Biological function of learning

Question 1

What are the historical views of animal behaviour?

Answer 1

Descartes - animals as soulless machines, no ability to reason, no volition, behaviour purely through reflexes and innate programming with no learning (QUALITATIVELY different from humans)
Hume - assumed continuity between mental processes, believing animals to be capable of some learning but just not as much as humans i.e. QUANTITATIVELY different

Question 2

What was Darwin’s perspective on animal behaviour?

Answer 2

Addressed topics such as soul and differences between animals and humans, and believed that intelligence and mental capabilities must have evolved in a similar way to physical traits
Prompted searches for continuity in mental life throughout evolution i.e. comparative psychology

Question 3

What did Romanes do?

Answer 3

Aimed to determine whether animals other than man could show intelligent behaviour - criticised because relied on owner testimonies and observations to research animal intelligence (influence from interpretations)
Suggested that intelligence can manifest and be measured in a number of ways - adaptation to novel circumstances, benefiting from previous experiences

Basically his criterion for possession of an intelligent mind was ABILITY TO LEARN

Question 4

What are 3 main reasons to study animal intelligence today?

Answer 4

Intellectual curiosity
Relevance to humans - conditioning research on animals can be applied to human phobia therapies for example
Animal welfare - help make informed decisions about how to care for animals in captivity to meet their needs

Question 5

What are the 2 main lessons to be taken from the case of Clever Hans?

Answer 5

1) The clever hans effect - behaviour cam be influenced by unintentional cueing on the part of the experimenter
2) To avoid this we should conduct double blind tests i.e. neither subject nor experimenter knows answer required, avoiding unintentional placebo effects for example in medical trials

Question 6

What is the result of pavlovian conditioning?

Answer 6

Improves the efficacy of the biological functions in which it takes part, and through learning individuals cam anticipate biologically important environmental events - essential to survival and development

Question 7

What is meant by a consummatory conditioned response?

Answer 7

After learning, the response is similar to the UR e.g. salivation in response to food and also in response to the tone after learning

Question 8

What is meant by a preparatory conditioned response?

Answer 8

Helps animal get ready for something, with significant implications for biological success, doesn’t necessarily mimic UR
e.g. courtship behaviours - male blue gourami defend their territory against other males but will usually allow females in. Hollis et al placed a fish in a tank with a transparent barrier, and a red light flashed to indicate imminent arrival of male competitor in other half of tank
Control group - long delay between light and competitor so no association, but pavlovian group prepared for a fight when red light flashed; better prepared for attack, and also better at actual attacking - more bites made

Question 9

How did Hollis et al investigate courtship behaviour?

Answer 9

Similar method - red light conditioned to indicate presence of female
Found increased instance of courtship behaviour, but it also took less time for female to spawn eggs so also led to more ready and efficient mating
Larger number of offspring in pavlovian group, so females lay more eggs and more quickly

Question 10

What is meant by a compensatory conditioned response?

Answer 10

Opposes effect of noxious unconditioned stimulus, so response is generally opposite of UR
Important role in development of tolerance and addiction to drugs

Question 11

What is the conditioning theory of tolerance with respect to drug-taking?

Answer 11

Exposure to drug perturbs body i.e. disrupts physiology
Body reacts by eliciting response that compensates, rebalancing systems
Compensatory response can be unconsciously controlled by contextual cues present during the drug exposure

Question 12

How was the significance of external cues demonstrated?

Answer 12

Dogs injected with adrenaline –> tachycardia
Tachycardic effects decrease as tolerance develops, reaching a point where purely experience bradycardia which is the compensatory response
When no drug actually injected but injection cues present, the conditioned compensatory response of bradycardia was still produced - animal had learned association between such contextual cues and the need for the response

Question 13

What is meant by Theory of Mind?

Answer 13

Ability to understand that other people have mental states i.e. desires, intentions, knowledge, beliefs etc

Question 14

What can be used to test for presence of ToM in children?

Answer 14

False belief task - marble and dolls story
Child asked 3 questions: memory question, reality question and ToM question - correct answer to this final question requires attribution of a false belief to the doll i.e. they should realise that the doll should falsely believe the marble to be where it isnt as she doesn’t have the same amount of knowledge of the whole situation

Question 15

What is found when conducting false belief tasks?

Answer 15

Children with autism seem to struggle - while their memory and appreciation of reality is normal, they don’t realise that the doll won’t have the same knowledge as them

Question 16

What does Theory of mind allow?

Answer 16

From an early age we can view the world from another’s perspective and have theories of others’ emotions, feelings, motivations etc

Question 17

What is Morgan’s cannon?

Answer 17

When testing for theory of mind in animals, we should never interpret an action as outcome of exercising a higher mental faculty if it can be interpreted as one which stands lower in psychological scale i.e. before concluding theory of mind, need to rule out simpler explanations

Question 18

How can deceit be used as a way of testing theory of mind in animals?

Answer 18

Deceit implies belief that others will act on info they receive, and you intend to take advantage
Observational study of adolescent baboon who demonstrated a predator-spotting behaviour which avoided him punishment from elders
Was this genuine deception or could it have been misperception (genuinely thought saw something?) or simple learning (learned that adopting predator-warning behaviour avoids punishment)
Suggests but does not confirm ToM in non-humans - experiment lacked experimental control

Question 19

How did Povinelli and Eddy test knowledge attribution in chimpanzees?

Answer 19

Chimp presented with 2 cups, only one contained food but which?
One trainer was the knower and always gave correct hints, while other was guesser and sometimes got it wrong
After >100 trials, chimp only paid attention to knower, potentially attributing knowledge to them?
However trial and error discrimination learning can also account for findings - knower became associated with rewards while guesser did not

Question 20

How did Emery and Clayton’s scrub jay experiments demonstrate presence of knowledge attribution and thus theory of mind?

Answer 20

1) Hide food in presence of observers - chose most hidden spot, no preference when no observer, preferences only demonstrated in birds with own experience of pilfering
2) Three hours later, allowed back - birds observed during caching retrieved hidden food and transferred to new tray
3) Further experiment, in which birds were allowed to cache in tray A when observer A present and tray B when observer B present; bird has food in both trays, but each observer only knows about one. When tested with observer A, storer re-cached food in tray A but not tray B - seem to know that tray B is safe because observer A doesn’t know the food is there. No re-caching at all with observer C. When tested individually with no observers they recache everything as don’t know which observer will be coming
This is a very complete experiment and it is difficult to explain the findings in any way other than knowledge attribution