12-ComparativeCognition Flashcards
What features make primates different to other mammals?
Reliance on vision rather than smell (stereoscopic 3D & colour vision); loss of wet, naked nose & whiskers & reduced relative size of olfactory brain; encephalised (larger brain relative to body size); five separate digits, fingernails & opposable thumbs; mainly omnivorous
Darwin originally made the suggestion that we descended from African apes. What evidence shows he may be correct?;
Though we’re not descended from chimpanzees, what do we share?
Chimpanzees share 99.4% of tested coding DNA base pairs; we’re closer related to chimpanzees than chimpanzees are to gorillas;
A common ancestor
Which great apes are the most similar to humans, in that they walk more upright, are less aggressive & more attractive & well kempt?
Bonobos
What were Darwin’s greatest challenges in convincing people about similarities between humans & apes?
Physical evolution – continuity of anatomy, nervous & vascular systems (though we share the same flesh & blood, genetic composition is slightly different over generations & between species); & Evolution of mind – continuity of or similarities between mental capacities
Controversies about gradation still continue, questioning the precise mental powers of other primates & what are uniquely human traits. Describe the two biases in the literature
Emphasising discontinuity - to justify religious beliefs about human’s special status & to justify human treatment of animals (e.g. investors in animal farms tend to play down animal capabilities); & emphasizing continuity – to show Darwin was right & humans are part of nature, & to show the animal one is working with has a capacity (those working with animals are more excited when they can do something)
Where do the difficulties lie in trying to identify the absence of a mental trait in animals?
Absence of evidence versus evidence of absence (it’s hard to conclude that a species doesn’t have a trait; may not be the right test or in the right circumstances)
Comparative analysis is important for making progress, as it can inform us about what?
The evolution of the human mind; the genetic & neurological basis of higher cognitive capacities (by knowing what we do & don’t share, we can narrow down the search space for commonality)
Rather than subscribing to the idea “I think, therefore I am”, Humphrey proposed that what you feel is more the point (e.g. if you feel pain it shows you are conscious). What did Bateson (1991) conclude about this in relation to animals?
If they have the same neuronal equipment to detect damage & show the same behaviour as humans, then it is likely they feel pain much like us
What experimental evidence did Colpaert (1980) find that suggests rats have the same neuronal architecture as humans, providing a sense of pain & pleasure?
Normal rats prefer sugar water over water containing analgesic. Rats with chronologically inflamed joints (which is painful for humans) prefer water containing analgesic (indicating they want to reduce the pain)
Romanes collated anecdotes about animals performing amazing feats & begun the field of comparative psychology. What was his main line of argument?
By analogy & anecdote – if an animal reacts the same way we do then maybe they feel the same (but they could act that way for other reasons)
What did Lloyd Morgan argue in relation to intelligence in animals?
The principle of parsimony – we should be open to the possibilities but use the simplest explanation rather than getting carried away
Explain the Clever Hans phenomenon
It appeared that Hans could solve mathematical & word answer problems by stomping his hoof the amount of times corresponding with the correct answer. It was finally discovered that when he arrived at the correct answer, the experimenter would stop watching his hoof & the behaviour was positively reinforced, so it was merely a conditioned response
Animals appear to behave intelligently, but we only tend to hear about their successes rather than their failures. What is more likely?
That it’s trial & error; we need to take their learning history into account
When Kohler (1917) examined chimps & found one was able to solve problems by stacking boxes on top of each other to reach a banana, he labeled this “insight”, but what did he & other behaviourists overlook?
He focused on stimulus response & neglected cognition; maybe the chimp could do trial & error in the mind rather than just actions
Describe the Means End reasoning, in regards to chimps & insight
They pick out appropriate length tools even when the problem (trying to get a banana from a high rope) is out of sight; suggests there’s some cognition happening & is more than just trial & error
What are some examples of tool production found in groups of chimps in some places but not others?
