Brief report: impact of applied behaviour analysis (ABA) on carer burden and community participation in challenging behaviour: results from a randomised controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Applied behaviour analysis (ABA) reduces challenging behaviour in people with intellectual disability. There is interest, however, in whether such interventions reduce carer burden and increase community participation in this group. METHODS: A 6-month randomised controlled trial was followed by a longer-term naturalistic follow-up of participants. We studied the impact of the challenging behaviour on the carers and on the daily activities of the participants measured by the Carer Uplift and Burden Scale and Guernsey Community Participation and Leisure Assessment respectively. RESULTS: Both community participation and carer burden improved at 6 and 24 months. Burden showed significant reduction in family carers compared with paid carers. There was no significant intervention effect on the variables under consideration. CONCLUSIONS: ABA appears to be no more effective than standard care in improving social outcomes in people with intellectual disabilities and challenging behaviour but this requires further examination in a larger trial.

Risk assessment as an evolved threat detection and analysis process.

Risk assessment is a pattern of activities involved in detection and analysis of threat stimuli and the situations in which the threat is encountered. It is a core process in the choice of specific defenses, such as flight, freezing, defensive threat and defensive attack, that counter the threat and minimize the danger it poses. This highly adaptive process takes into account important characteristics, such as type and location (including distance from the subject) of the threat, as well as those (e.g. presence of an escape route or hiding place) of the situation, combining them to predict which specific defense is optimal with that particular combination of threat and situation. Risk assessment is particularly associated with ambiguity either of the threat stimulus or of the outcome of available defensive behaviors. It is also crucial in determining that threat is no longer present, permitting a return to normal, nondefensive behavior. Although risk assessment has been described in detail in rodents, it is also a feature of human defensive behavior, particularly in association with ambiguity. Rumination may be a specifically human form of risk assessment, more often expressed by women, and highly associated with anxiety. Risk assessment behaviors respond to drugs effective against generalized anxiety disorder; however, flight, a dominant specific defense in many common situations, shows a pharmacological response profile closer to that of panic disorder. Risk assessment and flight also appear to show some consistent differences in terms of brain regional activation patterns, suggesting a potential biological differentiation of anxiety and fear/panic systems. An especially intriguing possibility is that mirror neurons may respond to some of the same types of situational differences that are analyzed during risk assessment, suggesting an additional functional role for these neurons.

There is more than the amygdala: potential threat assessment in the cingulate cortex.

Fear conditioning with its neurological basis in the amygdala and associated structures provides an important model of anxiety disorders. However, this review will argue for a distinction between fear-provoking immediate and anxiety-provoking potential threats, with the amygdala processing immediate threats and the cingulate cortex (and insular) processing potential threats. Four independent but related literatures are reviewed to bolster this argument: (1) rodent remote contextual fear conditioning, (2) symptom provocation in obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), (3) fMRI investigations of risk assessment, and (4) behavioural and neurological studies of precautionary reasoning. These four literatures converge in suggesting that the cingulate cortex (and in more specific instances the insula) underlie potential threat assessment, providing support for a number of recent models posting the existence of a separate potential threat system that is dysfunctional in obsessive compulsive disorder (e.g., Szechtman and Woody, 2004; Woody and Szechtman, 2011).

Lameness, activity time-budgets, and estrus expression in dairy cattle.

The aim of the present study was to identify specific behavioral patterns that contribute to diminished estrus expression in lame cows. Behavioral scan and focal sampling were used to examine the effect of lameness on daily activity budgets, sexual behavior, feeding activities, and body condition score. A total of 59 milking cows (51.8 +/- 1.4 d postpartum) were monitored on a commercial dairy farm for 5 d following estrus synchronization. Overall, lame cows (n = 39) spent proportionately less time elevated on their feet and more time lying down compared with nonlame cows (n = 20). This included lame cows spending less time walking or standing. Overall, the total proportion of scans in which an estrous behavior was observed was very small but tended to be smaller for lame compared with nonlame cows. Throughout a day, lame cows displayed a lower proportion of estrous behaviors in the early morning. Lameness did not affect durations of drinking, grazing, or ruminating, or how these behavioral states fluctuated throughout the day. Similarly, rumination chewing rates were the same for lame and nonlame cows, and there was no association between lameness and dominance/displacement while feeding at a feed-fence. Lame cows did, however, have a slower bite rate at pasture and had a lower body condition score. Lame cows were also nearer the rear of the herd, both as they left the field and when entering the milking parlor. In conclusion, lame cows have longer lying times and spend less time standing, walking, and expressing an estrous behavior. Lame cows also have a lower bite rate at pasture and are more likely to be of lower body condition score.

Red deer stags use formants as assessment cues during intrasexual agonistic interactions.

While vocal tract resonances or formants are key acoustic parameters that define differences between phonemes in human speech, little is known about their function in animal communication. Here, we used playback experiments to present red deer stags with re-synthesized vocalizations in which formant frequencies were systematically altered to simulate callers of different body sizes. In response to stimuli where lower formants indicated callers with longer vocal tracts, stags were more attentive, replied with more roars and extended their vocal tracts further in these replies. Our results indicate that mammals other than humans use formants in vital vocal exchanges and can adjust their own formant frequencies in relation to those that they hear.

Violent coalitionary attacks and intraspecific killing in wild white-faced capuchin monkeys ( Cebus capucinus).

