Animal Cognition - L1 Flashcards
what is comparative psychology?
the study of the behaviour and cognition of animals other than human beings
why do we study animal cognition?
curiosity - surrounded by animals -> therefore behaviours and mental states are interesting -> curious of evolution of cognition
human welfare
animal welfare
what separates humans from other animals?
-Language, tool use, abstract thought, consciousness, theory of mind (Darwin,1871)
what are three models of human disorders?
dopamine and schizophrenia
drug addiction
fear conditioning as a model of PTSD and other anxiety disorders
what occurs in behavioural neuroscience?
animal models allow experiments that can’t be conducted in humans
-study lesions, inject pharmacological agents into specific brain areas and histology
-is a sophisticated understanding of animals which allows for more sophisticated models
what does animal welfare study?
we interact with animals in a wide variety of settings
-those interactions are informed by what we know about their minds
how can we study animal cognition?
infer from behaviours through observations and experiments -> making it more difficult
what did Romanes do?
1848-1894
- associate of Darwin interested in the relationship between evolution and mental capacity
-collected stories of animal behaviour and gave interpretations based on anthromoprhism
what is Lloyd Morgans canon?
In no case may we interpret an action as the outcome of the exercise of a higher psychical faculty, if it can be interpreted as the outcome of one that stands lower in the psychological scale. (1894 p. 53)
-> appeals to parsimony -> what are lower mental processes anyway?
what did Fouts say about his ape?
“When I looked into Washoe’s eyes she caught my gaze and regarded me thoughtfully, just like my own son did. There was a person inside that ape “costume”. And in those moments of steady eye contact I knew that Washoe was a child.” (Fouts, 1997)
- leads to argument of should we be eye-gazers or behaviourists?
what did Darwin 1871 say about tool use?
Many authors have insisted that man is divided by an insuperable barrier from all the lower animals in his mental faculties…he alone makes use of tools”
“It has often been said that no animal uses any tool; but the chimpanzee in a state of nature cracks a native fruit, somewhat like a walnut, with a stone.”
what is an example of animals showing tool use?
dolphins using sponges to protect their snouts during foraging
what did Oakley 1944 say?
“lt is in making tools that man is unique. Apes have been known to make use on occasion of natural objects, e.g., as missiles, but the shaping of sticks and stones to particular uses was the first recognisably human activity.”
how do animals demonstrate tool use?
-prefer prefabricated objects like a stone
-occasional modification e.g. strip leaves from a stick to facilitate insertion
-use a combination of objects like stone hammers and anvils
what did Sakura et al 1991 find?
no evidence of stone modification used by a while chimpanzee to nut crack
- but they observed anvil stabilisation
what did Preutz & Bertolani 2007 find?
Chimps use spears to hunt bush babies
Most common among adolescent females, perhaps due to competition with older/male chimps
what are two questions in which lab experiments focus on?
- can non-human animals use tools?
- do they understand those tools in the same way we do?
what did Weir et al 2002 find?
tool modifications in new Caledonian crows
-a male and a female crow were expected to retrieve a piece of food from a bucket with a handle that was placed in a clear, vertical tube . The tube was so deep that it was impossible for the birds to reach the handle of the bucket with their beaks.
-straight wire must be bent into a hook to retrieve food
- but only one crow did this -> as it had prior experience with straight and hooked wire
what is a problem of studying animals?
-behaviour can be inconsistant
-as animals like chimapanzees try to figure out an order of events looking for logic and filling in the blanks (Premack & Premack 1994)
what are results from the tube task?
capuchins learned most of the tasks but struggled with the H stick
-appeared to know sticks help but not which sticks, suggesting a lack of understanding
-Apes found the H stick hardest but learnt the fewest errors
why is understanding important?
animals can solve problems simply by learning associations
-> greater understanding allows for insight and complexity
what is the trap tube task (povinelli 2000)?
chimpanzees were confronted with a clear tube that contained a peanut. To retrieve the food, they were required to push it out of the tube with a stick.
Once they had mastered this skill they were given the same task but this time there was a trap in the tube.
Pushing the stick in one direction caused the peanut to fall out of the tube, pushing it in the other direction caused the peanut to fall in the trap where it was inaccessible.
-only one chimpanzee reliably solved the task
what is the inverted trap tube task?
When the tube was inverted, the animal continued to push the food from the opposite end
Conclusion: Lack of ‘folk physics’
problem: cost of this behaviour? -> undergrads make the same mistake (Silva, Page & Silva 2005)
what are the series of experiments carried out by Gilbert et al 2014?
1st: Water vs Sand in the tubes, birds chose the correct choice 76% of the time
2nd: Sinking vs Floating objects, birds chose the correct choice 88% of the time
3rd: solid vs hollow objects, choose correctly 89% of the time
4th: used a U-Tube to experiment
what are the conclusions made from Gilbert et al 2014?
The results of the U-tube task suggest that physics might affect learning
However, other tasks don’t provide perfect controls for the U-tube. Perhaps it’s just harder?
Even when the physics were intuitive, subjects still needed experience
what did Heinrich and Bugnyar 2005 do?
Ravens presented with meat hanging from their perch
Some grasped the string to pull it up, using their feet to support each length
In the second task, meat could be retrieved by pulling downwards
Only birds who had mastered the first task could solve this
Again, this suggests that experience rather than insight is crucial -> ravens have some kind of understanding of means-end relationships.
->solution to first challenge is product of trial and error learning, sight of food being drawn ever closer served as the reward for the sequence of stepping and pulling tht the birds engaged in.
according to Mithen 1996, what are the differences between tool use in humans and chimpanzees?
Human tools are often more complex, with more parts
Chimpanzee tools are made using existing movements, whereas humans use unique gestures
Greater range of functions in human tool use, with multiple functions for the same object
Faster social learning of uses in humans – chimpanzees often very slow to acquire new uses from others
what do the results of wier et al 2002 show?
The results from these tests for an understanding of folk physics in birds can perhaps most fairly be described as ambiguous in their theoretical significance. On the one hand, it is possible to explain most, if not all, of them in terms of the trial-and-error principles advocated by Thorndike (1911)
-However, a critic of this type of explanation would argue that it is so versatile that it can explain almost any result that is obtained.
what do the Povinelli 2000 studies show from 27 experiments?
experiments, using a variety of tests, all of which show that chimpanzees have a complete lack of understanding of the physical properties of the problems that confront them.
what did Seed et al 2006 find in birds?
presented a group of naïve rooks a version of the trap problem used by Povinelli (2000; described above). When first confronted with this problem, the direction in which the birds pushed the food was determined by chance but, as training progressed, they showed a marked improvement in avoiding the trap. To test whether this improvement reflected anything more than learning through trial and error, the birds were given a new problem where performance was not expected to be influenced by the effects of any prior trial-and-error learning. Six out of seven birds performed poorly on the new problem, but one bird performed extremely well from the outset.
