Exam 1 Flashcards
What is the goal of animal cognition research?
compare the abilities of different species and determine whether they are similar or different (complexity of animal behavior)
Quantitative vs Qualitative
quantitative: countable or measurable (ex: number based)
qualitative: interpretation based, descriptive (ex: language based)
How do we define things like intelligence and cognition?
we can’t really
many different definitions and it varies between species and individuals -> any mental process
Issues with anthropocentrism in animal cognition
biased view of animal cog: human abilities are used as the standard for measuring animal intelligence
Darwins ideas on mental evolution
- mental processes, emotions, and psychology were subject to evolution
- difference between humans and animals minds are relative
Morgan’s Canon
- explaining animal’s behavior in the most basic form
- objective approach
Romanes
- coined term mental evolution
- ladder of intelligence
Clever Hans
- responded to subtle questions from trainer for correct answer
- highlights importance of considering experimenter bias in animal cog studies
umwelt
unique perceptual world experienced by an organism based on its sensory capabilities and ecological niche
What are the common features of all senses?
fundamental principles:
- stimulus detection
- transduction
- transmission
- perception
- adaptation
- modality-specific processing
- and feedback control
what is a go/no-go task?
behavioral paradigm used to assess an animals ability to detect and respond to a specific stimulus
- animal trained to perform a task in response to a “go” stimulus while withholding the response to a “no-go” stimulus
How can go/no-go tasks assess and discover the limits of what species can sense?
by varying the difficulty -> can determine limits of an animals sensory perception
How can single cell recording determine what animals sense?
observing neural responses of specific sensory neurons to different stimuli
What does vision detect?
- The perception of electromagnetic radiation (Travels in waves)
- Photoreceptors in our eyes detect wavelengths
Where does color vision come from?
cones in our eyes receive light and detect color
True color
- Species-specific photopigments determine what is perceived as true color
- The anatomy of the eye can create many different perceptions of color
ex: dogs only have 2 types of cones while humans have 3 and peacock shrimp have 12
What determines difference in vison?
complex interplay of anatomical, physiological, and ecological factors, resulting in a diversity of visual adaptations optimized for specific ecological niches and survival strategies
Depth perception
Animals perceive depth in two ways:
- Binocular vision
- Monocular vision
seeing one object from both fields gives 3D information
How are edges perceived?
differential activation of photoreceptor cells in response to contrasting light and dark regions, allowing animals to detect boundaries and shapes in their environment
Pheromones
- chemical signals released by animals to communicate with others of the same species
- Mammals can respond to pheromones through changes in behavior or physiological processes
How do animals locate the source of a particular sound?
ears will pick up a specific sound at slightly different times with each ear and the brain makes automatic calculations using the difference in time to calculate the location of the sound
What do weakly electric fish use their sense of electricity for?
detect muscle activation and heart rate -> know when they are nearby and or predators
What might lead to differences in taste perception?
- diff species need to taste/eat diff things
ex: sweetness tells us there are a lot of carbohydrates in the food. Some animals don’t usually eat carbs like cats so their perception of carbs is shallow compared to other animals
Concepts
our general idea or understanding of an object
How do animals categorize objects using concepts?
use physical features/functions of stimuli to group them based on concepts
- require info that is available to our senses
how are concepts adaptive?
- allow us to transfer what we have learned previously to new objects
- learned
How is the go/no-go task used to teach concepts? Why is this flawed?
Given a specific stimulus and when they do the matching reaction they get rewarded
flaw: just reacting to stim not conceptualizing why or what’s going on
How did Bhatt teach pigeons to categorize pictures?
- started with an initial discrimination training phase
- once they understood this they were presented with similar images to test if they could generalize the pictures
How does pavlovian/classical and operant conditioning allow animals to understand cause and effect?
learn the relationship between events as they are trained that one event precedes another
What are the procedures used to train and test the development of relational concepts?
1) Match to sample
2) same/different tasks
transfer test rules
1) use novel stimuli
2) perform equivalent to baseline
3) must be 1st experience with
generally, what species can form pavlovian associations?
mammals, birds, some fish, and inverts
3 term contingency
antecedent, behavior, and consequence
classical conditioning experiment example
pavlov’s dogs
operant conditioning experiment example
thorndike’s puzzle box
What do animals learn about their environment from classical conditioning?
one event signals/proceeds another (sequence matters)
what do animals learn about their environment from operant conditioning?
their behavior causes events in the environment
How are operant and classical conditioning affected by biological predispositions?
natural predispositions constrain their capacity for conditioning
tool use
intentional manipulation of objects to achieve a specific goal or solve a problem
reasoning
Adapting behavior or thoughts to achieve something
folk physics
the untrained perception of basic physical phenomena
How to test animals for object permanence?
displacement tests:
- visible
- invisible
what are trap tests designed to assess?
insight
How are new Caledonian crows and chimps special in their tool use?
demonstrate flexible tool use:
- fashioning tools
- selecting tools
transitive inference
extracting relational rules that have not been explicitly defined
liner ordering
learn a linear sequence
difference between monkeys and pigeons when learning linear ordering
pigeons took a very long time while monkeys learned a lot faster
theory:
- monkeys could represent mentally the entire sequence and think about which to press next using this representation
- pigeons may have been using associative rules
how are dolphins trained to demonstrate creativity?
trained via positive reinforcement to perform a new behavior they had not done that session on command
How might the behavior of Kohler’s chimpanzees and Epstein’s pigeons be related to insight?
- suggests that animals can exhibit insightful behavior when faced with novel problems or challenges
- animals demonstrated the ability to understand the problem and devise creative solutions to achieve their goals
What does the Epstein pigeon study tell us about potentially insightful behavior?
clearly understanding an animal’s prior history tells us how animals might solve problems or behave in ways that seem insightful
