Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Date of Degree
6-2026
Document Type
Doctoral Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Program
Psychology
Advisor
Dr. Diana Reiss
Committee Members
Chris Braun
Martin Chodorow
Ken Ramirez
Keywords
Creativity, concept learning, working memory, do something different
Abstract
For the entirety of my career as a professional animal trainer, there has been universal interest in Karen Pryor’s seminal work of 1969, The Creative Porpoise, where she details the process for training animals to display novel behavior under stimulus control (Pryor, Haag, & O'Reilly, 1969). Understanding the underlying mechanisms that allow animals to learn this concept has always been of interest to me and provided the foundation for this project. The goals of this project were to investigate the cognitive capacity of rats to learn the abstract concept of do something different (by requiring them to offer a different behavior each time they were cued to do so), to compare rates of learning between two groups of rats (a control group, with limited prior training, and an experimental group with additional training experience), and to investigate working memory capacity of rats in this task. A central question was whether the animals with more training would learn faster due to the scaffolding of the extra training provided or would the additional training create proactive interference and slow the learning process. Additionally, the idea of training for variability is counterintuitive to the basic premise of reinforcement stating that reinforcement of a behavior leads to a higher probability of that behavior being repeated. The criteria for reinforcement for do something different (DSD) is for the animal to offer any behavior that has NOT been reinforced, seemingly the very opposite of reinforcement theory.
In the methodology of this project, all rats learned one foundation behavior to provide them with a basic understanding of the training context: a cue to begin, understanding of the marker stimulus, behavior to be performed, and reinforcement to be earned. The Less group learned the initial one behavior then began learning the concept of DSD. The More group learned the initial one behavior, three additional behaviors, then began learning DSD.
Both groups of rats did learn the concept of DSD but with a few differences. The More group learned DSD more quickly, but the Less group appeared to understand the concept better, as evidenced by longer runs of behavior as compared to the More group. To successfully produce long runs of behavior, the rats had to remember every behavior that had already earned reinforcement. This was a novel paradigm for investigating working memory in rats and showed that they were able to perform at similar rates to previous studies on dolphins and whales.
Recommended Citation
Nelson Slater, Melissa J., "Conceptual Learning of “Do Something Different” and Working Memory in the Fancy Rat (Rattus norvegicus domestica)" (2026). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/6663
