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Animal Cognition > Exam 1 > Flashcards

Exam 1 Flashcards

1
Q

What is the goal of animal cognition research?

A

compare the abilities of different species and determine whether they are similar or different (complexity of animal behavior)

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2
Q

Quantitative vs Qualitative

A

quantitative: countable or measurable (ex: number based)

qualitative: interpretation based, descriptive (ex: language based)

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3
Q

How do we define things like intelligence and cognition?

A

we can’t really

many different definitions and it varies between species and individuals -> any mental process

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4
Q

Issues with anthropocentrism in animal cognition

A

biased view of animal cog: human abilities are used as the standard for measuring animal intelligence

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5
Q

Darwins ideas on mental evolution

A
  • mental processes, emotions, and psychology were subject to evolution
  • difference between humans and animals minds are relative
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6
Q

Morgan’s Canon

A
  • explaining animal’s behavior in the most basic form
  • objective approach
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7
Q

Romanes

A
  • coined term mental evolution
  • ladder of intelligence
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8
Q

Clever Hans

A
  • responded to subtle questions from trainer for correct answer
  • highlights importance of considering experimenter bias in animal cog studies
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9
Q

umwelt

A

unique perceptual world experienced by an organism based on its sensory capabilities and ecological niche

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10
Q

What are the common features of all senses?

A

fundamental principles:
- stimulus detection
- transduction
- transmission
- perception
- adaptation
- modality-specific processing
- and feedback control

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11
Q

what is a go/no-go task?

A

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
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12
Q

How can go/no-go tasks assess and discover the limits of what species can sense?

A

by varying the difficulty -> can determine limits of an animals sensory perception

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13
Q

How can single cell recording determine what animals sense?

A

observing neural responses of specific sensory neurons to different stimuli

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14
Q

What does vision detect?

A
  • The perception of electromagnetic radiation (Travels in waves)
  • Photoreceptors in our eyes detect wavelengths
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15
Q

Where does color vision come from?

A

cones in our eyes receive light and detect color

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16
Q

True color

A
  • 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

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17
Q

What determines difference in vison?

A

complex interplay of anatomical, physiological, and ecological factors, resulting in a diversity of visual adaptations optimized for specific ecological niches and survival strategies

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18
Q

Depth perception

A

Animals perceive depth in two ways:
- Binocular vision
- Monocular vision

seeing one object from both fields gives 3D information

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19
Q

How are edges perceived?

A

differential activation of photoreceptor cells in response to contrasting light and dark regions, allowing animals to detect boundaries and shapes in their environment

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20
Q

Pheromones

A
  • 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
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21
Q

How do animals locate the source of a particular sound?

A

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

22
Q

What do weakly electric fish use their sense of electricity for?

A

detect muscle activation and heart rate -> know when they are nearby and or predators

23
Q

What might lead to differences in taste perception?

A
  • 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

24
Q

Concepts

A

our general idea or understanding of an object

25
Q

How do animals categorize objects using concepts?

A

use physical features/functions of stimuli to group them based on concepts
- require info that is available to our senses

26
Q

how are concepts adaptive?

A
  • allow us to transfer what we have learned previously to new objects
  • learned
27
Q

How is the go/no-go task used to teach concepts? Why is this flawed?

A

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

28
Q

How did Bhatt teach pigeons to categorize pictures?

A
  • 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
29
Q

How does pavlovian/classical and operant conditioning allow animals to understand cause and effect?

A

learn the relationship between events as they are trained that one event precedes another

30
Q

What are the procedures used to train and test the development of relational concepts?

A

1) Match to sample
2) same/different tasks

31
Q

transfer test rules

A

1) use novel stimuli
2) perform equivalent to baseline
3) must be 1st experience with

32
Q

generally, what species can form pavlovian associations?

A

mammals, birds, some fish, and inverts

33
Q

3 term contingency

A

antecedent, behavior, and consequence

34
Q

classical conditioning experiment example

A

pavlov’s dogs

35
Q

operant conditioning experiment example

A

thorndike’s puzzle box

36
Q

What do animals learn about their environment from classical conditioning?

A

one event signals/proceeds another (sequence matters)

37
Q

what do animals learn about their environment from operant conditioning?

A

their behavior causes events in the environment

38
Q

How are operant and classical conditioning affected by biological predispositions?

A

natural predispositions constrain their capacity for conditioning

39
Q

tool use

A

intentional manipulation of objects to achieve a specific goal or solve a problem

40
Q

reasoning

A

Adapting behavior or thoughts to achieve something

41
Q

folk physics

A

the untrained perception of basic physical phenomena

42
Q

How to test animals for object permanence?

A

displacement tests:
- visible
- invisible

43
Q

what are trap tests designed to assess?

A

insight

44
Q

How are new Caledonian crows and chimps special in their tool use?

A

demonstrate flexible tool use:
- fashioning tools
- selecting tools

45
Q

transitive inference

A

extracting relational rules that have not been explicitly defined

46
Q

liner ordering

A

learn a linear sequence

47
Q

difference between monkeys and pigeons when learning linear ordering

A

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

48
Q

how are dolphins trained to demonstrate creativity?

A

trained via positive reinforcement to perform a new behavior they had not done that session on command

49
Q

How might the behavior of Kohler’s chimpanzees and Epstein’s pigeons be related to insight?

A
  • 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
50
Q

What does the Epstein pigeon study tell us about potentially insightful behavior?

A

clearly understanding an animal’s prior history tells us how animals might solve problems or behave in ways that seem insightful

Animal Cognition (3 decks)

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