Intro 1-Animal Learning/Cognition Flashcards
Why study animal cognition?
Comparative psychology (across different species). Can be used to answer questions not possible or easy to do with humans but can generalise results to humans. Can manipulate events in environment not possible for humans. Animals don’t know it is an experiment (no demand characteristics/social desirability). Animals lack symbolic systems of representations. Possible to use manipulations that allow assessment of neural basis of learning and memory
Who was Romanes?
Wrote Animal Intelligence. Linear idea of evolution and a hierarchy of intelligence
Who was Lloyd Morgan?
Against anthropomorphism. Argued against animals having the same motivations etc as humans. Disagreed with Romanes’ book and even wrote to Nature Journal about its problems (scorpions/suicide). Said that we should not explain things by a higher explanation if it could be interpreted lower on the psychological scale, eg a dog opening a gate due to trial and error rather than insight
Who was Thorndike?
Study with puzzle boxes. Trial by learning curve compared to hypothetical learning curve
What is Thorndike’s law of effect?
If a response leads to a satisfying outcome then it will be strengthened. Animals have no expectationof outcome when interacting with a stimulus
Who was Watson?
He advocated for the importance of learning, behaviourism (moving from subjectivity to objectivity to help psychology become a science like the natural science), and the use of animals
What is Skinner most famous for?
Instrumental, or operant, conditioning
Do animals only learn about a response?
Stage 1 lever press, food and chain pull, sucrose. Stage 2 food, illness and sucrose, nothing. Test-lever and chain (Colwill and Rescorla)
What are different schedules of reinforcement?
Fixed ratio, fixed interval, variable ratio, variable interval
What is Pavolvian, or classical, conditioning?
Type1/respondent conditioning, involving a CS, US, UR and CR
What are key features of classical conditioning?
Acquisition, extinction, spontaneous recovery, stimulus generalisation, generalisation gradient and generalisation decrement
What was Banks and Flora’s study?
Asked participants to rank animals from 1-10 based on their intelligence. Justifications for rankings included appearance, Aristotle’s Great Chain of Being, and brain size
How did Romanes rank animals?
Insects-bird-apes-humans. Too simplistic eg humans have not evolved further than birds. Difficult to use evolution as an explanation for intelligence differences between animals
How can brain size potentially explain intelligence differences across species?
Difficult explanation as humans are bigger so need bigger brains. Jerison used cephalisation index (brain weight÷body weight). Correlation between brain and body weight-anything below the line on the graph has a relatively small brain for its size and vice versa
What did Anaxagoras say?
Universe and everything in it is made up of a mix of substances. All animals therefore are equally intelligent, but their ability to demonstrate this differs
What did MacPhail say, similar to Anaxagoras?
All animals are equally intelligent and have equal abilities but other factors affect how they demonstrate this eg motivation and perception, which would have to be controlled to show intelligence differences. Appearance, evolution, brain size etc are just correlations that do not measure intelligence
What is the definition of learning that is hard to apply to animals?
Acquisition of knowledge
What is a definition of learning that can apply to animals?
Relatively permanent change in behaviour that results from experience
What are the problems with speed of learning as a measure of animal intelligence?
Unexpected between-species differences, difficult to equate perceptual and motivational demands in a test, within-species differences in speed of learning, and looking at the speed of learning means other things may be ignored
Why is unexpected between-species differences a problem for the speed of learning measure of animal intelligence?
Rats and humans made same amount of errors when learning a route through a maze (Skard). Bees took less times to consistently respond to stimuli for food, than fish who took less times than human infants (Angermeier)
Why is the fact that it is difficult to equate perceptual and motivational demands in a test a problem for the speed of learning measure of animal intelligence?
Food may be more motivating to a bee than a baby or fish may detect the apparatus in their environment quicker than a rat etc (Bitterman). Solution is systematic variation of motivational/perceptual demands for each species/environment though this is not practical
Why is within-species differences in speed of learning a problem for the speed of learning measure of animal intelligence?
Rats given saline either got ill then did not drink much or got a shock then still drank a lot, but this was reversed if the saline was given with lights and tones (Garcia and Koelling)
Why is the fact that looking at the speed of learning means other things may be ignored a problem for the speed of learning measure of animal intelligence?
