Comp 3 Flashcards
What is main problem with comparative psychology research methods?
With non-human animals we introspect and struggle to be unbias towards their behaviours. Also, consicous decisions - we don’t know what an animal is actually doing and the reason behind that - however this is similar in human research.
What are the pros and cons of experimental research designs
Pros = causal links and ability to control for other variables. Cons = Lack ecological validity
What are the pros and cons of an observational design
Pros = able to make conditions from data, and the data is real, it is spontaneuous behaviour that is not being produced for researchers purpose. Cons = there can be no cause and effect link, however we can try through making conditions post data collection.
Discuss what is meant by some questions cannot be addressed with observational methods
We can’t understand cognition through observational methods. We can’t observe how animals see the world and cope with its challenges - the knowlege of others social relationships and decision making. Or what the animals cognitive abilities are. We can however use natural behaviours in an experiement. F
What are the pros and cons of wild studies
Pros = more generalisable, real and more relatble to evolution. However, cons are they are much more difficult to conduct.
What are the pros and cons of captive studies
Pros = opportunity to conduct study, easier to identify the individuals and easier to implement experiments. However, there is human influence, learning is restricted and there is restricted behaviour.
It was found that baboons in captivity were more able to pass the tasks they were given than wild baboons. This may be because captive individuals are more familiar to unnatural items and that wild individuals do not need to engage in these tasks to survival, e.g. get food.
Are captive studies likely to have smaller samples?
Working in the field oes no necessarily guarantee a big sample size. Sometimes demonstrating that a behaviour is possible is interesting enough
Is social behaviour reall that different in captivity?
Comparison of behaviour between wild and captive populations (Melfi & Feistner, 2002). No signifcant differences found probably behaviour the animals were hosued in good conditions
How do captive and wild environments differ according to Hosey 2005?
Zoos have regular unfamilir audiences, whereas wild have less and reserach labs have no regular unfamilir audiences with some familiar and occasional unfamiliar.
Zoos have small unnaturalistic environments, whereas wild are some small and some large, but all naturalistic. Labs are never large and naturalistic, but sometimes small and naturalistic or small and non naturalistic.
Zoos and labs have a regular food supply, wild not as much. Zoos and labs are caught and handled, wild not as much and also don’t get moved around as much. Sometimes zoo and labs encounter other species, in the wild they often do.
Discuss the differences between research methods in reality
When studying communication, we tend to study different sensory modalities, however always there are more studies from captive than wild animals by lots (captive = 62.8% vocal, 92.2% gestural, 95.1% facial, 89.3% multimodal).
Also, there is variety between observational and experimental conditions (experimental is 62.% vocal, 49% gestural, 36% facial, 50% multimodal).
Scientists also study different species depending on what modality they are studying. (vocal = monkeys at 83.2%, gesutal = great apes at 78.4% and facial = monkeys at 77.9%, whereas multimodal is close between great apes and monkeys).
These biases lead to difficulties in comparing the findings across species and modalities, e.g. gestures are produced intentionally and flexibly acorss context while vocalisations are emotional and tied to a specific context.
What is pseudoreplication?
Pooling multiple observations from each individual, reflecting a error in the logic underlying random sampling since it implicity assumes that the purpose of data gathering in ethology is to obtain large samples of behaviour rather than samples of behaviour from a large number of individuals. (Machlis, Dodd and Fentress, 1984).
Artifically increasing sample size creating a false impression of being representative of the wider population.
Waller et al (2013) did a systematic literature review of 551 empirical peer-reviewed research articles on primate communication from 1960-2008. They found 41% had no pseudoreplication, but 33% had and the remaining did not have enough information to tell.
Observational studies pseudoreplicated more at over 50%, and mostly with prosimians. Facial and vocal expressions were mostly, however there is no effect of modality on likelihood of pseuoreplication because they all did it similarly and also in the wild.
How can we stop pseudoreplicating
Simple repeated measures analysis (Wilcoxon signed-ranks tests).
Hierarchical analysis techniques that take into account group membership of multiple samples from one individual (GLM).
Vigilance - be more careful with data.
