comparing intelligence

Question 1

what is Anthropomorphism

Answer 1

• Anthropomorphism: we assume that animal cognition is like human cognition (but not as good)

Question 2

what is Anthropocentrism

Answer 2

• Anthropocentrism: we interpret “advanced” as meaning “more like us”

Question 3

what is Social/political baggage

Answer 3

• Social/political baggage: we place the kind of human we are at top of the “ladder of nature”

Question 4

what is scala naturae

Answer 4

natural ladder

Question 5

example of big brain = higher intelligence

Answer 5

hippocampus and spatial memory

Question 6

what is “(En)cephalisation coefficient

Answer 6

raito of brain mass to body mass

Question 7

evidence of qualitative difference in intelligence

Answer 7

Note how the New World Monkeys, Old World Monkeys and Apes seem to follow a different regression line to other mammals, and to reptiles and amphibians.

Question 8

what did Jerison say about intelligence

Answer 8

• Jerison: Look for deviations from plot of brain mass vs. body mass. Once this is done, we start to get some interesting patterns emerging.

Question 9

behavioural test of intelligence example

Answer 9

Hebb-Williams maze (sequence of T-mazes)

Question 10

sophisticated examples of intelligence tests

Answer 10

– Successive reversal
– Learning set
– Probability learning

Question 11

what is the Serial Reversal Learning: Mackintosh (1974)

Answer 11

Blue and yellow button, press blue to get food. Once the accurqacy reaches 90%, the correct button reverses and the yellow one needs to be pressed

The result? On later reversals the animal makes less errors in acquiring the discrimination.

Question 12

Madingley sheep example of Serial Reversal Learning:

Answer 12

A spatial version of the task (with maddingly sheep). They can choose to walk either left (food) or right (nothing). They do this task until it gets it 90% right, then switch the right path. After a while, if they get an answer wrong, they instantly go down the other path. This task seems to suit them.

Question 13

what are learning sets (harlow) 194

Answer 13

Given two stimuli, need to locate right one. Wait til they get 90% accuracy. Then it changes to another stimuli

The result? On later problems the animal makes less errors in acquiring the discrimination. In extreme cases it makes only 1 error! Can we use the rate of acquisition of this problem as an index of intelligence?

Question 14

learning set across species

Answer 14

rhesus at the top. squirrel and rat near bottom.

Question 15

what is the problem of contextual vairabels leading to

Answer 15

why we underestimate the learning for animals such as the rat

Question 16

what is Macphails null hypothesis

Answer 16

• Macphail (e.g. 1982, 2000): there are no cognitive differences between non-human animals. A more refined version: There are no differences amongst non-human vertebrates.
• The only important difference is the emergence of human language. Language training may confer special abilities.
• If we find more sophisticated cognition in e.g. apes than other species, that may be because we can understand better how to test cognition in species that are like us. => “Contextual variables” could be responsible for the observed differences in performance rather than genuine differences in intelligence

Question 17

the role of contextual vairables with goldfish

Answer 17

In the first condition, the goldfish didn’t learn. The second condition makes the reward appear within a certain tiem frame. By doing this, the goldfish learns the task.

Question 18

what did Herman and Arbeit (1973) find abotu dolphins

Answer 18

• Herman and Arbeit (1973) found that dolphins had difficulty forming learning sets with visual stimuli but could with auditory stimuli.

Question 19

what did Herman and Arbeit (1973) conclude

Answer 19

• Thus how well an animal forms a learning set may well depend on the type of stimuli used to test them.
• The only valid test would be to compare animals with similar sensory and effector capabilities (we’ll look at this approach later).

Question 20

how to end the problem of contextual variabels

Answer 20

• The only valid test would be to compare animals with similar sensory and effector capabilities (we’ll look at this approach later).

Question 21

evidence in support of Macphail

Answer 21

• Simple forms of learning (e.g. classical and operant conditioning) take place in much the same way and at much the same rate in all vertebrate species and at least some invertebrates
• Surprisingly sophisticated forms of learning turn up in invertebrates, e.g. molluscs, arthropods.

Question 22

what did Colwill, Absher and Roberts (1988)study

Answer 22

Colwill, Absher and Roberts (1988)
• Conditional discrimination in Aplysia
• Found that Aplysia could learn to provide differential responses to the same stimulus in different contexts.
• Context 1 was a smooth white round bowl with lemony seawater
• Context 2 was a dark grey rectangular container with ridges and turbulence (an aerator).

Conditioning discrimination is shown

Question 23

who shows conditoning discirminaiton

Answer 23

colwill, abshar and roberts 1988

Question 24

Learning in honeybees (M. Giurfa & colleagues) stidy

Answer 24

• Classical and instrumental conditioning
• Contextual learning: C1: A+, B-; C2: A-, B+
• Categorization:
– bilaterally symmetrical vs.
asymmetrical,
– different types of abstract patterns,
– same vs. different (matching and non-matching to
sample)
– negative patterning: A+, B+, AB-…w/ olfactory
stimuli

Question 25

what is bittermans suggestion to the comparabiloty problem

Answer 25

Bitterman’s suggestion: Control by systematic variation of the confounding factors
• Problem: How can we ever explore all variations?
• Another solution is to use comparable species, e.g. pigeons and corvids

Question 26

what did Wilson, Mackintosh and Boakes (1985) do

Answer 26

• This experiment by Wilson, Mackintosh and Boakes (1985) suggests that jackdaws show better transfer to a novel matching problem after training on matching with different stimuli. Note that in this case the jackdaws actually learn more slowly - but show more transfer.
• There is also some evidence that corvids (crows, rooks, ravens, magpies and jays) perform better at learning sets than pigeons (Mackintosh, 1988).

These graphs show performance of individual birds. On the left is pigeons, right is jackdaws. In jackdaws, the solid lines are pretrained on matching samples are better than those pretained on elsewise.
For the pigeons, there are no evidence on transferring. The worst pigeon was pretrained. The jackdaws show transfer but learn the task way slower than the pigeons.

Question 27

alternative method of solving transfer probelm

Answer 27

Either, having studied the sample (top middle) which comes on first, 1. pick the bottom left comparison stimulus because it feels more recent (or more familiar), or 2. pick bottom left because that’s the right response to this configuration of stimuli

It could be that Corvids are biased to use solution 1, whereas pigeons tend to use solution 2, but does that make the corvids more intelligent? Note that there is evidence that pigeons can, after a lot of training, use solution 1, so it might simply be that recency or familiarity information is just less salient for them.

Question 28

recency/familiarity w chimps

Answer 28

Language trained chimps could solve these tasks, but non-language trained chimps could not.
Interestingly, both sets of chimps could solve successive same/different problems, where one object is shown and then either the same or a different object is shown.
e.g. if an object (peg) is taken out, need to notice there is a difference.
When you have these tasks, all of the objects appear recent. The non-language trained chimps are stuck whereas language trained chimps can complete the task.

Question 29

what did Gillan, Premack and Woodruff 1981 find

Answer 29

Given two bits of a problem and need to identify is they are the same or different. The language monkey can pass this test. This test is used to assess IQ in humans

Question 30

conclusion on sarah the language learnt monkey

Answer 30

Here we have the conceptual analogical reasoning problem I referred to in an earlier lecture.
Sarah can get these (mostly) right as well. By using two versions with the same alternatives, the experimenters rule out an explanation based on simple preference for one response item.