1) Animal Cognition Flashcards
The mechanisms by which animals acquire, process, store, and act on information from the environment is known as?
Cognition
What is Anthropomorphism?
attributing human characteristics to animals
What is Anthropocentrism?
viewing animals from our own, human, perspective
George Romanes wrote a book which was a collection of anecdotes about intelligent behaviour called?
Animal intelligence, 1882
Name 3 reasons we study animals:
Psychology is the science of mental life, we are interested in all Psychology not just humans.
Helps us to understand humans and evolutionary development.
Animal welfare (improve standards).
Charles Darwin:
Darwin’s mechanism for evolution involves which 2 processes?
The outcome is adaptation (animal’s suitability to environment)
Darwin argues that it is not only physical things, behaviour and psychology also subject to evolution.
Darwin observed commonalities between species’ mental characteristics.
This idea led to what type of Psychology?
Comparative Psychology
-looking at similarities and differences between animals and humans, also helps us to understand evolution of Psychology and cognition.
Conwy Lloyd Morgan observed a dog opening a gate on accident and deemed this as?
Trial and error learning as performance improved over time, not intelligence
What 4 things did Tinbergen argue we need to ask when studying animal behaviour?
Function (adaptive purpose of behaviour)
Phylogeny (evolution of how B varies between generations)
Ontology (development of learning across lifetime)
Mechanism (how does B occur, link with brain)
Morgan’s canon argued which explanation is best when interpreting actions as the outcome of the exercise of a higher psychical faculty in animals behaviour?
Use the simplest explanation
Further development of Psychology during the 1900’s includes what?
Experimental methods
Ways to compare the cognitive abilities between animals:
What does the concurrent discrimination task measure? 2
Learning: concepts
-concurrent discrimination task
show rats 2 types of shapes, when learnt compare with other shapes, time how long it takes to learn task/ highest level reached
Look at learning on trial 2 after a number of problems (solvable)
Results:
Most perform better as trials continue but Dunnarts reach 90% after 12 problems. They forage in open areas and need to quickly learn about signals in the environment. Also due to lifestyle.
What are ways to compare the cognitive abilities between animals?
Brain size
Cephalization index (K):
Size of brain relative to body size
Higher values mean a larger than average brain for body size
Rats = 0.1, humans = 0.89
Ways to compare the cognitive abilities between animals:
What does a simple instrumental conditioning task measure? 1
Learning: speed
A simple instrumental conditioning task
Respond = reward
Measure how many rewards needed before criterion reached
However contrasting research shows:
Rat 0,05 (low) K index = 22 Rewards to criterion (high)
Issues when testing animals:
Learning with some stimuli seems easier than with other stimuli, e.g., it is easy for a rat to learn to press a lever for food, but not to press a level to avoid a shock.
Which type of factors can effect an animals ability to learn?
Contextual factors:
Sensory, motivational, and motor processes that influence learning.
Issues when testing animals:
Contextual factors can affect an animals ability to learn.
What did Bitterman suggest was a solution to this?
Systematic variation:
Training on a task across a range of conditions
(different stimuli, reward size, hunger levels).
However, difficult to implement because of time, number of subjects, facilities.
Animal Perception:
Perceptual abilities vary between species
The world you experience is due to the processing ability of your brain. Why is this important when researching animal behaviour?
You need to be sure that animals can detect the stimulus that you are testing in the environment (perception)
eg. green and red circle may clash in colour vision of cats
so you have to have an understanding of the animals ability prior
Which effects are important to control when studying animals?
The Clever Hans Effect
- refers to the danger of unintentional cueing of desired behaviour by the questioner in experiments involving animals. It occurs when subjects sense what is expected of them, even without deliberate signals, leading to potentially biased results in intelligence testing.
Animal Vision:
Humans have 3 colour receptors (blue S, green M, red L)
Other species can see more of the spectrum than humans
Bees: ???
Birds: e.g., blue tits perceive ?
pigeons have >? colour receptors
Bees: green, blue, ultraviolet
Birds: e.g., blue tits perceive UV
pigeons have >6 colour receptors
Animal Smell:
Can identify an individual odour in mixtures of odours (< 11 odours in a mixture with 100% success).
Detection of illegal substances, food, explosives, disease.
What are the uses/ importance of smell?
Survival: Find food, avoid predators, find home
Communication: attracting mates, recognizing individuals
Animal Hearing:
Sounds formed by the detection of vibrations in the air.
Bats – produce sound and listen to echoes, flying in the dark, tracking and catching prey. What is this term called?
(Stealth) Echolocation
What conclusions can be drawn from the Clever Hans story?
Horses can do maths
We should check methodology of studies to ensure “Clever Hans effects” are not present
Researchers should not be present during experiments with animals
Someone should observe the researcher to check for involuntary behaviours
We should check methodology of studies to ensure “Clever Hans effects” are not present
Many animals have shown to be sensitive to magnetic fields: pigeons, bats, migrating fish, bees, ants, cattle, sea turtles. Sea turtles can distinguish different locations by the magnetic field.
This is known as?
Magnetic Sensitivity
Animals’ different perceptual abilities suggests what?
Animals that have better abilities than humans are more evolved
Perceptual abilities have not developed over time
Perceptual abilities are adaptations to the animals’ environment
Humans are not the same as animals
Perceptual abilities are adaptations to the animals’ environment
