The Value of Behavioral Research on Animals
Neat E. Miller The Rockefeller University
i i
ABSTRACT: Facts documented by references are
presented to prove beyond any reasonable doubt the
value of behavioral research on animals. Attempts
by radical animal activists to mislead humane people
by repeatedly asserting such research is completely
without any value and by other false statements are
a disservice to animal welfare by deflecting funds
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from worthy activities. Some of the significant con-
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
tributions of animal research covered are those to
welfare of animals; treatment of human urinary and
fecal incontinence, psychotherapy and especially be-
havior therapy and behavioral medicine; rehabilita-
tion of neuromuscular disorders; understanding and
alleviating effects of stress and pain; discovery and
testing of drugs for treatment of anxiety, psychosis,
and Parkinson's disease; new knowledge about
mechanisms of drug addiction, relapse, and damage
to the fetus; treatment enabling extremely premature
infants to gain 47% more weight and save $6,000
per child in hospital care; and understanding the
mechanisms and probable future alleviation of some
deficits of memory that occur with aging.
This article is addressed to humane people who are
members of humane societies, of the American
Psychological Association, or of the general public,
or who are writers for the media. Its aim is to
present the facts that will prevent you from being
misled by the grossly false statements repeatedly
made by certain leaders of the radical animal activ-
ists. If you know the true facts, you may not want
to help these radical leaders impede the research
that has produced, and can continue to produce,
such great benefits to the lives of both animals and
people (Comroe, 1983; Keen, 1914; Miller, 1983a;
Randall, 1983). You may want to concentrate your
support on far more urgent and productive activities
for the benefit of animals, such as shelters for
abandoned pets and protection of endangered species.
A recent survey (Coile & Miller, 1984) showed
that of the six specific extreme abuses that Mobili-
zation for Animals, an animal rights group, has
described in each of two recent leaflets as the
characteristic tools of experimental psychology, not
one single example was found in any of the 608
articles published during the last five years in journals
of the American Psychological Association (APA)
that publish research on animals. This article will
April 1985 • American Psychologist
Copyright 1985 by the American Ps~,chological Association, Inc. 0003-066X/85/$00.75
Vol. 40, No. 4, 423-440
I I
concentrate on presenting the facts that correct
another constantly repeated, bold assertion by leaders
of radical animal activists that definitely is not true~
namely, the assertion that psychological experiments
on animals are without any value.
For perspective, it should be noted that only
7% of pages in journals published by the American
Psychological Association report research primarily
on animals, whereas 93% report research primarily
on people. Although the research on animals is a
small part of the total, this article will show that it
has yielded, and is likely to continue to yield, results
of great value in enhancing the ability of professional
psychologists to benefit those who come to them for
help.
Research Benefiting Animals
The traditional method of dealing with animals that
damage crops or flocks has been lethal control. Crow
rookeries have been dynamited. Other troublesome
animals have been poisoned or shot (e.g., Stone,
Overmann, & Okoniewski, 1984). Such killing is
beginning to be avoided by applying experimentally
derived knowledge of animal behavior. One example
Editor's note. This article was originally presented as a Distin-
guished Professional Contributions Award address at the meeting
of the American Psychological Association, Toronto, Canada,
August 1984.
Award addresses, submitted by award recipients, are published
as received except for minor editorial changes designed to maintain
American Psychologist format. This reflects a policy of recognizing
distinguished award recipients by eliminating the usual editorial
review process to provide a forum consistent with that employed
in delivering the award address.
Author's note. Preparation of this manuscript was assisted by
USPHS Grant HL 34205. Help is gratefully acknowledged from
colleagues, too numerous to list, who generously provided refer-
ences and other information.
Requests for reprints should be sent to Neal E. Miller, The
Rockefeller University, 1230 York Ave., New York, New York
10021.
i To cite only the most recent examples, in the summer of
1984 the Humane Society of the United States sent out to all of
its members a Close-up Report asking them to write Congress
requesting the end of all federal funding of psychological experi-
mentation involving laboratory animals and stating, "Remember,
experimental psychology is one area of research in which it is
clear that no human good results from the unspeakable suffering
of animals:' Similar statements were made in materials circulated
by Mobilization for Animals (1984) and by ARK II, Canadian
Animal Rights Network, to mobilize a protest at the Toronto
meetings of the APA in August 1984. See also McArdle (1984).
423
 is the application of the learned taste-aversion effect
described by Garcia and Koelling (1967). In a totally
different line of research, it was unexpectedly dis-
covered that x-ray-induced nausea caused animals
to avoid a flavor even if they tasted it some time
before they became sick. Other nausea-inducing
agents were discovered to have the same effect. This
knowledge has been applied by using a chemical,
methiocarb, with a moderately bad taste that is
reinforced by nonlethal nausea if the bird continues
eating. It provides a more humane method than
killing to protect berries, small fruits, and lawns.
One application can cause Canadian geese to avoid
for 3 months eating the grass and messing up a lawn
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or golf course in the location that has been sprayed
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(Conover, in press). The Garcia effect also shows
promise in training coyotes to avoid the taste of
sheep meat and thus avoiding the necessity of killing
the coyotes to protect sheep. However, more research
is needed to improve this application. 2
In other applications of behavioral research to
substitute for lethal control, experiments have shown
that a scarecrow consisting of a model owl mounted
on a weathervane and grasping a model crow in its
talons is 80% more efficient than a traditional one
in reducing the loss of corn, tomatoes, and cante-
loupes (Conover, 1982).
In Pennsylvania alone, deer create an estimated
$122.6 million dollars of damage to crops each year.
Research on an experimental herd of deer there has
shown how an effective electric fence can be built
for approximately one-seventh of the cost of a
traditional fence to make nonlethal control more
economically feasible as a way of protecting valuable
crops (Dowlin, 1981).
Behavioral research has benefited animals in
other ways than finding practicable substitutes for
lethal control. Approximately a half-century ago,
Konrad Lorenz (1937) initiated behavioral experi-
ments on what he described as imprinting. He found
that if the eggs of wild ducks were artificially incu-
bated, so that he was the first moving, sound-
producing object that they saw upon hatching, they
would follow him instead of a mother duck. Fur-
thermore, upon maturing, such birds would direct
their courtship activities toward people instead
of their own species. Experimentally determined
knowledge about imprinting has been essential in
certain efforts to save endangered species. For ex-
2A study on children receivingchemotherapyfor cancer has
produced results showingthat the Garcia effectcan be responsible
for food aversions that such children develop. It has produced
results tentativelysuggestingthat a procedure derived from animal
studies of the Garcia effect may provide a way to avoid such food
aversions (Bernstein, Webster,& Bernstein, 1982). A clinical study
aimed at testing the efficacyof this procedure is under way.
424
ample, artificially incubated condor chicks are ex-
posed to a puppet imitation of an adult female
condor and are fed by that puppet rather than by
an undisguised h u m a n caretaker. This is essential
for their later association with wild condors. Similarly,
research on the sexual behavior of animals threatened
with extinction has been crucial to encouraging
some of them to reproduce in captivity, which is
helping to save them from the threat of extinction
and to restore their numbers in natural habitats.
However, current results in this area are considerably
short of ideal; knowledge from additional research
is needed.
Research on the marvelous complex of genetic
and experiental factors that control the precise timing
and course of migration of salmon is playing an
increasingly important role in restoring them to
streams from which they had been eliminated and
preventing their elimination from other habitats by
dams (Brannon, 1984; Miller & Brannon, 1982).
Other research on the behavior of animals, such as
requirements for habitat and for territory, social
groupings, and incompatibility between species, is
valuable for establishing nature preserves. Such re-
search has greatly improved the lives of animals in
the leading zoos, and techniques imported from the
laboratory to expose animals to more complex and
normal environments in which they control the
delivery of their food by working for it are further
improving their physical and emotional condition
(Markowitz, 1982).
O f course, biomedical research on animals,
which most radical animal activists also would have
liked to abolish, has been essential to protecting our
beloved pets from rabies, distemper, heartworm,
parvo virus, and respiratory and other diseases or
to performing surgery that they may need. But that
is not the main topic of this article.
Protecting People and Crops
