Chapter 1 Flashcards
Anthropomorphism
The tendency to view animals as people. An Ancient and natural irresistible urge.
What is anthropocentrism?
Humans can NOT help but see animals from a human perspective.
What kind of questions are these when regarding animals: Are they intelligent? Do they think or feel?
Anthropocentric questions, because they ask if other animals share our human states
What is the ‘Theory of Mind’?
An Individual’s understanding that other beings have minds too.
Modern comparative psychologists take the Darwinian view that believes..?
That each species has its own set of problems to solve and has therefore evolved its own skills to solve them.
Intelligence means?
Wide-ranging problem-solving abilities… (a Natural way to describe an important aspect of behaviour.)
Animal Cognition means?
The full richness and complexity of animal behaviour. (Not internal representations)
The Study of Animal behaviour began with who and what theory?
Charles Darwin and his theory of Evolution.
The cornerstone of the adaptive approach to animal behaviour is?
Animals act to perpetuate their genes into future generations.
What is Filial Cannibalism?
Animals eating their own offspring.
Why do some fish eat some of their eggs?
An energetic benefit. Enables more eggs to survive.
What does Comparative mean in Comparative psychology?
The comparison of different species.
When did Animal psychology become a science?
Two years before the 20th century.
Laboratory experimental methods for studying Animal Behaviour originated with what psychologist and which countries?
Thorndike and English-speaking countries.
Behaviourists believe that a science of psychology must confine itself to …?
Behaviour (observable).
Europeans developed studying animals in the wild.. this lead to discoveries such as
honey bees having a language.
The animal psychology that grew out of fieldwork tradition is known as?
ethology.
Timbergen identified 4 questions to be asked about behaviour.. what are they?
Function, Phylogeny, Ontogeny and mechanism
Function means?
The adaptive purpose of the behaviour in an evolutionary sense.
phylogeny means?
How does the behaviour vary across related species?
helps understand how behaviour evloved
Ontogeny means?
Development of behaviour over the individual’s lifetime.( cause and effect)
Mechanism means?
How a behaviour is caused in an animal’s brain and how it is caused by its ability to learn cause and effect.
Behaviour is a function of multiple levels of?
Causation
After behaviourism came what approach?
Cognitive approach? (enabled psychologist to study wider range of phenomena)
Hans the horse the did math did it by?
Picking up on slight movements of the head that questioners didnt know they were making.
simpler explanations are always prefered to?
complex explanations.
Llyod morgan’s canon principle states?
To always assume the easier/lower level of psychological reasoning when possible.
what is a weakness of L Morgan’s principle?
when can you know what is a higher psychical faculty vs lower?
stories about animals in the media emphasize?
The improbable, the rare, and untrue
Animal-cognition is?
The study of the mental lives of animals.
