Cognitive Abilities in Animals - 20 Flashcards
What is cognition?
The mental processes concerned with the acquisition and manipulation of knowledge including perception and thinking. Mental states of animals are inaccessible, but can look at response animals give to external objects & events.
What signals do animals give that show cognitive ability?
Referential signalling - using signals to functionally denote external objects and events e.g. whistle for high urgency threat, chitter-chat call for low urgency (meerkats). Animals attach acoustic/visual labels to external objects and events.
What are language-like abilities in animals?
Animals can attach acoustic labels to objects and events (semantics) e.g. in response to infant’s scream, group members look to infant’s mother.
What are labelling social relationships?
Mother-offspring bond: Dasser (1988) monkeys trained to distinguish mother-offspring pairs. Subjects had high success rate despite diverse combination of age and sex classes of offspring.
What are third party relationships?
Knowledge of the dominance relationships could confer fitness benefits, enabling individuals to assess which potential allies are likely to be effective in coalitions against opponents.
What is Machiavellian intelligence?
Machiavelli provided advice for social interactions based on mind-erasing and deception. Suggested tactical deception: short term tactics where elements from an honest counterpart in the individual’s repertoire are used in a functionally deceptive act.
What is evidence for tactical deception?
Whiten & Byrne: concealment, distraction, creating an imagine, manipulation of target using social tool, deflection of target to a fall guy, countering of deception.
What is theory of mind?
The ability to attribute mental states (e.g. desires, intentions, knowledge) to others. Early evidence from chimpanzees: appear to know what other individuals do and do not see, can recall what a conspecific has and has not seen in the immediate past. Also evidence that chimpanzees may be aware of knowledge and ignorance in others.
