Comparative Cognition Flashcards
What is comparative cognition?
the study of information processing across a variety of species including humans
What are Tinbergen’s Four Questions for Ultimate Cause and Priximate Cause?
UC - what purpose does trait serve for survival? how is this trait distributed across species?
PC - what biological/environmental events lead to expression of trait in individual? how does this trait emerge/change during a person’s development
What is the biophilia hypothesis?
humans have an inherited predisposition to be drawn to nature
What method can be used to study animal memory?
delayed matching to sample
What is directed forgetting?
when you’ve been told to forget something and you end up with poorer memory for it
What memory abilities to food-storing birds possess?
spacial navigation abilities
What was Hans the horse able to do?
tapping (not from arithmetic though, until questioners features changed)
What feature of classical conditioning was Hans showing a subtle form of?
stimulus discrimination
What can primates destinguish in relation to numeracy?
small numbers, but not large ones
What is transitive inference?
a form of reasoning in which the relationship between two objects can be inferred by knowing the relatiohsip of each to a third object
What are lemurs able to understand in terms of relations?
hierarchies, due to social hierarchies of species
The ability to use objects in a manipulative way in order to have a desired effect shows ___ ability
high order cognitive
What is a common test to access self-awareness
mark and mirror test
Why has it been suggested that apes find it difficult to cooperate?
due to competitivness, especially with food
In sign language experiments, what test were all chimps able to pass, and what does this mean?
reference test - able to use arbitrary signs to refer to objects (learned through modeling)