Ignores intelligence as information processing: memory, learning, reasoning, navigation, communication
What is memory?
When current behaviour is under influence of past learning (experience). Reject the mentalistic view as cannot see memory in animals. Need to see change in behaviour as a result of experiences
What was Vander Wall’s study?
Clark’s nutcrackers ability to find hidden food that they store for winter
What was Vaughan and Greene’s study?
Capacity of pigeons. They could remember 320 pictures and what half to respond to or to ignore
What is time (periodic) in relation to memory?
Ability to respond at a specific time within the day. Circadian clock eg mice show consistent periodic timing despite controlled/stable levels of light and temperature
What is time (interval) in relation to memory?
Duration of events. Church and Deluty, different lever whether tone is played for 4 or 16 seconds. Church and Gibbon, rats could remember intervals where they had to press lever after lights were off for 4 seconds
What are examples of number memory and animals?
Hans (horse)/Van Osten/Pfungst. Meck and Church rats different lever depending on number of tones. Brannon and Terrace, rhesus monkeys touch screen dots in numerical order. Rugoni, Regotin and Vallortigara chicks selected correct feeding well in line of wells. Pepperberg and Alex the parrot (subatising)
How is categorical memory demonstrated in animals?
Heinstein, Loveland and Cable where pigeons could distinguish trees, water and specific people. Also Cerella where pigeons distinguished between silhouettes of oak and non-oak leaves almost perfectly
What are the explanations for categorisation?
Innate categories/evolved ability such as face perception (does not explain animal studies), exemplar learning (explains discrimination but not ability to unseen novel stimuli), feature learning, and exemplar learning and stimulus generalisation (different to humans categorisation which is based on concepts)
What explanations for animal short term memory are there?
Habituation, effector fatigue and receptor fatigue
What is habituation?
Reduction in responsiveness to stimulus-a result of repeated presentation. This is even found in sea slugs
What studies look at habituation?
Whitlow: test whether rabbits reduction in reaction to stimulus is due to memory (startle response). Wagner: memory because when tone played after a while the startle response came back
What is effector fatigue?
Not an explanation as startle response does occur with second tone as was different to first tone
What is receptor fatigue?
Rabbits-distraction and retroactive interference
What are the properties of short term memory
Capacity 8 items. Duration 4 hours. Content landmarks. (Olton-radial maze with rats). Retroactive interference (Beatty and Shavalia/Roberts)
What study looks at long term memory in animals?
Miller and Berk: black (shock) and white aquarium with tadpoles. Removed, and then put back in when fully grown frogs. Still avoid black area
What are consolidation theories?
Hebb: biological mechanism, neurons firing. Duncan, rats, electroconvulsive shock disrupts central nervous system, disrupting consolidation
What are retrieval theories?
Retention-rehearsal in order to retain. Failure to retrieve rather than failure to remember. Deweer, Sara and Hars, rats timed in maze, and again after 25 days but half were given a 90 second reminder in between
How can associative learning explain craving for drugs?
Anecdotal evidence where smokers often report desire to smoke in pubs/with drinks. Illegal drug users report similar effects
What lab setting study looks at drugs?
Bonson et al. Cocaine users shown film of cocaine use and drug paraphernalia. Others shown film about art. Drug use urge was 5.1/10 after drug film but 1.4 after art film
What was Hollands study?
Stage 1 tone wintergreen and sucrose or noise peppermint and sucrose. Stage 2 wintergreen and sucrose. Stage 3 tone and sucrose (don’t like) or noise and sucrose (like)
What is the influence of US on CR?
Unconditioned stimuli have specific and affective qualities. Affective qualities can be appetitive or aversive
What is stimulus substitution?
Autoshaping, preparatory response
What is autoshaping?
Pigeons saw flashing light then food or water was available. Pigeon then pecked at the flashing light even when in different location to the food/water
What are preparatory responses?
Salivation during CS that signals US (general increase in activity) and conditioned suppression (decrease in movement)
What are compensatory conditioned responses?
