Communication and Cognition

Question 1

Behaviour =…

Answer 1

Behaviour must imply some kind of communication

Question 2

What is behaviour? Marler (1950’s-1990’s)

Answer 2

The transmission of information from one animal to another, signaler to receiver.

Question 3

What is behaviour? Dawkins and Krebs (1978, 1984)

Answer 3

• Criticized this ‘classical ethological approach’ (1978)
• Individuals not selected to inform receivers, but to influence their behaviour
• Receiver responses also shaped by selected (1984)
• Eventually conceded ‘information’ necessary

Question 4

What is information?

Answer 4

-Claude shannon and information theory. Information is the resolution of uncertainty
-As applied to animal communication
Reduction in receivers’ uncertainty as a result of having received the signal

Question 5

What is a signal?

Answer 5

Any act or structure that
-Affects the behaviour of other organisms
-Evolved because of those effects
-Which is effective because the effect had also evolved
Will only occur if signal carries information relevant to the receiver (Smith and Harper, 2003)

Question 6

Signals

Answer 6

Evolved to alter receiver behaviour, as receiver evolved to respond, on average, responding to signal benefits recipient.

Question 7

Cue

Answer 7

Act/structure is informative and effects receiver behaviour,

• The act/structure didn’t evolve for this reason
• But receiver responses evolved

Question 8

Coercion

Answer 8

Act/structure affects receiver behaviour, but does not provide information

• The act/structure DID evolve for this reason
• But receiver response did not

Question 9

Sensory Bias Exploitation

Answer 9

Senses have a bias to respond or not respond to certain signals

Question 10

Signals vs Cues Vs Coercion

Answer 10

-Why provide cues or respond to coercive acts/structures if it’s costly?
Constraints and Disequilibrium
-Signals are equilibrium state

Question 11

Ensuring Signal Reliability

1.

Answer 11

Index

• cannot be faked
• Signal form casually related to relevant information

Question 12

Ensuring Signal Reliability

2.

Answer 12

Costly Signaling/Handicap

• Too costly to fake
• Production / Consequence

Question 13

Ensuring Signal Reliability

3.

Answer 13

Common interest

-No benefit to faking

Question 14

Deception

Answer 14

• Not common
• Signals must be honest on average
• Deceivers can exploit this as long as: C deceived

Question 15

Communicating identity

Answer 15

-Strength, status (both dominance and reproductive), age, sex, kin group etc

Question 16

Communicating current or future behaviour

Answer 16

Copulate, fight, affiliate, initiate movement

Question 17

Communicating Environmental information

Answer 17

Food, predators and social environment, eg. Wild groups.

Question 18

Sensory modalities

Answer 18

• Olfactory
• Tactile
• Visual
• Auditory

Question 19

Receiver psychology (Guildford and Dawkins 1991)

Answer 19

Signals should use features that receiver brains find:

• Eye catching
• Easily discriminable
• Memorable

Question 20

Olfactory Communication +

Jacobson’s organ

Answer 20

-Jacobson’s first stage of the olfactory system
-Well-developed in many mammals including strepsirrhines and many platyrrhines
-Greatly reduced in catarrhines
-Urine, faeces, glands.
Ring tailed lemurs stink fights

Question 21

Copulation calls

Answer 21

• Common among female catarrhines, some NWM

- May incite male-male competition, confuse paternity and ensure, mate gaurding

Question 22

Vervet alarm calls

Answer 22

Different calls to indicate eagle predators so they hide in the bush, leopard alarm they get in a tree and snake alarm where they jump (Seyfarth et al, 1980)

Question 23

Functionally referential signals

Answer 23

• Signals that function like human birds
• Context-specific production
• Receiver reactions consistent across contexts
• Elicit mental representations of referent?

Question 24

Evolution of language

Answer 24

• Evolved from primate vocal communication?
• Language is vocal
• Referential-like alarm calls
• But limited flexibility, non-intentional

Question 25

Gestural communication

Answer 25

Socially learned | intentional

Question 26

Or is language based on..

Answer 26

Different cognitive mechanisms than primate than primate communication

Question 27

Encephalisation Quotient (EQ)

Answer 27

EQ= observed brain mass/expected for mammal of that body size.

Question 28

Brain subsystems

Answer 28

Cerebral cortex and Striatum -Executive brain, planning and executions Limbic systems, hypothalamus -Emotional brain: sexual parental, aggression, hormones and drives -Hippocampus Spatial memory/ mental maps and foraging -Visual System Finding fruit, social group size

Question 29

What is Cognition? | Shettleworth 2010

Answer 29

'The mechanisms by which animals acquire, process, store and act on information from the enviroment'

Question 30

Gaining Knowledge : | Conditioning

Answer 30

Associative: pairing if neutral event with reinforcer Classical Instrumental (Trial and error)

Question 31

Gaining Knowledge : | Imitation

Answer 31

Cheap way of copying behaviour

Question 32

Gaining Knowledge : | Insight

Answer 32

Powerful, advanced, lacking in animals

Question 33

Imitation example

Answer 33

Macaca fuscata and the example of washing sweet potatoes, 1953. Juveniles learnt but old adults never did.

Question 34

Social learning

Answer 34

``` Stimulus Enhancement - Directing attention to fraction of environment Response Facilitation -Watching increases chances of doing Emulation -Copying results / goals not methods Imitation -Quick. ```

Question 35

Insight

Answer 35

Understanding how things work. Capuchin, peanut plastic tubes and pits.

Question 36

Selective pressures for large brains

Answer 36

Solving ecological problems -Frugivory -Extractive foraging Some support for both, but neither can fully explain why primates generally have big brains.

Question 37

What do monkeys know?

Answer 37

- Others identities - Own and others relationship - Status, friendship, kinship and aggression. 'Don't know they know this' (Cherny, 1997)

Question 38

Theory of Mind

Answer 38

- Reading minds or reading behaviour? - Difficult to rule out alternative explanations - Chimpanzees may have ToM but monkeys don't.