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.