comparing intelligence Flashcards
what is Anthropomorphism
• Anthropomorphism: we assume that animal cognition is like human cognition (but not as good)
what is Anthropocentrism
• Anthropocentrism: we interpret “advanced” as meaning “more like us”
what is Social/political baggage
• Social/political baggage: we place the kind of human we are at top of the “ladder of nature”
what is scala naturae
natural ladder
example of big brain = higher intelligence
hippocampus and spatial memory
what is “(En)cephalisation coefficient
raito of brain mass to body mass
evidence of qualitative difference in intelligence
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.
what did Jerison say about intelligence
• Jerison: Look for deviations from plot of brain mass vs. body mass. Once this is done, we start to get some interesting patterns emerging.
behavioural test of intelligence example
Hebb-Williams maze (sequence of T-mazes)
sophisticated examples of intelligence tests
– Successive reversal
– Learning set
– Probability learning
what is the Serial Reversal Learning: Mackintosh (1974)
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.
Madingley sheep example of Serial Reversal Learning:
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.
what are learning sets (harlow) 194
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?
learning set across species
rhesus at the top. squirrel and rat near bottom.
what is the problem of contextual vairabels leading to
why we underestimate the learning for animals such as the rat
what is Macphails null hypothesis
- 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
the role of contextual vairables with goldfish
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.
what did Herman and Arbeit (1973) find abotu dolphins
• Herman and Arbeit (1973) found that dolphins had difficulty forming learning sets with visual stimuli but could with auditory stimuli.
what did Herman and Arbeit (1973) conclude
- 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).
how to end the problem of contextual variabels
• The only valid test would be to compare animals with similar sensory and effector capabilities (we’ll look at this approach later).
evidence in support of Macphail
- 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.
what did Colwill, Absher and Roberts (1988)study
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
who shows conditoning discirminaiton
colwill, abshar and roberts 1988
Learning in honeybees (M. Giurfa & colleagues) stidy
• 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
