Communication and Cognition Flashcards
What are the 4 components of communication
- Signal
- Motivation
- Mechanism
- Function
Signal
- form the communication event takes place
- observable action (ex: vocalization, scent marking)
What makes human signal special?
Language givens humans increased signalling abilities.
Motivation
- What is creating the feelings, emotion or intention
- Internal state of the animal
- Can be inferred from the actions that accompany the signal AND/OR External stimulus in environment
Mechanism
- Proximate causation
- How does the signal affect the receiver?
- Is response for information, physical quality of signal, or who is sending the signal?
What was the Cheney and Seyfarth experiment?
It was a playback experiment on wild vervet monkeys revealed that they can:
- identify individuals by their vocals
- recognize relationships between kin
- produce three alarm calls and response accordingly for each call
What were the three conclusions from the Cheney and Seyfarth experiment?
- Symbolic, meaningful calls: Different calls for different predators that elicit different escape responses
- Arbitrary call structure: attaches meaning to arbitrary calls
- Intentional: calls are deliberate attempts to inform listeners
Information Sharing
- cooperative information transmission from one individual to another
- not very supported anymore (theory of mind assumption into the model)
- evidence for different mechanisms
Function
- Ultimate Causation
- Adaptive value of the signal to sender, either directly or indirectly via receiver fitness (kin selection)
Observations vs Inferences
Observations: signal –> reaction –> see & record –> environmental context
Inferences: motivation –> mechanism –> function
What are the 4 modes of communication?
- Olfactory
- Visual
- Tactile
- Auditory/Vocal
Olfactory Communication - Who uses it?
Typical in Mammals - chemical signals like pheromones
- limited use in anthropoids
- More used in prosimians
Advantages and Disadvantages of Olfactory communication?
- Conveys messages after the sender has left
- Signals are subject to the elements
- Advertise information to whoever finds it, whether intentional or not
What is scent marking and its function?
Chemical signal dispersed in the air or deposited on substrates.
Function:
- marks territory
- attracts mates
- advertise dominance status
- sexual receptivity
- aggressive/competitive encounter
Who is olfactory communication most important to ?
Solitary nocturnal primates (ex: lorises and galagos)
What are the four main types of visual communication?
- Facial Expressions
- Body postures
- Tail postures
- colouration
Explain facial expressions
Permits very diverse messages
- only good for close range signalling
- many expressions are universal across species
- more limited in prosimians
Explain body and tail postures
Better for distance messaging
- involved in courtship and dominance signalling
Explain colouration
Examples are silverback gorillas, or bright colourful face and body
- can be used to show dominance, or to help identify individuals from the same species
Infants can have different coloration of the body
- especially in colobines
- allows group to identify infants and sometimes take care of them
Which area of research is a main area in non-human primates?
Vocal Communication
What is a tool used in vocal communication research ?
A sonogram/sonograph
- provides a spectrographic picture of the sound waves
- primates display great variation in vocal pitch and intensity
what is an advantage of vocal communication
ability to attact the receivers attention without being in view
- ex: arboreal primates developed anatomical specializations to call long distances through the forest (howler monkeys, siamangs)
- ex: arboreal species also have behaviour adaptations to vocal communication when they signal at times of the day when the call can be propagated further - in the morning and evening
Tactile Communication
Hard to study because it occurs in intense and intimate social interactions
ex: mother&infant
Explain grooming as a form of tactile communication
It is a primary function to maintain social bonds and reduce tension.
Has a secondary function to remove parasites.
Where is grooming seen?
-Mothers pacifying infants
-Prelude to mating consort pairs
-Reinforces kinship bonds
-Reduces tension between potential adversaries
-Involved in reconciliation
Other forms of tactile behaviours?
Greeting and reunion hugs and kisses
ex: chimpanzees and spider monkeys
What are the two considerations of intelligence?
- A single unitary capacity (Domain general)
or - Many different capacities (Domain specific)
Why is it good to have a big brain?
Allows for behavioural plasticity when environments change to be successful.
What are the facts about primates having a relatively large brain?
- The energetic constraints of having a large brain have somehow been offset = energy reallocation
- ex: smaller guts or fewer offspring - Selection continues to drive brain enlargement
What are the two hypotheses of why selection pressure favours intelligence in primates?
- Ecological factors: associated with location and processing inaccessible food items
- Social factors: associated with life in large complex social groups
What would selection favour for ecological intelligence?
- Ability to form spatial mental map of food trees
- Ability to predict temporal variation in seasonal foods
- Ability to extract difficult to find & eat foods (ex: tool use to crack nuts, buried roots, larvae inside trees)
- Ability to use tools to access food
A prediction of ecological intelligence
frugivores and extractive foragers should have larger neocortex than folivores
- evidence of this in cebus monkeys: spider monkeys (frugivores) have twice the brain size of howlers (folivores)
What would selection favour for social intelligence?
Ability to:
- deal with conflict and competition
- form coalitions and alliances
- form dominance hierarchies
- reconcile disputes
- form enduring social bonds
- deceive others and detect deception
- engage in reciprocity
- keep track of own and other’s relationship
A prediction of social intelligence
Species living in large social groups should have larger neocortex than those living in smaller groups
what is machiavellian intelligence?
Idea that primate intelligence is social intelligence but driven specifically by the need for social manipulation
What is deception in humans?
intentional behaviour that acts to persuade another to believe something that is false
Deception in primates?
- Flexible behaviour patterns
- interactions between and among members of the same species
- Does it show theory of mind?
- ex: fake trauma or alarm calls, hiding to mate, pretending not to see food.
Theory of mind
necessary condition for true deception in humans (ie. changing the mental/knowledge states of others)
- distinguish between what they know and what others know
- attribute thoughts and motives to others
- can primates truly deceive or are they learning to associate deceptive behaviours with positive reward
Do primates have theory of minds
Humans - adults yes, children no
Apes - inconclusive: understand visual perception of others but not the mental state
Monkeys - unknown: may attend to line of sight of other monkeys
What does today’s evidence say about brain size development in primates?
suggests ecological factors are the driving factors that are more important for brain size evolution in primates