Ant fishing, water sponge, toilet paper, hammer & anvil
Describe the Machiavellian hypothesis of the evolution of intelligence
Social intelligence is the prime mover – primates competing with each other on a social level drove them to be smarter; there’s a positive linear association between neocortex ratio & group size of species
Describe the features suggesting primate social intelligence
Group living; grooming; social hierarchies; keeping track of third party relations (forming alliances); tactical deception (e.g. one baboon grooming or having sex with another, while hiding from the alpha male); cooperation (though competition is more prominent)
How have orangutans displayed social learning also found in human infants?
By imitating us & recognising when we imitate them (they seem to test whether we’re really copying through more vigourous behaviour)
Culture is ultimately social inheritance. Ideas, words, customs & values are passed on to generations. What evidence suggests that chimpanzees have culture?
Certain behaviours (often functional, e.g. using rocks for tools) are found in some groups & not others, suggesting it’s socially maintained; in Tai forest & Mahale they give each other a high 5, but not in Gombe
According to Max Mueller (1860-70), no other communication system is open ended like human language. What did Richard Garner (1890) believe he could do?;
What rumours occurred from this?
Understand the Simian language by going to the jungle & recording & playing back their sounds with Edison’s phonograph;
That he wasn’t really in the jungle & animal language became part of fiction
How was the approach of animal language playback re-discovered in 1980 by Marler, Cheney & Seyfarth?;
Despite this, what hasn’t been found?
They discovered different alarm calls by vervet monkeys for leopard, eagle, python, small cat, baboon & human; also showed evidence of social culture through deception (one calling “leopard” so the others would climb the tree & hide, then it would gather & eat all the food);
Evidence of nonhuman syntactical languages
What have Koko, the gorilla’s responses to the question “who are you” indicated?
Self-awareness by referring to her name, “me” or “gorilla”
Children by around 18 months have been found to pass the surprise-mark test by Gallup (1970), where rouge is marked on their face to see if they recognise themselves in the mirror. What other species successfully pass this test?
Gorilla, chimpanzees & orangutans
Describe how the gibbon self-recognition test was carried out;
How did the gibbons behave?
They were exposed to a mirror to habituate for 5-6 hrs, were fed some icing sugar (motivation check), then the sugar was placed on their leg, & if they could see it in the mirror they’d eat it;
They’d reach behind the mirror to find the mark, as though there was another gibbon there; they showed no mark-directed behaviour
In post-self-recognition tests for gibbons, experimenters put some sugar on their forehead & some on the mirror. What occurred?
They scraped it off the mirror but neglected the sugar on their forehead; shows evidence of absence, not just absence of evidence
Pretence involves primary representation of reality & secondary representation of pretend world. What has been found with home-reared great apes in this regard?
They play with dolls & treat them as if animate; hard to find evidence of this in the wild
What three abilities do 2 year old infants share with chimps, orangutans & gorillas?
Pretence; insightful problem solving; mirror self-recognition
When looking at phylogenic reconstruction (our family tree), one could argue that the sharing of any trait is the result of homology (sharing common descent) or what?
A result of independent/convergent evolution - solving the same problem in an analogous way (e.g. bees & birds have wings but don’t share the same ancestor)
What do biologists use to explain how traits are shared?
Evolutionary parsimony to decide what model best describes the distribution of a trait
The fact that secondary representation has been found in humans & some great apes but not others (monkeys & gibbons) could be that each branch evolved independently, but then you have to make 4/5 assumptions about events in the past. What’s a more parsimonious/simpler explanation?
It evolved before the last great apes split off from the line that led to the modern great apes (pretence likely evolved some 18 million years ago after the line of monkeys & gibbons split off, & before orangutans around 14 million years ago)
List some unique human capacities when surveying the gap between us & other animals
Thought, complex emotion, reason, language, mental time travel, conscience, self-awareness, creativity, imagination, theory of mind, motives beyond drive & meta-thinking
Why does the gap between humans & animals appear so large?
Because all other hominins have died out or have been displaced by homo-sapiens
