Stimulus-response spatial contiguity vs. S-R spatial discontiguity in auditory spatial tasks. I. Acquisition by normal dogs.

Twelve dogs were trained in spatial tasks with auditory location cues. One group, tested on delayed response with stimuli and responses spatially contiguous, solved the task at once, whereas the other group, trained with actual stimuli and responses spatially discontiguous, attained criterion after errors. The differences in behavior of these groups suggest that two learning strategies may be involved. In the first group - approaching a specific (directly determined by auditory targeting reflex) feeder by an unspecific directional response. In the other group - approaching a non-specific feeder by a specific directional response, established in the differentiation learning.