Experiments on the cues that biting insects, such as
mosquitoes and blackflies, use to home in on their
targets have led to insect repellents that contribute
greatly to people's enjoyment of being outdoors in
areas where such insects abound. Experiments on
the chemical signals (pheromones) that insects use
to attract mates have greatly increased the ability to
trap them and to discover the first signs of infestation
of a new area by an insect, such as the medfly or
gypsy moth, that can devastate orchards or other
trees. Research discovering that some insects, such
as the screwworm, mate only once has laid the
foundation for the use of males sterilized by radiation
as a relatively more humane and ecologically much
less destructive way of controlling such devastating
insects (Baumhover, 1966).
April 1985 • American Psychologist
 Principles of Learning and Behavior
Derived from Research on Animals
To understand an extremely important series of
contributions, we need to start with a brief historical
review. The experimental study of learning started
with Ebbinghaus's (1885/1913) experiments on his
own ability to learn and remember lists of nonsense
syllables. For an educated man, and later for college
students, such a task involved inherently strong
motivation to demonstrate mental ability. Further-
more, Ebbinghaus invented the anticipation method
that became the standard technique. In it, the subject
successively tried to remember and pronounce the
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next syllable in the list, after which that syllable was
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exposed. For the highly motivated subject, such
exposure served as a strong immediate reinforcement,
rewarding a correct response or punishing an incor-
rect one. Because strong motivation and reward were
automatically built into the procedure for all subjects,
the role of these important variables was concealed,
and the studies of human learning concentrated on
other factors, such as the number of training trials,
the curve of forgetting, the length of the list, the
position of the syllables within the list, and many
other similar variables. The importance of motivation
and of immediate reinforcement emerged from ex-
periments on animals, where their powerful primitive
effects were not concealed by complex aspects of
human behavior, such as intrinsic motivation to
appear intelligent and to please the experimenter.
The theory of evolution caused a search for
behavioral similarities between animals and people
and led to many uncontrolled-anecdotal reports of
highly intelligent actions by animals, such as opening
gates as if they understood the mechanisms of the
latches. Just before the beginning of this century,
Thorndike (1898) thought that there was a simpler
explanation. He demonstrated this by experiments
in which slightly hungry kittens were placed in a
cage in which some specific response, such as pulling
on a loop of string, would open a door allowing
them to escape and get a highly preferred food, such
as fish, that was placed in a bowl just outside the
cage. He found that such animals made a large
number of irrelevant responses until they finally
happened to make the correct one that produced
the rewarding release and food. During a succession
of trials, the rewarded response occurred progres-
sively more promptly, until it was the only one that
the animals made. This was the first systematic
study of animal learning. Because the animals would
not perform and learn well without some drive such
as hunger and some reward such as food, the im-
portance of these two factors was emphasized.
Later work by Skinner (1938) improved Thorn-
dike's procedure by keeping the animal in a box in
April 1985 • American Psychologist
which a simple response, such as pressing a lever or
pecking on a key, caused food to be delivered into
the box. He and his many students added much
important knowledge, such as how to shape a re-
sponse by rewarding successive approximations to
the desired one and what schedules of reinforcement
to use to maintain a high level of performance
without the need to reward every response.
Slightly after Thorndike, but independently of
him, Parlor (1927) and his students systematically
studied dogs in another type of simple learning
situation, classical conditioning, in which a condi-
tioned stimulus, such as a tone, signaled the presen-
tation of an unconditioned stimulus, such as food,
that elicited an unconditioned response, such as
salivation. After a series of trials, the tone elicited
salivation. Systematic study of this simple situation
allowed Parlor and his students to discover a number
of basic principles of learning, such as the fact that
immediate reinforcements by the unconditioned
stimulus are much more effective than delayed ones,
that a conditioned response to one stimulus gener-
alizes to similar stimuli, that nonreinforced trials
progressively weaken (extinguish) a conditioned re-
sponse, and that reinforcing the conditioned response
to one stimulus and extinguishing it to another can
produce a discrimination. Clark Hull (1943) and his
students showed that these same principles applied
to Thorndike's trial-and-error learning, now often
called instrumental learning or operant conditioning.
They also could be applied to certain aspects of
human verbal learning.
In addition to discovering these and other im-
portant basic principles of learning and performance,
the experiments on animals who could not talk
played a major (but not completely exclusive) role
in expanding the scope of psychology from an
almost exclusive emphasis on introspective tech-
niques aimed at trying to isolate the elements of
consciousness to the broader study of behavior,
including verbal behavior. A number of the practical
consequences of these developments can now be
described.
Treatment of Enuresis
Enuresis beyond the normal age of successful toilet
training can be a deadly serious problem for the
afflicted child. It can cause intense embarrassment
and shame, conflicts with parents, inability to visit
friends overnight or to go to camp, and other
difficulties. Applying learning principles derived from
animal experiments, Mowrer and Mowrer (1938)
analyzed the problem as one in which the child has
to learn the difficult discrimination of "responding
to cues of bladder fullness and/or incipient sphincter
relaxation under the unfavorable condition of deep
sleep. The punishment of waking up to a wet bed
425
 occurs too long after the incorrect response to be a
very effective reinforcement. As an application of
the principles of classical conditioning, they devised
a pad via which the first trace of moisture would
cause a bell to ring, immediately waking the child
up to perform the correct response of inhibiting
urination and going to the toilet. Under these im-
proved conditions, most children learned, and the
Mowrers' method is considered to be one of the
most successful ways of treating prolonged childhood
enuresis (Lovibond, 1964). Baker (1969) showed
that, as might be expected, relief from the trouble-
some consequences of enuresis by this method of
treatment produced a definite improvement in the
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child's personality and behavior as judged by teachers
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who were rating all of their pupils on a number of
items without any knowledge of which child was
receiving the treatment. In the original article
Figure 1
Milwaukee Brace Used as Conservative
Treatment for Scoliosis
426
(Mowrer & Mowrer, 1938), it is clear that this useful
therapeutic technique for a problem that had been
vexing for centuries was directly derived from the
principles of classical conditioning discovered by
Pavlov's experiments on dogs.
Automated Training Devices
The Mowrers' method of treating bed-wetting was a
simple automated training device based on principles
of learning discovered by experiments on animals.
As behavioral research on animal learning pro-
gressed, more sophisticated devices and programs
were developed to teach them more difficult skills
and to maintain consistent performance for longer
periods (Ferster & Skinner, 1957). These have found
many practical uses. Before the first astronauts were
launched into space, it was highly desirable to know
whether a person could live and maintain skillful
performance under conditions of zero gravity. The
successful performance of learned tasks by two
chimpanzees on automated equipment in space gave
a favorable answer. More recently, pigeons have been
taught to use their keen vision to detect colored life
preservers and life rafts on the ocean. In tests by the
Coast Guard, under conditions where helicopter
crews detected approximately 50% of the targets, the
pigeons detected 85% (Simmons, 1981). If you were
floating in a seemingly endless ocean, would you
think this research was useless?
Teaching machines and programmed learning
have evolved out of experimental work on animals
(Skinner, 1958) and are being used to increase the
efficiency of instruction by the armed forces and by
industry. Devices developed to study the ability of
chimpanzees to approximate communication by
"language" (which is very poor compared with that
of human children) are showing promise in teaching
retarded or autistic children to communicate and in
alleviating severe reading disabilities (Ronski, White,
Millen, & Rumbaugh, 1984).
Scoliosis is an s-shaped curvature of the spine;
a conservative treatment for this condition has been
a brace similar to the one in Figure 1. As a substitute
for the brace, Barry Dworkin and I have developed
the much less cumbersome and cosmetically disfig-
uring automatic posture-training device shown in
Figure 2. Dworkin (1982) has described how prin-
ciples of learning derived from research on animals
were used in developing this device. Although iaot
yet commercially available, its effectiveness in treating
scoliosis and kyphosis has been demonstrated in two
studies (Cevey, et al., 1984; Dworkin et al., in press).
Psychotherapy as Learning
In the 1940s, psychotherapy was dominated by
psychoanalysis, and the powerful American Psycho-
April 1985 • American Psychologist

