Animal Intelligence Flashcards
Gottfredson’s key points on intelligence?
Reason, plan, solve problems, learn
Overall idea of processing information from our environment and applying this to our course of action
What is cognition?
Mental process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience and senses
What indicates intelligence i.e. what can we look for when studying? (5)
Learning Problem solving Recognising conspecifics/self Planning Use of tools
What are the difficulties in measuring intelligence?
Not measured directly
Motivation often needed
Brain size as a proxy - not always true
Criteria varies e.g. intelligent in one aspect and not another
What was the problem with Clever Hans?
Horse believed to add/subtract - was instead reading the audience response to know when to stop tapping his hoof
What is apparent intelligence?
Where an individual appears to exhibit intelligence e.g. complex nest building when this is instead an innate process
Social Brain Hypothesis?
Dunbar - social complexity drives the evolution of intelligence
More complex interactions = greater intelligence to cope
Complex interactions required by social groups? (4)
Dominance hierarchies
Resolving conflict
Recognition
Parental care and bonding
Evidence for social brain hypothesis?
Neocortex size correlated with group size in primates
Pair-bonded groups within species have greater residual brain volume than other systems
Contradicting social brain theory?
Brain size not necessarily linked to group size - diet may play a greater role e.g. fructivores have greater brain volumes, maybe due to spatial knowledge needed for foraging
Guilt in dogs?
Example of anthropomising - we assume they are guilty, but this is a highly complex cognition
Experiments found they exhibited the same ‘guilty’ response to scolding regardless of whether or not they ‘deserved’ it
Mirror self-recognition experiments?
Habituated animals to a mirror and then marked them - greater self-directed responses indicate that they could self-recognise
Which species show self-recognition?
Chimps, apes
Dolphins - even though they do not encounter their reflection in the wild
Asian elephants
Birds
How is self-recognition likely to have evolved?
Separately - it is evident in taxonomically distinct groups
Self-recognition in magpies?
Gertie and Goldie - both responded strongly when their badges were painted gold
Theory of Mind?
Idea that we have some idea what each other are thinking, essential to our cooperative society - can animals do the same?
Theory of mind in scrub jays?
Cash acorn and nuts to hide over the winter - if they see other birds in that area, they will move them in secret
However, is this just natural selection?
Testing theory of mind in humans
Ernie and Bert puppets - Ernie puts a ball in red box and ‘leaves’
Bert moves it to the blue box
Child asked where Ernie would look - they usually cannot separate their knowledge from the puppet i.e. development occurs later in life
Testing theory of mind in animals
Two boxes, animals habituated to know one contains food
One touched intentionally and one accidentally by experimenter - primates select the intentional box
When is theory of mind thought to evolve in primates, if they possess it?
More than 40 million years ago, as diverse clades demonstrate it (rhesus monkeys, chimps etc)
What did the hand-occupied touch experiment test?
Box touched with elbow with hands occupied or not - animals could detect whether the experimenter had a free hand or not and investigated the boxes touched with hands occupied
Language in apes?
Sign language can be taught, but mainly used for requests - no construction of sentences or deeper understanding
Washoe sign language?
Ape taught to sign - signed water in response to a duck which seems indicative of complex thought processes, but actually just a coincidence
Rational maximiser idea?
Assigned to humans - idea that we are only self-interested. This is argued as unfair, as humans are moral and focused on cooperation rather than competition
Animal morality in capuchins
Rejection of unequal pay - if both given reward of cucumber, both capuchins were happy.
If one was then rewarded with grapes, the other was unsatisfied with the cucumber
