After reading The Thinking Rat, by Oskar Pineno I learned that the rat is much more than just an absent-minded rodent. The rat is actually a purpose driven animal whose behaviors intend to get the most from what the surrounding environment has to offer. (Pineno, 2010, p.106) These behaviors are driven by some surprisingly complex and interesting mental abilities. Two of these mental abilities I find most interesting are causal reasoning and metacognition. I am pairing these two mental abilities because…

English 926 March 12,2013 Rat Park In Lauren Slater’s article Rat Park, Slater talks about Bruce Alexander’s study and experiments on addiction. Alexander’s experiment consists of lab rats in two environments. The first is a caged environment and the second was a “perfect environment” called Rat Park. Rats in each environment were given two choices of water. One study group had regular water and the second was a form of heroin in water. The caged rats chose to drink the drugged water…

Our purpose is to build a rat maze and find out how hunger motivation affects a rat’s memory and spatial reasoning. By learning more about what drives a rat’s actions we could in turn learn more about humans and what motivates them. Understanding why animals are motivated to complete a task can shed light onto reasons why animals behave the way they do and why animals chose to repeat a behavior. Background Information: For our experiment, we will be testing if motivation from hunger affects the…

pg. 462-464 a) Draw a diagram of the rat when it is first cut opened and the internal organs are exposed. Identify and label the diaphragm, the stomach, the small intestine, the caecum, the heart, the left and right lung, the trachea and the esophagus. (Note: see Figure 22 on pg 470 for an example) b) What structure divides the thoracic and abdominal cavities? The Diaphragm divides the thoracic and abdominal cavities. c) What is the sex of your rat? Male. Part C Digestive System pg 467…

Cognitive Maps in Rats and Men Edward Chance Tolman made many significant findings to the studies of learning , memory and motivation. By today's standards he would be considered a behaviorist. “He is best remembered for being a pioneer in cognitive psychology during a time when behaviorists dominated the field. Tolman made several significant contributions to the field of psychology. At Berkeley University he created a cognitive theory of learning, which became his trademark to the field…

Rats are various medium sized rodents. "True rats" are members of the genus Rattus, the most important of which to humans are the black rat, Rattus rattus, and the brown rat, R. norvegicus. Many members of other rodent genera and families are also called rats and share many characteristics with true rats. A rat has an average life span of 2-3 years[1]. Rats are distinguished from mice by their size; rats generally have bodies longer than 12 cm (5 in). Contents [hide] * 1 Species and description…

The present study found supporting evidence for incubation effects, where participants in the incubation condition scored higher averages on the RAT. This finding supports the first hypothesis that incubation will improve problem solving performance on the RAT. This study has demonstrated and confirmed results from previously mentioned studies on the positive effects of incubation on problem solving (eg., Smith & Blankenship, 1991; Segal, 2004; Baird et al., 2012; Sio & Ormerod, 2009). However, no…

Days before the arrival of Homer Barron, Miss. Emily went to get arsenic which is rat poison and when the druggist asked her what the rat poison is for she did not answer him and just looked at him. By doing so Miss. Emily was able to get the rat poison without an explanation. The whole town started to think that the rat poison was to put an end to her own life. Now Miss. Emily is patiently awaiting the arrival of her “lover” Homer Barron. Homer makes his way to her back door and she welcomes him…

The Plague The black rat originated in Asia in the Mongolian Empire. They were wild borrowing animals who hosted the microorganism Yersinia pestis, which was natural disease in the wild borrowing animal’s population. Humans and these animals did not cross paths until the development of roads crossing through the domain of the rats. Following the onset of the leprosy scare throughout Europe, another deadlier infection was about to change their perspective on life and the world. The Church held the…

Results: For the experiment we observed a total of 8 trials. Each trial consisted of two rats. The rats were 25-day-old Long-Evans hooded rats. Each rat was randomly assigned to one of two drug groups. The groups were either administered 1.0 mg/kg of Naloxone or an injection of saline. Among the 8 trials, 4 of the trials the rats were given Saline, and among the other 4 trials the rats were given Naloxone A pin response can be described as when one of the animals lies on its back , with its spinal…