Figure 2
The Posture-Training Device Developed by
Dworkin and Miller for the Treatment of
Idiopathic Scoliosis
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analytic Association defined psychoanalysis as an
exclusively medical specialty. Then Dollard and
Miller (1950; Miller, 1980a) used the principles of
learning derived from animal experiments, along
with the results of animal experiments on conflict
behavior, displacement, and fear to show in detail
that combat and other neuroses were learned and
that psychotherapy, as practiced by psychoanalysts,
could be considered to be a process of learning more
adaptive social and emotional habits. This analysis
of psychotherapy as learning provided a scientific
rationale, as well as theoretical guidance, for the
practice of psychotherapy by psychologists; many of
them have stated that they benefited greatly from
the book Personality and Psychotherapy (Dollard &
Miller, 1950).
Behavior Therapy
Later, a book by Wolpe (1958) introduced new
therapeutic techniques, such as systematic desensi-
April 1985 • American Psychologist
tization, based on the principles of learning, such as
reinforcement, counterconditioning, experimental
extinction, and stimulus generalization derived from
experiments on animals. The role of such experi-
ments, including some experiments of his own, was
explicitly acknowledged in this pioneering book.
Some of Skinner's students also began applying
principles of learning, such as positive reinforcement,
shaping, and behavioral analysis derived from ex-
periments on animals to human problems of behav-
ior. The merging of these streams of work resulted
in behavior therapy. It is now considered to be the
treatment of choice for phobias and compulsions,
behaviors that can produce extreme constriction and
misery in the lives of their victims. But many other
types of neurotic behavior have been treated by
behavior therapy, and the relief of often intense
human suffering and release from life-impoverishing
and crippling neurotic behavior have been amply
documented in many hundreds of cases (Giles,
1983a, 1983b, 1984; Pomerleau & Brady, 1979;
Wolpe, 1976).
In order to convey an understanding of the
intense human suffering often concealed behind dry
statistics, Figure 3 shows pictures of a case of
anorexia nervosa before and after behavioral treat-
ment (Bachrach, Erwin, & Mohr, 1965). Some an-
orexia nervosa patients tragically starve themselves
to death. If your daughter had a problem like this,
would you want to have prevented the behavioral
research on animals that led to the treatment that
cured her? Nine million pounds of rat poison are
used each year by professional exterminators alone.
At least twenty million dogs and cats are abandoned
each year in the United States; half of them are
killed in pounds and shelters, and the rest are hit
by cars or die of neglect. Less than 1/10,000th as
many dogs and cats were used in psychological
laboratories as were abandoned by pet owners in
1983 (American Psychological Association, in press).
Is it worth sacrificing the lives of our children in
order to stop experiments, most of which involve
no pain, on a vastly smaller number of mice, rats,
dogs, and cats?
Figure 4 shows pictures of a 9-month-old child.
On the left side, we see this child suffering from life-
threatening malnutrition and dehydration produced
by persistent ruminative vomiting. After all other
forms of treatment (including an abdominal opera-
tion and forced feeding via a tube from the nose
into the stomach) had failed and the child's condition
was desperate, Lang and Melamed (1969) used
avoidance conditioning therapy based on behavioral
research on animals combined with psychophysio-
logical recording techniques. Thirteen days later, the
vomiting had stopped, and the child had gained
25% more weight. Five months later, the child was
427
 Figure 3
A Case of Anorexia Nervosa Before and After Behavior Therapy Treatment
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This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