CR in prep for US eg Pavlovs dogs. CR as substitute for US eg autoshaping in pigeons. CR opposes action of US eg rat placed in cold box produces CR that compensates for cold
What does Siegel look at?
The role of conditioning in drug tolerance. Tolerance is the decrease in sensitivity to a drug as a result of repeated exposure. It results from compensatory mechanisms that can be biological (metabolic or synaptic changes) or psychological (homeostasis mechanisms)
What was Siegel’s study?
Injection (CS)-morphine (US)-analgesia (UR). CR opposes UR increasing likelihood animal will feel pain-homeostasis
What was Crawell, Hinson and Siegel’s study?
Hypothermic effects of alcohol on rats
What was Siegel, Hinson, Krank and McCully’s study?
Rat heroin overdose rates. Heroin in same environment=32% OD. Heroin in different environment=64% OD. No heroin=96% OD
What does the conditioning model of drug tolerance suggest?
Compensatory CRs most evident in contexts associated with drug taking. Unusual contexts make overdose more likely. Extinction of drug taking is context dependent. Relapse when back in normal context
What is contiguity?
Events that occur close together in time or space will become readily associated
What are examples of conditioning without contiguity?
Smith and Roll-taste aversion with conditioning (rats and saccharin-vary time between stimulus and illness), and Garcia and Koelling (saline and illness or shock)
What is an example of no conditioning even with contiguity?
Rescorla. Contingency is just as important as contiguity
What studies looked at surprise?
Kamin-blocking effect (light/noise/shock or big shock). Dickinson, Shanks and Evendon (Mines/tanks/missiles)
What studies look at attention?
Latent inhibition. Wagner-attention high to novel and low to familiar stimuli. Mackintosh-attention high to novel stimuli and important events but low to irrelevant stimuli. Pearce-Hal-attention high while learning a stimulus but low once learning is complete (automatic vs controlled processing)
What was Kay and Pearce’s experiment?
Group none: Light and nothing. Group continuous: light and food. Group partial: light and food or light and nothing
What are conclusions to associative learning?
Found in most if not all species. Pavlovian conditioning is a useful tool for studying it. Contiguity/surprise/attention
What was Thorndike’s theory of animal learning?
Animals solve problems through trial and error
What is deductive reasoning?
Conclusion necessarily follows from the premises
What is induction?
Conclusion likely to follow on from the premises
What is navigation?
Wehner and Srinvason-dead reckoning and path integration in desert ants, who use information from the sun to work out location
What is piloting?
Piloting with a single landmark in gerbils (Cartwright and Collett)
What are cognitive maps?
Tolman, Ritchie and Kalish. Morris-rats and platform in pools
What is insight?
(Gestalt psychology) Kohler-chimps stacked boxes to reach food. Epstein et al trained pigeons to push or stand on box then test condition combined the two. Weir, Chappel and Kacelnik-new caldonian crows twisted wire to make hook to reach food, though Rutz et al says this is what they do in the ild
What is analogical reasoning?
Gillon and Premack, chimp completed task with symbols similar to problems like “A cat is to a kitten as a cow is to a…?”
What is communication?
It occurs when one organism transmits a signal to another organism that is capable of responding appropriately to that signal, though this is a broad definition
What is one of the most complex forms of animal communication?
Honey bee communication, who communicate to locate food (Von Frisch)
What are two forms of honey bee communication?
Round dance when food is within 100m of hive (causing random search), and the waggle dance when food is more than 100m away, and reveals direction and distance of food
What was Seyfarth and Cheney’s study?
Vervet monkey 3 alarm calls
What are two views on whether animals can acquire language?
Chomsky-all language conforms to rules of grammar so humans must have a ‘language acquisition device’. Macphail-no evidence in intelligence differences of species, but there is a difference in ability to use language
What is Hockett’s criteria?
Discrete units, arbitrary units, semanticity, displacement, productivity through syntax
What are examples of attempts to teach language to an ape?
Furness, Hayes and Hayes (Vicki), Gardner and Gardner (Washoe-ASL), Premack (Sarah-symbols), Savage-Rumbaugh et al (Luna/Austin/Sherman/Kanzi-Lexigrams), Terrace (Nim-ASL-habbit order rather than grammar)