During 12 years of observation, we have observed three confirmed and two inferred lethal coalitionary attacks on adult male white-faced capuchins ( Cebus capucinus) by members of two habituated social groups at Lomas Barbudal Biological Reserve, Costa Rica. In one case, an alpha male was badly wounded and evicted from his group, and when later found by his former groupmates he was attacked by several of them and died less than 24 h later. In two other cases, lone extra-group males were mobbed by adult and immature males of a bisexual group. One victim's abdomen was torn open and he died less than 24 h later. A second victim was quite badly bitten but may have escaped. The fourth and fifth cases resulted from intergroup encounters. One victim lost the use of both arms but may have survived, whereas the other died of unknown causes within an hour of the attack. The observed death rate from coalitionary aggression at our site is approximately the same as that reported for eastern chimpanzees. Because at least three of the five observed incidents involved large coalitions attacking lone victims, they support the general hypothesis that imbalances of power contribute to intraspecific killing in primates. However, the occurrence of lethal coalitional attacks in a species lacking fission-fusion social organization poses a challenge to the more specific version of the imbalance-of-power hypothesis proposed by Manson and Wrangham in 1991 to explain chimpanzee and human intergroup aggression.

Experimental field study of the relative costs and benefits to wild tamarins (Saguinus imperator and S. fuscicollis) of exploiting contestable food patches as single- and mixed-species troops.

Several species of tamarins form stable mixed-species troops in which groups of each species feed, forage, rest, and travel together during much of the year. Although the precise set of factors that facilitate this ecological relationship remains unclear, predator detection and foraging benefits are presumed to play a critical role in maintaining troop stability. In this work we present data from an experimental field study designed to examine how factors such as social dominance and within-patch foraging decisions affect the costs and benefits to tamarins of visiting feeding sites as single- and mixed-species troops. Our data indicate that when they exploited contestable food patches (sets of eight feeding platforms, two of which contained a 100-g banana), each tamarin species experienced foraging costs when they arrived as part of a mixed-species troop. These costs were found to be less severe for emperor tamarins because they were socially dominant to saddle-back tamarins and could displace them at feeding sites. We conclude that the foraging benefits to tamarins residing in mixed-species troops are asymmetrical, and that at feeding sites in which the amount of food in a patch is insufficient to satiate all troop members, even minor differences in the timing of return to food patches and changes in troop cohesion have a measurable effect on the costs and benefits to participating tamarin species.

Biochemical cost of a fight in fed and fasted Betta splendens.

Behavioral and biochemical effects of threat displays and fights were determined in both fed and fasted animals. A week-long fast resulted in subtle behavioral modifications and a significant reduction in muscle glycogen. Threat displays had no effect on carcass composition. In the course of fighting, fed animals degraded large amounts of lipids, glycogen and amino acids, while fasted animals degraded only glycogen. Two alternative hypotheses are proposed to explain the difference between the biochemical effects of a fight in fed and starved animals.

[State of equilibrium among agonistic behaviour patterns in a group of Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata)]. / L'état d'équilibre entre comportements agonistiques chez un groupe de macaques japonais (Macaca fuscata).

The degree of aggressive intensity, the degree of contest asymmetry and the development of conciliatory patterns were studied in a captive group of Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata). The state of equilibrium among these components varied according to relatedness of interacting individuals, the observed variations being analogous to those found in interspecific comparisons. It is concluded that the relations linking these components result from epigenetic processes which govern the emergence of a social organization.

Testosterone and survival: a cost of aggressiveness?

Free-living male brown-headed cowbirds were captured during the breeding season, implanted with testosterone-filled Silastic tubing, and released. Radioimmunoassay verified that the implants maintained circulating plasma testosterone values at maximal breeding season levels well beyond the normal time of decline. Survival to the following year of these implanted males was compared with survival of unimplanted birds captured in other years, and also with survival of males given empty implants. Androgen-implanted male cowbirds exhibited significantly reduced survival to the following year compared with either of the control groups, and also exhibited severe injuries not seen in other years. It is suggested that the increased risks associated with prolonged high testosterone levels act as a selective force to maintain reduced androgen levels except during the period of aggressive intrasexual interactions that characterizes the reproductive season. Further, it is proposed that the nature and importance of the different risks vary with a species' mating system.

Social organization in caged layers: the peck order revisited.

The dominance hierarchy that exists among free ranging chickens is a peck order. Several researchers have attempted to correlate various production parameters of caged layers with dominance rank, with mixed results. Animal welfare groups have expressed increasing concern over the effects of battery cage housing on the behavior of layers, even though several researchers have shown that the incidence of aggressive pecks decreases in these cages. The studies presented here demonstrate that agonistic interactions occur among most pairs of hens housed in pens but do not occur among most pairs of hens housed in cages. Therefore, peck orders could be constructed for hens housed in pens but not for hens housed in cages. Incidence of agonistic interactions is highest in cage-housed hens immediately following housing of the hens; this peak is matched when group membership is mixed. These results suggest that a social system does form among caged hens even if a peck order does not. A single dominant hen in each cage was involved in and won a large majority of the agonistic encounters in the cages. The lack of evidence of dominance relationships between pairs of hens in cages, other than those between a single dominant hen and its cage mates, supports the hypothesis that despotism, not a peck order, was the prevailing social organization among hens housed in high-density cages.