Note. From "The Control of Eating Behavior in an Anorexic by Operant Conditioning Techniques" (Figures 2 and 6) by A. J. Bachrach, W. J. Erwin,
and J. P. Mohr in Case Studies in Behavior Modification by L. P. UIImann and L. Krasner (Eds.), 1965, New York: Rinehart & Winston. Copyright
1965 by Rinehart & Winston. Photographs courtesy of Arthur J. Bachrach.

healthy, happy, and normal, as shown in Figure 5. leaders of the radical animal activists who are making
Who are the cruel and inhumane ones, the behavioral an exciting career of trying to stop all such research
scientists whose research on animals led to the cures and are misinforming people by repeatedly asserting
of the anorexic girl and the vomiting child, or those that it is without any value?

428 April 1985 • American Psychologist

 Figure 4
A 9-Month-Old Child Suffering From Life-Threatening Malnutrition and Dehydration Produced by
Ruminative Vomiting Before and After Behavioral Treatment
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This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

Note. The photograph on the left shows the child before treatment, and the one on the right shows the same child after 13 days of behavioral
treatment. From "Case Report: Avoidance Conditioning Therapy of an Infant With Chronic Ruminative Vomiting" by P. d. Lang and B. G. Melamed,
1969, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 74, p. 7. Copyright 1969 by the American Psychological Association. Repdnted by permission.

