Animal Cognition Unit 1 Flashcards
Giving animals human like traits
Anthropomorphism
The belief that humans are the most important species
Anthropocentrism
14 dog experinment the owners believe to be about obedience, used to measure if dogs feel guilt or not (The dogs do not feel guilt rather it is a learned response based on theirs owners reaction)
Horowitz experiment
Based on Von Osten’s belief that horses are as intellgent as people, and set out to prove this by teaching a horse to do math, history etc. However Hans did not learn math he was however able to gauge the audiences reactions instead
Clever Hans
A soul is a kind of inner form that directs bodily activty
Aristotles Version of Soul
Plant Soul
-Focus on reproduction
-Focus on Growth
Vegitative Soul
Animal Soul
-Focus on mobility
-Focus on Sensation
Sensitive Soul
Human Soul
-Focus on thought
-Focus on Reflection
Rational Soul
Non-human creatures do not have souls and are simply just mindless automata
Descartes Dualism
Souless entity (lower than a human)
Automata
That all species have evolved over the same period of time and the variations we see now are based on the traits that have allowed these species to survive for as long as they have
Darwin’s theory of evolution via natural selection
In the same period as Darwin came up with the theory of evolution.
He also believed that higher reasoning was a faculty humans had beyond an evolutionary bias.
Alfred Russel Wallace
Believed that a species traits where determined by it’s life experiences
ex: a giraffee that went for taller tree’s neck would grow longer as time went on and the longer neck would then be passed on to it’s children
Lamark
Darwins idea that all physical traits where developed for a purpouse
ex: we did not develop eyes to see rather we developed sight because he have eyes as a faculty.
Functional Significance
There have to be variatable phenotypes in a species in order for there to be further evolution
(living organisms are not like gm crops which are carbon copies and would die to same thing)
Variability
Traits that are better suited to be passed on to the next generation
Ex: a brown field mouse is more likely to survive than a white field mouse.
Selective Advantage
Speices are bound to develop at different rates (not everyones going to have a kid at the same time which means spikes + plateu’s in population growth)
Diffrent Reproduction Rates
An organism is more likely to inherite a trait if it is dominant rather than recessive ( or if more of the population has it)
Inheritance rate
Focus on the study of animal behaviors in order to broadly apply the concepts to people
Behaviorism
The belief that because there is a lack of a human and other species communication network it is easier to study observable behaviors to be able to understand another speices mind
Focus on Observable Behavior
Focused on in lab experiments for optimal controlled environment
Behaviorists lab experiments
Father of classical conditioning
Pavlov
Father of Operant Conditioning
B.F Skinner
Who did the little albert experiment
John B. Watson
Law of effect:any behavior that is followed by pleasant consequences is likely to be repeated, and any behavior followed by unpleasant consequences is likely to be stopped.
Thorndike
Biologists that study of animal behavior in the speices natural environment
Ethology
Ethologist known for their study of development
ex: becoming the ducklings ‘mother’
Lorenz
Came up with the four questions to study animal cognition ( functionality, mechanism, ontogeny, phylongeny)
Tinbergen
Why does the animal exibit this behavior? What evolutionary purpouse does it serve?
ex: nurturing or eating your young
functionality
What causes the behavior? Is it a specific stimuli? elemental factor?
ex: bird mating rituals happen as the days get longer i.e the days getting longer signals the birds to mate
mechanism
Has the trait developed over the organisms lifetime? How has this development impacted these traits?
ex: an isolated birds song is less well tuned than that of one in the wild with it’s species
Ontogeny
How has this species evoloved over several generations
ex: look at a geneological map/ study multiple similar species to note the similarities and differences
Phylogeny
While in most cases Tinbergen’s four questions categorization is unatainable for most species there has been enough research on birdsong that it is a rare case where there are answers to all four questions
Birdsong example
Do not overcomplicate behaviors ( explain it as the simplist behavior it aligns with)
Morgan’s Cannon
Frees researchers to look at a broader category of behaviors than a limited anthropocentric lens
Cognative Psychology