Chapter 12: Comparative cognition Flashcards
Comparative cognition
studies of animal learning
theoretical constructs and models used to explain aspects of behaviour that cannot be readily characterized in terms of simple S-R mechanisms or reinforcer contingencies
Human exceptionalism
the idea that humans are unique, distinctive beings that ought to be assigned fundamental moral value in accordance with that distinctiveness
Anthropomorphism
The attributing of human characteristics and purposes to inanimate objects, animals, plants, or other natural phenomena, or to God.
Morgan’s canon
parsimony
Dawson 2004
see slides
Contemporary animal cognition
test cognition w/ particular predicted behavioural outcome
explain behaviour that cannot be understood through simpler learning mechs.
does not rank organisms, difficult to determine “intelligence” or “consciousness”
Food storing birds
- adaptation to survive predictable food shortages
- groups include: parids, corvids, sittids.
- neural specialization - hippocampus- is larger relative to their brain and body than non-storing birds
why is this feat of memory important?
- memories formed during single, brief visits
- larger # of items must be remembered
- 10 000 to 100 000 items per year - info retained over long periods of time (clark’s nutcrackers remember locations for over 285 days)
Kamil and Balda (1985)
Clark’s Nutcrackers
- forced nutcrackers to cache in only 10 of 180 spots
- after retention interval (10 days) birds allowed to search
- birds performed above chance
- can’t be due to marked sites, preference for location type or due to olfaction
Episodic memory
memory for specific events or episode
- what, where, and when
- must be integrated (use all 3 Ws)
Clayton & Dickinson (1999)
Scrub jay
Scrub jay catching worms w/ distinct cues on tray
- replenish and a degrade condition
- both groups search for worms more than peanuts after 4 hours
- replenish group searched more for worms than peanuts after 124 hours
- degrade group searched for peanuts more than worms after 124 hours
- birds remember WHAT they cached, WHERE they cached it and WHEN they cached it
Numerosity in animals
approximate number system (ANS) in nonhuman animals and human children (and adults)
“which is more?”
Mumerical magnitude production
rats trained on diff FR schedules, but half of the time there is no reinforcement
- produce approx values (more error for larger numbers)
interval timing
timing short durations (think FIs)
universal, automatic
peak procedure (duration production)
- deliver food after FI
- stimulus 1 -> FI 20 s -> food
stimulus 2 -> FI 40 s -> food
on some trials, present no food - stimulus stays on
peak procedure:
- 40 s curve is 2x the 20 sec curve
- also 2x as wide
- scalar invariance - responding according to relative, rather than absolute properties
phow interval timing develops
- early on: peck arbitrarily
- slowly: responding scallops before 60s
- later: post FI responding extinguishes
models of timing
- scalar expectancy theory
- behavioural theory of timing
- oscillators
scalar expectancy theory
internal clock accumulates in working memory; compared to reference memory
behavioural theory of timing
animals track their own behaviours over time to judge duration
oscillators
neurons set at particular times
serial order performance
learning to respond to a set of stimuli in a specified order
serial order performance can be achieved by learning a series pf S-R or S-S associations or by forming a mental representation of the order of the stimuli
Representation of order
when presented with novel orders, humans and monkeys take longer to “figure out” the order if it starts with a later stimulus
Categorization and concept learning
category perception: how we call all ducks a duck
- stimulus equivalence training
Acquisition performance: true vs. pseudo category
true group: discriminated BBC from MOCH
pseudo group: discriminated by rote
Perceptual concepts
pigeons trained to discriminate b/w pics with person vs. w/o
abstract concepts
- discriminating “faster than,” “bigger than,” or simply “same as”
- i.e. abstract relationships bw stimuli (rather than static qualities)
tool use
tool: physical object used to obtain a goal
language
not just communication symbolic meaning semantic menaing grammer, syntax critical period
lexigrams
- non-human apes do not have laryngeal apparatus for speech
- visual shapes approximating words
- kanzi learned w/o explicit instruction
is protolanguage really a language?
- difficulties w/ grammer (Nim, recent kanzi evidence)
- difficult to analyze
- problems with definitions
- preditions: no evidence for lexical priming
- recursion: no evidence for complex sentences
- songbird vocal leanring is closest ecological creative to human language learning
self awareness
mirror test
metacognition