Behavioral Medicine payments, or by receiving special sympathy and

The two examples that have just been given, anorexia
and ruminative vomiting, illustrate a relatively recent
development, the successful extension of techniques
of behavior therapy beyond the traditional area of
mental health to problems encountered in various
areas of physical medicine. To give another example,
there is a class of perplexing patients who start out
with a disability resulting from an injury or infection
but who keep showing disabling symptoms after the
obvious physical causes have disappeared. It has
been found that many such patients are being re-
warded for sickness behavior in various ways, such
as by escape from responsibilities, by disability
attention. In cases where conditions can be changed
to ignore sickness behavior and to reward wellness
behavior, such patients often can be made to show
marked improvement (Pomerleau & Brady, 1979).
These and other techniques, derived from principles
of learning and motivation discovered by research
on animals, have been applied successfully to make
merciful improvements in the lives of patients treated
in rehabilitation centers (Ince, 1980). These appli-
cations, and others to be described below, are con-
tributing to the development of a highly significant
new area of research and application called behav-
ioral medicine (Hamburg, Elliott, & Parron, 1982;
Melamed & Siegel, 1980; Miller, 1983b).

April 1985 • American Psychologist 429


Figure 5
Child Cured of Ruminative Vomiting by Behavioral
Therapy 5 Months After Treatment
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This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
Note. From "Case Report: Avoidance Conditioning Therapy of an Infant
With Chronic Ruminative Vomiting" by P. J. Lang and B. G. Melamed,
1969, Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 74, p. 3. Copyright 1969 by the
American Psychological Association. Reprinted by permission.
Learning to Compensate for
Deafferentation
Illuminating experiments by Sherrington (1906) on
dogs and cats showed the importance of information
from stretch receptors and other sense organs in
muscles, tendons, and joints in controlling reflexes
basic to balancing, walking, and other motor activi-
ties. This information on reflexes has been basic to
traditional techniques for the rehabilitation of pa-
tients with neuromuscular disorders. Sherrington
won the Nobel Prize for this valuable work. Inciden-
tally, the antivivisectionists of his d~iy vehemently
430
accused Sherrington of performing painful surgery
on animals without the use of any anesthetics, in
spite of the fact that the very publications to which
they referred clearly stated that these operations
were performed under surgical anesthesia (Keen,
1914).
Some of the foregoing experiments (Mott &
Sherrington, 1895) showed that if animals were
deprived of the sensations from a limb by cutting
the sensory nerves from it, a procedure called de-
afferentation, they would not use that limb again
after they recovered from the anesthetic and surgery.
For approximately half a century, no one thought
of asking whether animals could be trained to resume
using such a limb; it was assumed they could not.
Then, Edward Taub and his associates (Taub, Bacon,
& Berman, 1965) made the revolutionary discovery
that if monkeys with a forelimb deafferented were
motivated to learn to use that limb by having the
good one restrained, they could indeed do so. 3
Although the deafferented arm and hand was some-
what clumsier than a normal one, the monkeys
could even learn to use it in the delicate task of
picking up raisins out of small depressions. Other
experiments showed that the monkeys could even
learn to perform simple tasks with the deafferented
arm without being able to see it.
Taub's research clearly showed that the deaffer-
ented monkeys normally fell far short of their full
potential for recovery and that special training could
cause them to learn to recover skills that previously
had been believed to be impossible for them. This
finding and Taub's hypothesis of learned disuse have
contributed to additional successful efforts to im-
prove the performance of patients suffering from
brain injury, stroke, and other forms of neurological
damage. Such work has shown that patients believed
to have reached the limits of recovery by conventional
methods of physical therapy can be significantly
improved by special training. As a direct result of
Taub's work, Steven Wolf (personal communication,
August 1984) of the Center for Rehabilitation Med-
icine of the Emory School of Medicine, has started
a project on the effects of restraining the good arm
of patients with partial paralysis on one side. He
already has shown that a number of patients who
apparently had reached the limits of improvement
by conventional methods can be significantly im-
proved, although the specific role of the restraint
remains to be determined. For example, one patient
reported the progressive realization that her afflicted
3 Work on avoidance conditioning in a deafferented limb was
initiated by Harriet D. K n a p p with surgical assistance by A. J.
Berman. It was carried on by Edward Taub who provided the
proof of the more extensive capacities of such limbs and ruled
out alternative interpretations in an extensive series of experiments.
April 1985 • American Psychologist

Figure 6
Nine-Year-Old Child Suffering From a Spastic
Right Arm and Hand
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showing that human subjects could learn to control
brain waves, such as alpha rhythm (Kamiya, 1969),
or the firing of single motor units (Basmajian, 1963).
But these two types of human behavioral experiments
were dependent on earlier physiological experiments
with animals that studied the electrical activity of
nerves and that discovered the existence of single
motor units.
Biofeedback, combined with other behavioral
techniques, has been found useful in the treatment
of conditions such as headaches, neuromuscular
disorders, Raynaud's disease, orthostatic hypotension,
hypertension, and fecal incontinence. Evidence for
the clinical value of biofeedback is summarized

elsewhere (Basmajian, 1979; Brudny, 1982; Olton,

This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

Aaron, & Noonberg, 1980).

The value of biofeedback in the area of neu-
romuscular disorders is made vivid in pictures of a
child, shown in Figures 6 and 7, who was treated
by Bernard Brucker of the Department of Ortho-
pedics and Rehabilitation of the University of Miami
School of Medicine. At the age of 3, this boy had
received a severe head trauma from being hit by a
car. From shortly after the injury until the picture
in Figure 6 was taken at the age of 9, he had

Note. Photograph courtesy of Bernard Brucker. Figure 7

Child in Figure 6 After 10 Sessions of Motor
Neuron and Coordination Treatment Using
Biofeedback
arm was capable of performing many of her house-
hold chores and hobbies. She has resumed canning
and preserving fruits and vegetables with her daughter
and has achieved a personal goal of having the
ability to pick up and carry her granddaughter in
her arms.
Visceral Learning and Biofeedback
Another of the contributions to behavioral medicine
has been biofeedback. Research on animals by Pavlov
and his students showed how many visceral responses
are subject to classical conditioning--for example,
changes in heart rate and blood pressure; secretions
of salivation, stomach acid, pancreatic juice, and
bile; and contractions of the stomach, duodenum,
intestines, gallbladder, and spleen. The translation
of this work into English (Bykov, 1957; Razran,
1961) raised the question of whether these visceral
responses could be modified by trial-and-error learn-
ing, also called operant conditioning. Research on
this problem, deriving directly from the experiments
with animals on classical conditioning and trial-and-
error learning (operant conditioning), was one of the
main contributors to the development of biofeedback
(Kimmel, 1967; Miller, 1978). Other contributions Note. Photograph courtesy of Bernard Brucker.
to the development of biofeedback were research

