Octopus ocellatus is a small benthic species of octopus that is easy to rear and spawns large eggs during a short life cycle. These and other features of O. ocellatus may make it an advantageous subject for a broad range of behavioral studies, including those involving various types of learning. However, no type of learning has been studied in O. ocellatus. In a successive visual discrimination task, in which a 'positive' or 'negative' stimulus (white or black rectangle) was presented to a subject octopus and appropriate rewards or punishments were given to the subject, the rate of 'correct' responses (i.e., touches to the positive stimulus or refraining from the negative stimulus) gradually increased. Moreover, 'observer' octopuses that observed another octopus performing a visual discrimination task in which reward was also given to the 'incorrect' responses (touches to the negative stimulus) showed a higher ratio of incorrect responses in their test sessions. These results, coupled with the physical characteristics of O. ocellatus, indicate that this species is potentially suitable for neurogenetic and neuroembryological studies of learning
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机译：章鱼八爪鱼是一种小的底栖章鱼物种，易于饲养，并在较短的生命周期内产卵较大的卵。 O. ocellatus的这些和其他特征可能使其成为广泛的行为研究（包括那些涉及各种学习类型的行为研究）的有利学科。但是，在O. ocellatus中尚未研究任何类型的学习。在连续的视觉辨别任务中，对章鱼的目标呈现“正”或“负”的刺激（白色或黑色矩形），并对目标章鱼给予适当的奖励或惩罚，“正确”反应的比率（即，触及正面刺激或避免负面刺激）逐渐增加。此外，观察者章鱼观察到另一只章鱼正在执行视觉辨别任务，其中还奖励了“不正确”的反应（触摸到负面刺激），在他们的测试过程中，错误反应的比率更高。这些结果，加上O. ocellatus的物理特征，表明该物种潜在地适合于学习的神经遗传学和神经胚胎学研究
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