studies suggests that the reward delivery mechanism should be included in a causal model. doi.org/10.1037/com0...

The Journal of Comparative Psychology is offering one editorial fellowship for 2026. More details can be found in the link below.

Submissions due by November 1.

www.apa.org/pubs/journal...

Summary Infographic: Justin Yates, Professor and Chair, Department of Psychological Science, Northern Kentucky University. Justin is interested in elucidating the neurobehavioral mechanisms that control risky choice and substance use disorders.

MEMBER HIGHLIGHT: Justin Yates, Professor and Chair, Department of Psychological Science, Northern Kentucky University. Justin is interested in elucidating the neurobehavioral mechanisms that control risky choice and substance use disorders.

Overall, skunks do have the ability to use visual patterns to solve problems even though they have poor vision and difficulty in learning the tasks without a lot of experience. doi.org/10.1037/com0...

Although the task was hard for the skunks to learn, they did finally solve it (after 1000s of trials). They seemed to be responding to visual patterns of contact and perceptual containment between food and painted lines. Only one skunk learned to pull supportive over unsupportive slats.

There were functional slats (real wooden slats that gave subjects both visual and functional information when manipulated) and purely representational slats that were painted lines that provided only visual information.

Johnson-Ulrich et al. presented the slat-pulling task to three striped skunks to assess whether they could reason about visual patterns of support. doi.org/10.1037/com0...

Skunks are an understudied but interesting species. As omnivorous generalists with food that is spread around and often in patches, it is perhaps the case that they must engage in various forms of cognition to thrive in their environment.
doi.org/10.1037/com0...

MEMBER HIGHLIGHT: Ellen Furlong, Associate Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience, Transylvania University. Ellen studies dog cognition and behavior. Check out her lab website: transy.edu/dog-lab/

MEMBER HIGHLIGHT: Ellen Furlong, Associate Professor of Psychology & Neuroscience, Transylvania University. Ellen studies dog cognition and behavior.
Check out her lab website: transy.edu/dog-lab/

Summary infographic of the Journal for Comparative Psychology article,Melodic and harmonic chromatic interval processing by pigeons (Columba livia).

The origins of human musicality remain poorly understood. Cook tested four pigeons in three experiments for their capacity to discriminate the intervals of the chromatic scale. doi.org/10.1037/com0...

The results provide additional support for greater attention to housing conditions for laboratory animals, as these may influence welfare as well as the experimental outcome in important ways.

Rats raised in a “naturalistic” environment with wooden branches, tunnels, and a wooden shelter and variable location of food, water, and shelter displayed attenuated retrieval of context fear conditioning.

In comparison to a standard-housing control group, rats that were raised in an enriched environment demonstrated shorter latency to learn a platform reversal in the Morris water maze, which may suggest that housing conditions influenced behavioral flexibility.

The opportunity to interact with and adapt to a varied environment has cognitive benefits and may contribute to well-being. Laboratory animals are often maintained under conditions that do not afford such opportunities.

Check out Caratti, N., et al., (2025). Naturalistic housing condition promotes behavioral flexibility and increases resilience to stress in rats. Behavioral Neuroscience, 139(2), 53–59. doi.org/10.1037/bne0...

The authors concluded that this may reflect a species-specific win-stay bias and the differential consequences of staying versus leaving (a conditioned-reinforcement account of intertemporal choice in patch-leaving contexts).

For the binary-choice condition, the pigeons preferred the SS option. In Patch-L and Patch-S conditions, pigeons preferred to stay at the patch rather than leave in both cases, and even when the stay response was more effortful.

Gomes-Ng et al. replicated this research using pigeons. There were three conditions, one with the binary-choice task and two patch-leaving tasks in which staying at a patch either led to an LL (Patch-L) or SS (Patch-S) reward. doi.org/10.1037/com0...

When offered a simultaneous choice between a larger-later reward and a smaller-sooner reward blue jays, monkeys, humans, and rats often prefer the SS option. When choosing between staying at a location for a reward or leaving for a different reward, these same species tend to prefer the LL reward.

MEMBER HIGHLIGHT: Michael Beran, Professor of Psychology, Georgia State University. Michael studies comparative cognition with an emphasis on metacognition, self-control, prospective cognition, numerical cognition, perception, and decision making.
Check out his lab website: sites.gsu.edu/comic-lab/

Check out the August Issue of the Behavioral Neuroscience Journal!

Summary infographic of the Journal for Comparative Psychology article, Positive intonation increases the perceived value of smaller rewards in a quantity discrimination task with dogs (Canis familiaris).

Colbert-White et al. assessed the influence of a high, rising, positive “Oooh!” sound on dogs’ choice of differing quantities of food. The idea behind this experiment is that dogs may use human-delivered cues to aid them in making choices. doi.org/10.1037/com0...

MEMBER HIGHLIGHT: Philip Jean-Richard-dit-Bressel, PhD, UNSW Sydney School of Psychology. Philip is interested in the psychological and neurobiological mechanisms of motivated learning and decision-making.
Learn more: unsw.edu.au/staff/philip-jean-richard-dit-bressel

Enhanced context fear was more persistent than conventional context fear conditioning which has potentially optimistic implications for exposure-based treatments.

doi.org/10.1037/bne0000608

Interestingly, fear conditioning augmented by early life stress was expressed more strongly at the beginning of extinction but rapidly decreased.

doi.org/10.1037/bne0000608

Consistent with harms of early life stress exposure, early stress augmented context fear conditioning, anxiety-like behavior, and was not weakened by a retention interval.

doi.org/10.1037/bne0000608

Minshall et al., (2025) study examined an adaptation of stress-enhanced fear learning, or SEFL, in which rats were exposed to footshock stress early in life (17-days old) and later as adults (around 90 days old) received footshock paired with a novel context.

doi.org/10.1037/bne0000608

The effect of separation and subsequent increased play may depend on general motivations, rather than any “peer-specific” drive to renew relationships. More broadly, these results suggest that play may have a greater role in more general social learning rather than re-establishing bonds.