April 1985 • American Psychologist 431

 received continuous and rigorous physical and oc-
cupational therapy. This had produced significant
gains for the first 3 years, but there had been no
significant improvement in function for the last 3
years. As shown in Figure 6, his right arm, wrist,
and fingers were spastic. He could not bend his
elbow or open his hand, and so the limb was
practically useless. Then, during 2 weeks, he was
given 10 sessions of biofeedback training in motor
neuron recruitment and coordination aided by dis-
plays of recording of the electrical activity of the
relevant muscles. Figure 7 shows that he became
able to grasp a glass and lift it to his mouth. He had
a hand useful in eating, dressing, hygiene, and a
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host of activities in daily living. Follow-up at 3 and
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6 months showed that all the learned motor neuron
patterns had been retained and that the use of the
arm and hand had improved. His life was dramati-
cally better. How can the leaders of the radical
animal activists continue to claim that the research
that has contributed to this type of therapy is
completely useless?
Incidentally, specifically because Taub's work
on monkeys had shown that it is possible to learn
to use a deafferented limb, Brucker has tried to use
biofeedback to train patients with functionally de-
afferented hands or legs to use them, and he has
succeeded.
To give one more example out of many possible
ones, Bernard Engel's experiments showing that
monkeys could learn to control the visceral response
of heart rate caused him, in collaboration with
gastroenterologists, to use biofeedback to train pa-
tients with the exceedingly embarrassing symptom
of fecal incontinence to control their bowel move-
ments (Engel, Nikoomanesh, & Schuster, 1974). To
do this, they h a d to utilize knowledge, to which
research on animals had made substantial contri-
butions, about the functions of the anal sphincters.
The value of their work, along with that on urinary
incontinence mentioned earlier and recently devel-
oped in other directions by Engel and his colleagues,
is shown by an estimate made by Faye G. Abdellah,
Deputy Surgeon General, that the wide application
of biofeedback techniques to treat incontinence in
the institutionalized elderly could save the United
States as much as $13 billion a year (Rodin, 1984).
Prevention
One of the major challenges to behavioral medicine
and health psychology is to prevent unhealthy be-
havior and to promote healthy behavior. Principles
of learning derived from experiments on animals
have been found to be useful in this effort. To cite
one example out of others described elsewhere
(Miller, 1984), the principle that immediate rewards
and punishments (both actual and anticipated) are
432
much more effective than delayed ones has been
found to be helpful in designing programs to reduce
the number of children who start the bad habit of
smoking.
Effects of "Stress"
Clinical and epidemiological work has indicated that
a number of conditions that can loosely be described
as stressful increase the probability of a variety of
adverse medical consequences, such as hypertension,
strokes, heart attacks, cardiac arrhythmias, sudden
cardiac death, ulcers, increased susceptibility to a
wide variety of diseases, and increased incidence of
cancer, headaches, insomnia, and a host of minor
complaints (Cassel, 1973; Institute of Medicine,
1981, 1982; Jenkins, 1977; Levi & Andersson, 1975).
Although many of these studies have used ingenious
controls, it is extremely difficult to rule out the
many confounding factors, such as sanitation, pol-
lution, physical exertion, and diet. Therefore, many
of the conclusions have remained controversial (Kasl,
1977; Ostfeld & D'Atri, 1977). However, experiments
on animals, in which confounding factors can be
rigorously controlled, have confirmed many of the
suggestions from clinical research and are providing
an opportunity to learn more about the details of
the variables and mechanisms involved (Miller,
1980b).
Early basic experiments on animals were the
classical studies of Cannon (1953) on the fight or
flight response and of Selye (1956) on stress. To give
a more recent example, in spite of suggestive clinical
and epidemiological evidence, the question of
whether psychological stress could produce hyper-
tension remained controversial (Kasl, 1977; Ostfeld
& D'Atri, 1977). But research summarized by Henry
and Stephens (1979) used a mouse colony designed
to produce stress by conflict among the mice for
food, water, and space and proved that such stress
could produce hypertension. Mice reared in isolation
and introduced into this colony gradually develop
hypertension through a series of stages identical to
those in the development of human malignant es-
sential hypertension. Furthermore, they die prema-
turely from the causes characteristic of premature
deaths in human hypertension, namely, strokes,
heart attacks, and kidney failure. In addition to
proving that psychosocial stress can produce hyper-
tension, these experiments provide a good animal
model for studying the details of this disease and
for testing various therapeutic procedures.
Other experiments on stress, which ethically
can be carried out only on animals, are proving that
it increases the susceptibility to experimentally in-
duced infections and to experimentally implanted
cancers and that it can reduce the effectiveness of
various components of the immune system. Some
April 1985 • American Psychologist
 of these experiments on the immune system are
being confirmed by studies of human patients who
have been subjected to the stress of the death of a
loved spouse or child. But the effects are complex;
for example, different timing of the relation between
an acute stress and an implanted tumor can reverse
the results. No one who has studied the facts can
doubt the medical significance of the problem or
the need for additional behavioral research, some of
which must be conducted on animals (Ader, 1981;
Jemmott & Locke, 1984; Levy, 1982).
Other experiments on animals that would be
extremely difficult, impossible, or unethical to con-
duct on people are proving that psychological factors,
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such as the opportunity to learn a discrimination of
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when there is danger that an electric shock will
occur and when there is no danger or the ability to
control a stressor such as an electric shock, can be
much more important than the physical strength of
the shock (Weiss, 1970, 1971). Furthermore, such
experiments are demonstrating a point-to-point cor-
respondence between the aftereffects of unpredict-
able, uncontrollable electric shocks and the behaviors
characteristic of human depression as described in
the latest manual for psychiatric diagnosis, Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-
III; American Psychiatric Association, 1980). In fact,
in spite of the fact that two of the items in the
manual are verbal and hence are precluded for them,
animals clearly display five characteristics, although
only four are required for a diagnosis of depression
(Weiss et al., 1982). Furthermore, the purely psy-
chological factors that can produce such a depressive
effect in animals have the same effect of depleting
the neurotransmitter, norepinephrine, ifi their brains
that is caused by drugs such as tetrabenazine that
can produce similar depressive effects in both animals
and people (Weiss et al., 1982). The foregoing facts
should demonstrate to any reasonable person that
this is a promising animal model for at least one
type of human depression. Approximately 15% of
the population, or 30 million people, in the United
States will suffer from a significant bout of depression
at least once during their lives. Depression can cause
such terrible suffering that it can drive its victims
to kill themselves. Suicide is the leading cause of
death for young adults from 15 through 44 years
old. The suicide of a depressed child can be a searing
tragedy for the parents or other loved ones, leaving
a scar that is painful for the rest of their lives.
The foregoing types of studies of the effects of
stress are providing the rational foundation and the
motivation for the use of a variety of clinical pro-
cedures, such as biofeedback (Miller, 1978), the
quieting reflex (Stroebel, 1979), meditation and the
relaxation response (Benson, 1975), the revival of
progressive relaxation (Jacobson, 1938), training in
April 1985 • American Psychologist
coping strategies (Levine & Ursin, 1980), assertive-
ness training, and other forms of psychotherapy.
But, unfortunately, one cannot study the effects of
stress without subjecting animals to stress, any more
than one could have conducted the research that led
to the conquest of polio without subjecting monkeys
to that paralyzing disease.
Effects of Noise on Hearing Loss
Controlled experiments on animals have been used
to prove conclusively and to analyze in more detail
the anatomical damage and the permanent hearing
losses that less well controlled clinical observations
indicate can be produced by exposures to various
durations and types of loud sounds (J. D. Miller,
1974). The results of such experiments on animals
have been useful in the development of standards
for safe exposures to noise (Trahiotis, 1976).
Research on Pain
Although considerable progress has been made in
controlling pain, much terrible suffering still remains
to be relieved. Leaders of radical animal activists
may say we already have adequate pain-killing drugs,
but anyone who has heard the heartrending cries of
acute pain of a badly burned child having his or her
bandages changed knows that this is not true.
Chronic pain is the most costly health problem in
America. The annual costs---direct medical expenses,
lost productivity, lost income, and so on--have been
estimated at approximately $50 billion (National
Institutes of Health, 1982). Unfortunately, some of
the carefully controlled, analytical experiments that
are needed to understand the causes and relief of
pain inevitably must involve the production of some
pain. To prevent these experiments, or to limit them
to the lowest level is likely to impede knowledge
about, and relief of, the very conditions that produce
the most intense human suffering.
Recent behavioral research, which ethically
could be done only on animals, has discovered that
there are certain specific pathways deep in the brain
that can powerfully inhibit even strong pain. Addi-
tional pharmacological research has found that in
these same pathways there are receptors that bind
radioactively labeled morphine. Still further research
has found that the brain has its own opiate-like
neurotransmitters that function in these pathways.
This knowledge led to hope for discovering superior,
nonhabituating, and nonaddictive analgesics. Unfor-
tunately, that hope has been dimmed by the discovery
that the natural opiate-like substances also seem to
have habituating and addictive properties. (It is
impossible to predict whether a specific experiment
will lead to a valuable result, just as it is impossible
to predict that every well drilled will strike oil.)
Fortunately, additional behavioral research has
433
 found that there also are nonopiate pathways that
inhibit pain. This discovery increases hope of leading
to superior nonaddicting painkiUers that do not lose
their effectiveness with repeated use (Kruger & Lie-
beskind, 1984). But even if this lead does not pay
off, behavioral experiments on pain-inhibiting path-
ways in animals already have brought merciful relief
to certain patients who were completely disabled by
constant, excruciating pain that had resisted relief
by all other treatments. Under surgical anesthesia,
tiny electrodes were permanently implanted in the
brains of these patients in places where stimulation
by similarly implanted electrodes had inhibited pain
in behavioral experiments on animals. By briefly
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pressing a button on a portable radio transmitter,
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these patients can secure considerable periods of
relief. In one study, 14 of these disabled patients felt
their pain had been completely relieved, 8 were
partially relieved, 7 found no effect, and none were
made worse; 17 returned to either essentially normal
or good functioning in daily life (Young, Feldman,
Kroening, Fulton, & Morris, 1984).
Furthermore, for a different, much more fre-
quently encountered group of patients, those with
no apparent remaining physical cause, treatments
using principles of reinforcement and extinction of
avoidance learning originally derived from experi-
ments on animals have eliminated dependence on
narcotics and restored many such patients to normal
activities. Two especially convincing studies have
been done by Fordyce, Fowler, Lehmann, DeLateur,
Sand, and Trieschmann (1973) and by Roberts and
Reinhardt (1980).
Behaviorally Active Drugs
Behavioral tests for the suppression of pain-elicited
responses in animals have been found to be useful
in predicting the pain-relieving properties of many
new compounds. In addition, the addictive properties
for humans of these and other drugs (such as
amphetamine-like appetite suppressants) have been
found to be highly correlated with the results of
tests in which animals are given the opportunity to
self-inject such drugs. Therefore, the latter procedure
is now used to test new drugs for addictive potential.
Other, more sophisticated, behavioral tests also are
used to screen for potential addictiveness (Boyarth,
in press; Young, Stephens, Hein, & Woods, 1984).
Many of the newer analgesics (pentazocine, nalbu-
phine, butorphanol) have been identified by animal
tests as having reduced liability for abuse, but some
remaining liability is still predicted. Similar tests are
also being used to develop appetite-suppressing drugs
with less potential for drug abuse. If history is any
guide, basic experimental research with animals on
the mechanisms for the control of appetite is likely
434
to contribute to new methods for the control of
human obesity (Stunkard & Stellar, 1984).
Tests for the ability to inhibit the avoidance
component of approach-avoidance conflict behavior
with animals have been found to be useful in
screening for antianxiety drugs. Recent research on
animals has found that there are receptors in certain
areas of the brain to which radioactively tagged
molecules of one of the more effective types of
antianxiety drugs, the benzodiazepines, bind. New
research along these lines is likely to lead to better
drugs and to fundamental increases of our under-
standing of the brain mechanisms involved in anxiety,
which is a pervasive clinical problem. Other contri-
butions of behavioral research on animals to our
understanding of clinical problems of anxiety have
been summarized elsewhere (Tuma & Maser, in
press).
Recent behavioral work on animals has shown
that there is a large conditioned component to the
development of tolerance for morphine and that
conditioned withdrawal symptoms can be elicited if,
without receiving any morphine, animals are exposed
to situations in which they previously have received
it. This finding predicts that patients who become
addicted in one situation, the street, but are detoxified
in another, a prison or hopsital, should relapse when
reexposed to the street. It also explains why the
veterans who became addicted and were detoxified
in the army during the Vietnam war did not show
anywhere near the rate of relapse that had been
expected when they returned to civilian life. But,
perhaps the foregoing results were produced by the
higher level of stress on the street and in Vietnam.
The factor of stress, however, has been controlled in
an animal study (Thompson & Ostlund, 1965),
which showed that relapse is more probable if the
addiction and the relapse testing situations are similar
to each other and different from the one in which
the subject is detoxified. Along with increasing our
understanding of the mechanisms of tolerance, with-
drawal symptoms, and relapse, these experiments
suggest new methods of treatment to avoid relapse
(Siegel, 1979, 1982).
It is hard for someone who has not experienced
them to imagine the horrible conditions that existed
in the back wards of large mental hospitals 30 years
ago--the stench of urine and feces, the subhuman
screams in the night of rage, anguish, and terror,
the patients who tore radiators off the wall and had
to be completely restrained in straitjackets to prevent
violence against themselves, their fellow inmates, or
the staff, and the utter hopelessness of a diagnosis
of schizophrenia. Although not a complete cure,
antipsychotic drugs, of which chlorpromazine was
an early and important example, have vastly im-
proved these excruciating conditions; such drugs
April 1985 • American Psychologist
 have allowed psychotherapy and other humanizing suitable dogs; another part was due to experimentally
reforms to be made. The history of the discovery of acquired knowledge about critical periods in the life
chlorpromazine clearly shows that research on ani- of a puppy for different types of learning, and
mals, including behavioral research, provided signif- especially for emotional attachments and adjust-
icant links in the chain of discoveries that led to the ments. On the topic of critical periods, Pfaffenberger
synthesis and use of this drug. It also makes clear (1963) said,
that in any but the very last steps no one could have
It is beyond doubt one of the most important discoveries
predicted that the chain of research would lead to a man has ever made about dogs. All of us who are
revolutionary new treatment for mental illness (Swa- interested in dogs in any way are deeply indebted to him
zey, 1974), summarized more briefly by Miller [Dr. J. P. Scott] and his able staff for having pursued so
(1983a). This fact, that many of the most useful relentlessly the facts and for having made them available
clinical advances have depended on basic research to all of us. (p. 120)
that had no obvious clinical relevance when it was
performed, shows the fallacy of requiring that any More recently, M. J. WiUard (in press) has used
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specific experiment that causes animals to suffer the techniques of training developed in the laboratory
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to teach Capuchin monkey pets to serve as compa-

