Cognition, Evolution and Behaviour Flashcards
Define “Cognition” and how understanding the term helps us to study animal behaviour? - LO
Cognition is a mechanism that animals use to acquire, process, act on and store information. This includes perception, learning, memory and decision making. The sum of cognitive processes is known as behaviours –> THE OUTCOME OF COGNITION
example:
bird song - how is it gaining that information - we can ask about these 4 types of mechanisms in cognition.
what is high-level cognitive process and low-level cognitive process?
high-level - insight, reasoning, planing
low level - attention and motivation
What is the clear distinction between cognition and intelligence?
Intelligence is used to refer to the ability of person to use many cogniitive traits (not just one or two)
Intelligence has been tested in humans using a ray of light experiment by adding distractions. Pigeons outperfomed humans in the experiment
Explain why the sum of cognitve processes (behaviour) is adaptive
Animal behaviour is an adaptative trait as it is favoured by natural selection –> which operates on phenotypes
there are two criteria for a trait to be favoured by natural selection:
1. there is variation among individuals in expression of the trait
2. the trait is heriatble
What is heritability?
The trait variance due to genetics/ the total variance of the trait
The value is between 0 to 1
if nearer to 1 = the trait is more linked to genes
if nearer to 0 = the trait is more linked to enviorment
example of exploratory behaviour heritability in great tits:
- conducted an artifical experiment to see how heritable the “innate (hard-wired/genetic) personality behaviour was
- paired together males and females with similar scores e.g. high boldness scores linked together
- collected the eggs and gave them to other individuals to foster
- the young individuals were tested for a boldness and repeated test again
results showed there was positive and negative artifical sleection on the behavioural trait “exploratory behaviour” - hertiable
reference: Drent et al 2003
realise how to study behaviour and identify Tinbergen’s four whys?
when animal behaviour was first being studied, there was a psychological appraoch :
- Anthropocentric/ psychological approach
can animals do what we do? - not a goof baseline for understanding animal behaviour
Morgans canon - was to guide the interpretation of evidence pertaining to psychological processes in animals
Morgan was an ethologist (1894) - “in no case may we interpret an action as the outcome of the exercise of a higher psychic faculty, if it can be interpreted as the outcome of the exercise of one which stands lower in the psychological scale”
- NOT A GOOD APPROACH
there is a new era to studying animal behaviour using a biological approach:
why does an animal do that..?
Niko Tinbergen was the pioneering ethologist that pioneered the new era of studing animal behaviour
in 1963, he emphasised that the question “why does an animal do that?” can mean four things
Nikolaas Tinbergen (1963) - Tinbergen’s four whys
1. Causation
2. Development
=these are known as proximate mechanisms (individual bases)
3. Adaptation/function
4. Evolution
=these are known as ultimate mechanisms (what is happening at the end of process - evolutionary outcome of the species)
examples of using tinbergens 4 whys in lecture notes
Discuss why we should be careful with anecdotes in animal behaviour?
using an example of “why do crows drop walnuts”
hypthosesis: crows use cars as nutcrackers
we have to use morgans canon - we cant interpret a behaviour as “higher level”, if there is a “lower level” explanation
resulst found cros did the same when cars were present or absent
- crows suing hard surfaces to crack nut - but not deliberately using approaching cars
using example of why do cichlids fish make bowers?
prediction = males with bigger bowers (honest indicators of fitness) of the right shape will achieve more matings per encounter
-we have to use morgans canon - we cant interpret a behaviour as “higher level”, if there is a “lower level” explanation
- no significant effect of bower area or height
bowers are only slected indirectly by female mate choice
Critique the blurred boundary between innate and learnt behaviour?
it is perceived that there is a clear dichotomy (contrast) between genetic (innate) and non-genetic (learned behaviour
The capacity to learn will be heritable and no behaviour will be strictly learned or entirely innate, it is modified by the environment of which it is in
an example if this is acqusistion of song by birds :
question: what is the function of bird song?
- 2 different phases to acquire bird song
1. sensory acquistion phase ( memorisation from species song)
2. sensoy motor phase (practice song, does the song work?)
depends on whether you have an innate template or learned template
- example in song and swamp sparrows (see lecture notes)
- song learning preference = heriatble = therefore innate template as sing the song of their own species
- however it is not 100% so there is some inaccuracy so it is not entirely innate behaviour - blurred lines
No behaviour will be strictly learned or entirely innate - all phenotypic traits are a result of causal process that involve both genetic and non-genetic factors
- each behaviour is likely to be a combined outcome of multiple cognitiive process linked to both genes and the environment - blurred line between them
