Figures and data
Pairwise comparisons.
Theoretical assumptions and exemplar trials. a-c Predicted spider distances for baseline (red dots), habituation (green dots) and dishabituation comparisons (blue dots). Habituation can manifest either in equal inter-spider distances (solid line) as in the baseline comparison or in an increase of distances (dashed line). What is referred to as baseline in this context is the dishabituation trial of the previous comparison (see Table 2). Distance samples are predicted to fall into distributions as shown in b. Contrasts between baseline, habituation and dishabituation comparisons would result in distributions as shown in c. d-f An exemplar trial consisting of baseline, habituation and dishabituation comparisons from the first session of trials is shown. The short-term dishabituation comparison shows a decrease of inter-spider distances, indicating increasing interest in a different individual than the previously perceived one (habituation comparison). g-i; j-l Two exemplar trials from the third session of Experiment 2 are shown, where a presentation of an individual novel and unseen across the three experimental sessions triggered a great rebound in interest (i,l, ‘Dishabituation - habituation’).
The relative change in distance between pairs of individuals, upon being confronted with the same individual as in the preceding trial (habituation trial; red discs) or a different individual from the individual in the preceding trial (dishabituation trial; blue discs). Each panel refers to an experiment (panel a. for Experiment 1; panel b. for Experiment 2), consisting of three sessions of trials. The dependent data is shown as the proportion of time spent at a given distance binned into 4 equally spaced bins. The x-axis labels refer to the proportional distances from the transparent acrylic sheet, ranging from ‘proximal’ to ‘distal’; the y-axis refers to the proportion of time spent at a given distance, i.e. the relative number of samples that fall into a given bin. Discs show the mean proportion across all individuals (i.e. 20 for Experiment 1; 16 for Experiment 2). The whiskers indicate the standard errors of the mean. White diamonds in the lower right subfigure b show the long-term dishabituation trials. Light blue bars indicate the side of the transparent acrylic sheet (proximal); grey bars indicate the back wall of the container (distal).
Procedure of Experiment 1.