must be justified by a cost-benefit expectation of
nions and aides to patients whose arms and legs are
directly producing a sufficient reduction in human
suffering. Any doubters should read the monumental paralyzed. The quadriplegic patient uses a harmless
laser beam aimed by gripping a lever with the teeth
study by Comroe and Dripps (1977) or even their
to project a small dot of red light onto the object to
summary of it (Comroe & Dripps, 1976).
be manipulated. With this guidance plus a few
To cite yet another example, experiments on
verbal commands, the monkey can perform tasks
animals, showing that injections of dopa could reverse
such as placing a drink container on the feeding
the locomotor deficits produced by reserpine, played
tray, opening it, and inserting a straw through which
a key role in the discovery that dopamine functions
the paralyzed patient can drink. The monkey can
as a neurotransmitter in the brain. This discovery
open and close doors, turn lights on and off, load a
was a crucial step leading Carlsson to the hypothesis
selected cassette into a tape recorder, or place a
that Parkinson's disease is caused by a deficiency of
selected magazine on a reading-stand and bring a
dopamine in the basal ganglia of the brain that
mouth-stick and insert the correct end into the
might be corrected by administering dopa. This
patient's mouth to be used in turning pages. For
hypothesis was the basis for clinical work by others
successful performance of each step of each task,
that led to the introduction of the L-dopa treatment
the pet monkey is rewarded by praise and a device
that mercifully retards the incapacitating progress
that delivers a sip of fruit juice. During periods,
of the disease (Carlsson, 1983).
which in many cases are all too frequent and long,
With all of the foregoing drugs, research on
when a family member or a paid attendant is not
animals was necessary, not only for the steps leading
available, these and other services by the trained pet
to their discovery but also to test for their toxicity.
monkey greatly improve the quality of the paralyzed
patient's life. WiUard said, "The fact that owner and
Animal Companions to Help animal actually work together, depending on one
the Handicapped another, makes their relationship a special one. It's
much closer than that experienced by even avid pet
Although much of the training of seeing-eye dogs to
owners."
guide the blind was developed independently, based
on centuries of experience in training dogs, labora-
tory research has made some significant contribu-
Effects of Early Experience
tions. When Clarence Pfaffenberger was assigned the Experiments on animals have confirmed, refined,
task of finding the ideal puppy and training it to and extended clinical observations on the long-
become the ideal guide dog, only approximately 9% lasting effects of certain aspects of infant experience.
of the dogs who were started in training at the By clearly proving such effects, they have motivated
Guide Dogs for the Blind, San Rafael, California, significantly greater efforts to enhance beneficial
could be trained to become reponsible guides. Thir- effects and avoid harmful ones (Hunt, 1961).
teen years later, aided by his own intelligence, de- For example, the experiments by Riesen showed
votion, and help from the scientists in the dog that complete deprivation of visual stimulation for
behavior research project at the Jackson Laboratory, a critical period in the infant chimpanzee's life
Bar Harbor, Maine, the school was able to train caused the adults to show severe visual defects that
90% to meet even stricter requirements as guide could not be corrected. Then, in analytical experi-
dogs. A large part of this success was due to the ments, which could be done only on animals, he
application of behavior genetics to the breeding of showed that the cause of the defect was not mere

