Exploring the Animal Mind is a collection of Windows-based
(Windows 98 or 95) software modules for teaching basic principles and advanced theories
in animal cognition and behavior. They are designed to allow students to experience and
interactively examine classic and modern methods for studying animal behavior. The goal is
to improve student understanding of the methods, logic, and evidence involved with the
interpretation of behavioral data as collected in the research laboratory.
All of the modules are designed so that they move from simple
illustrations of fundamental ideas (excellent for use in lectures and presentations) to
more complex content that develop a deeper conceptual understanding of the material
(excellent for laboratory exercises). The driving principle behind all of the modules is
that you learn better by actively doing, testing, and interacting with the material rather
than passively reading about it or listening to it.
The software package currently consists of nine modules (more are in development):
Modules looking at Stimulus Learning:
Pavlovian Conditioning
Human
Contingency Learning and Perception
Modules looking at Response Learning:
Schedules
of Reinforcement
Choice
Behavior under Concurrent Schedules
Modules looking at Discrimination Learning:
Conditional
Discriminations (e.g. Matching-to-sample)
Spatial
Memory and the Radial Maze
T-
Maze Procedures
Modules looking at Foraging Behavior:
Prey
Models and Optimal Foraging
Patch Models and
Optimal Foraging
The goal of each module is to allow the student to experience and
interact with simulations of the same procedures used with the animals (with occasional
modifications to make it more interesting for humans). In conjunction with this, woven
into the modules are the most important conceptual operations or materials of each area.
The students can discover and investigate these more advanced ideas as they use the
program. For example, in some modules real time graphical information is provided to the
students showing their behavior depicted in the very types of graphs used in their
textbook. Using this feature, they can try to duplicate an animal's behavior to produce
the same graphs as in the textbook or explore how different patterns of their own behavior
change the relations in the graph. In other modules options are included to explore,
manipulate, and understand the mathematical models associated with the topic area.