April 1985 • American Psychologist 435

 lack of exposure of the retina to light but rather
lack of stimulation from visual patterns (Riesen,
1975). Later, Wiesel and Hubel (1965) followed up
and extended this work, showing that various forms
of visual deprivation or conflict between images
from the two eyes cause permanent deficits in visual
connections in the brain. As a result of this work,
pediatricians are paying far more attention to the
very early detection and correction of visual defects
in infants, such as misalignment of the eyes or
severe astigmatism. Thus, they avoid irreversible
defects in adult vision (Moses, 1975, pp. 599-610).
In different cases, detailed experimental studies
on animals are showing that some of the important
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results of early experience may not be as irreversible
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as previously had been thought. For example, Mark
Rosenzweig (1984) and his associates found that
enriching the normally impoverished environment
of infant rats caused them to develop thicker layers
on the cortex of their brain, containing many more
neural connections, a change that was followed by
improved behavior as adults. But additional work
from the same laboratory has shown that similar
improvements in the brain and behavior can be
produced even if the environmental enrichment is
introduced at the adult stage. Further experiments
also have shown that enriched experience can ma-
terially improve recovery after brain lesions, an
effect highly relevant to programs of rehabilitation
(Rosenzweig, 1980).
In other cases, some of the important, appar-
ently permanent effects of early experience may be
due to the persistence of the conditions that estab-
lished the early deficit or of the vicious circle of
behavioral effects that it initiated. For example, early
research by Harry Harlow and his group showed
that separation of infant monkeys from their mothers
and playmates during an early critical period in
their development could produce striking and ap-
parently permanent deficits in their social behavior,
as well as certain neurotic and psychotic symptoms
(Harlow, Dodsworth, & Harlow, 1965). Later research
by his group showed that if, instead of reintroducing
the 6-month-old monkeys into a social group of
their own age they were introduced into a group 3
months younger than themselves, they would develop
much more normally (Suomi & Harlow, 1972).
Apparently most, and perhaps all, of the deficits of
the deprived group were caused by the fact that
when they were introduced later into the group that
had developed more sophisticated social behavior,
their undeveloped social behavior caused them to
be rejected and attacked by the more sophisticated
group. This prevented them from ever learning their
missing social skills and posed continuing problems
for them. These results suggest that some of the
apparently permanent deficits incurred in early
436
childhood are potentially subject to later correction
if their causes are well enough understood so that
appropriate reeducation and/or changes in the social
environment can be accomplished. But that is likely
to be considerably less efficient than preventing the
problem from occurring.
Another of the highly significant findings from
Harlow's laboratory has been that infant monkeys
who have been deprived of adequate mothering grow
up to become mothers who neglect and abuse their
children (Harlow, 1962). This finding has helped to
encourage and guide studies of the origins of human
child abuse.
Clinicians have observed that some infants who
experience extreme psychosocial deprivation fail to
thrive and even become dwarfs. But the precise
causes and mechanisms have not been understood.
Recent experiments on newborn rats have shown
that short periods of separation from the mother
can cause deficiencies in growth hormone and also
in receptor function for this hormone so that, even
when it is supplied, protein synthesis is not stimu-
lated. Further experimental analysis has shown that
the critical deficit is a lack of physical contact with
the mother, and especially a lack of the stroking
that the infants receive when the mother licks them
with her tongue. Stroking with a paintbrush can
prevent or reverse these deficits and the inhibition
of growth that they produce (Schanberg, Evoniuk,
& Kuhn, 1984).
Schanberg has been impressed with the fore-
going findings from his laboratory, and with the
facts that the aseptic conditions in incubators for
premature infants approximate those of maternal
deprivation and that a disproportionate number of
such infants fail to thrive. Therefore, he and Tiffany
Field have given an experimental group of 20 pre-
mature human infants in an intensive-care nursery
general body stroking and manipulation for three
15-minute periods per day for l0 days. Compared
with a matched control group, infants in the exper-
imental group averaged 47% more weight gain, and
the duration of their hospital stay was 5 days shorter,
yielding a cost saving of $6000 per infant. In addition,
the stimulated infants were more alert and active
during observations of sleeping and waking behavior
and showed more mature habituation, orientation,
motor, and regulation of state behavior on the
Brazelton scale. These behavioral assessments were
made by investigators who did not know whether
the infants were in the experimental or control group
(Schanberg, 1984). These results help to explain and
strongly reinforce earlier findings by ScarroSalapatek
and Williams (1973) in a pioneering study, the
report of which explicitly acknowledges origins in
experimental work on animals.
Experiments on effects of giving alcohol and
April 1985 • American Psychologist
 other drugs to pregnant animals have provided
convincing evidence that the behavioral symptoms
(e.g., fetal alcohol syndrome) are due to effects of
the drug on the fetus rather than to the genetic or
environmental causes that could be used to explain
the clinical observations (Martin, Martin, Sigman,
& Radow, 1978). Such experiments also are useful
in analyzing the ways different drugs interact and in
determining the mechanism of the insult (e.g., Mar-
tin, Martin, Chao, & Shores, 1982; Streissguth,
1977). Similarly, experiments on various animals on
the changes in sex behavior that appear at puberty
as a result of prenatal exposure to sex hormones is
causing such hormones to be used on pregnant
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mothers with greater caution (Goy & Kemnitz,
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1983).
Deficits in Learning and Memory
that Occur with Aging
The loss of memory that occurs in people in old age
can be, when severe as in Alzheimer's disease, a
devastating experience for them and their loved
ones. The social burden of the problems created is
becoming heavier as the elderly become a larger
proportion of the population. Experiments on ani-
mals have unique advantages in studying fundamen-
tal biological processes affecting memory and other
aspects of behavior during the latter stages of aging.
Many animals age much more rapidly than people--
rats age approximately 30 times as fast. Neuroana-
tomical, biochemical, hormonal, and drug studies
can be carried out that, although not painful, would
be unethical with people.
Experimental studies on a number of different
species of aged laboratory animals have all shown
deficits in learning and memory that are similar to
the details of common human aging deficits. The
memory of both senescent animals and people is
intact for events that have occurred either long ago
or very recently, as in the almost immediate present.
But the memory becomes increasingly defective for
events in a span that widens with age between these
two extremes. These animal models of memory
defects with aging are providing powerful means for
analyzing experimentally some of the mechanisms,
such as deficiencies in the cholinergic neurotrans-
mitter system and in cerebral energy metabolism,
that play a role in the memory deficits. They also
have provided clear and convincing evidence that
impaired learning and memory of aged animals can
be improved by certain drugs and hormones. This
type of information has stimulated research by drug
companies, using screening techniques developed in
animal psychology laboratories, to try to develop
new and more effective compounds. It also has
stimulated clinical trials that already have shown
some modest success with drugs first studied in
April 1985 • American Psychologist
experiments on animals. It seems likely that such
research eventually will lead to therapeutic amelio-
ration of at least some disorders of human learning
and memory (Crook & Gershon, 1981; McGaugh,
1983; Martinez, Jensen, & McGaugh, 1983).
Conclusion
The facts in this article have demonstrated how
extremely false and misleading is the repeatedly
made assertion that behavioral research on animals
is without any value. In the light of the evidence
presented, one wonders how any responsible orga-
nization worthy of financial and moral support
could continue to make such an assertion. A pre-
ceding survey (Coile & Miller, 1984) has shown how
equally false are the claims that six specific types of
atrocity are characteristic of such research. What
are the effects on the welfare of animals of such
wildly misleading statements? I suggest that the
effect of the activities of these radical leaders is
strongly detrimental to animal welfare. They divert
attention and precious resources away from areas in
which abuses are frequent and many animals suffer
for little human benefit. They concentrate attention
and resources on an area in which abuses are rare
and far fewer animals suffer for much greater human
benefit. Evidence presented by Elaine Newton, Di-
rector of the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to
Animals in Philadelphia, supports this conclusion.
In an interview with Frank Rossi, reported in the
Philadelphia Inquirer on August 8, 1984, she said
she received several calls right after each of two
raids by the Animal Liberation Front. The people
were happy and excited, not because something
good had been done for animals "but because they
would love to join an organization where you could
break in and destroy things and take animals." She
continued, "I was out yesterday with the dog catchers.
There was this cat some kids were playing .with the
night before. They gouged out the eyes, then hung
it from a tree." She also described other atrocities
involving pets such as children dousing a dog with
lighter fluid and then setting it on fire, and training
a pit bull to fight by having it rip a kitten apart.
S. J. Flowers, who is in charge of inspecting scientific
facilities for the Canadian Council on Animal Care
has written, "I have often stated, when I have spoken
to humane movements, that during most of my
career as a practicing veterinarian, there is no ques-
tion that I saw far more abuse, neglect, and cruelty
to farm and pet animals than I have ever seen in
any research facility I visited" (in Sechzer, 1983, p.
154). After learning the true facts, people should
seriously consider the moral question of whether
they want to support any organization, dominated
by radical activists, that repeatedly makes so many
extremely false statements about research on animals
437
 or whether they should concentrate their support on
m o r e u r g e n t a n d p r o d u c t i v e activities for t h e w e l f a r e
o f a n i m a l s , s u c h as t h e p r e s e r v a t i o n o f n a t u r a l
habitats and the alleviation of the problems of
a b a n d o n e d pets.
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