Learning and Cognition Flashcards
Bowden Box
- what was it used to study?
- which monkeys are most curious?
- studied curiosity as a motivational drive
- monkeys look through a window and watch stuff - no incentive needed
- little monkeys are most curious
What was special about Bandit (chimp in Coe lab?)
- loved to watch people
- knew what to do with a tool if left with one
What did Kanzi the bonobo learn how to do?
-make a campfire and roast marshmallows
George Romanes****FINISH
-didn’t believe that animals had a higher intelligence
-
Von Osten
- different view than Romanes
- thought animals were capable of higher intelligence
- worked with Clever Hans - horse that people thought could count
Clever Hans effect
- the situation may not be what they think it is
- horse couldn’t actually count - he was looking for hints
William of Ockham
-law?
- law of parsimony
- believed that situation shouldn’t be made more complicated than necessary
Edward Thorndike
- trial and error learning
- animals stumble around; if they get a reward, they keep going; if they get nothing they stop doing it
Pavlov
-Classical Conditioning
Classical conditioning
- unconditioned response
- meat = salivate; pair bell, eventually get salivation with bell
Skinner
-Operant conditioning
Operant conditioning
-direct reinforcement
-i.e. press lever, get water - keep doing it
press lever, get shocked - stop doing it
Wolfgang Kohler
- 2 examples
- his theory
- The mentality of the apes
- Gestalt psychology
- “insight learning”
- used a situation where monkeys had to stack boxes to get bananas
- set up box with chain and grape; grape on straight chain at first and then it’s crossed - monkeys have to figure out what to do
gestalt psychology
- monkeys think about it and then have an “ah ha” moment and know what to do
- different than trial and error
- solution comes to them in a different way
WI General Test Apparatus (WGTA)
- Harry Harlow
- learning in primates: object discrimination, oddity learning
object discrimination
-tell two objects apart
oddity learning
- choose stimulus which is different
- shape, color
- have to distinguish which object is right, which one is wrong
- know that no matter what objects are presented, must choose the different one
Learning set
- which types of primate can do this?
- which types can do this?
-first trial: not just choose the odd one, but tell characteristics that made something odd
-i.e. trial 1, pick different shape; trial 2, pick shaded one - color is important
-galagos can’t do this
rhesus monkeys and chimps can do this
delayed matching-to-sample
-what age of monkey is this good for?
- show 1st object, goes away
- then 2 objects - monkey needs to remember which one it saw
- -delay 10 mins - much longer
- good for older monkeys - aging brain
effect of age on retention
-what test is good to test this?
- older monkeys - less retention
- delayed matching-to-sample is a good test for short term memory and working memory
role of technology in delayed matching-to-sample
- looking at which light went off
- touch screens becoming more popular (looking at where red squares had been around blue squares)
word recognition
- recognize by letter pattern
- look at telling which world was misspelled
- using shape of letters
Tetsuro Matsuzawa
- Japanese primatologist
- got chimps to count to 9
- remembers where numbers are hidden
Addition task
- show set 1
- delay
- show set 2
- touch sum of 2 sets
Chute exercise
- have a chute that connects 2 boxes that are not directly under one another
- see if monkey will figure out where ball goes
Preparedness learning
- monkeys raised in captivity, initially don’t fear snakes
- learn to become afraid of snakes when you show them a video of other monkeys being afraid of snakes
- same video doesn’t work with flowers
Issues and challenges with traditional learning/cognition studies
- anomalies/exceptions
- training: clever hans effect
- motivation vs performance
anomalies/exceptions to learning/cognition studies
- which monkeys are bad?
- which monkeys are good?
- other animals?
- squirrel monkeys, gibbons
- capuchins are above the norm
- racoons and parrots are good
Motivation vs performance in learning/cognition studies
- nature reared monkeys vs mother reared monkeys
- city monkeys vs jungle monkeys (who studied this)
- nature reared monkeys are less intelligent and more emotional than mother reared monkeys
- city monkeys (rhesus) are more curious than jungle monkeys (Sheo Singh)
other kinds of intelligence
- typical behavior: net building, hunting, medicinal plant use
- tool use: Jane Goodall (ant dipping) and Testuro Matsuzawa (rock hammer/anvil)
- protoculture
- complex cognitive concepts: awareness of time, sense of self, sense of fairness and reciprocity, sense of death, art and music appreciation
protoculture
- knowledge not in genes
- passed via imitation
- facultative: learning from mother
Japanese macaque potato and wheat washing
- named Imo
- washed potatoes and wheat if they were covered in sand
- she washed her potatoes; other juveniles watched and learned from her
- now all monkeys in that area wash potatoes
- only adult males didn’t learn but they died
cultural transitioning of foraging behavior
- how old are they when they learn?
- what are the things they learn?
- which primate is learning this?
- what is a cultural transition?
- ant dipping and termite fishing in chimps
- age observed in male/female chimps - later in life (~3-5 yrs) so it means they learn
- same age thing occurs with using rocks
Jane Goodall’s belief about imitation vs. purposeful teaching
-believes that chimps purposefully teach things
to each other
Julie Mercader
- studied how long chimps have been using rocks
- used archaeology to figure it out
- demonstrated that in a particular African forest, rocks have been used for about 4300 yrs to open palm nuts
tests of creative tool use in captivity
-most important finding?
- jars of honey, lever device to get into room
- do in zoos
- transmission of learned behavior between groups
Japanese macaque examples of prototyping
stone handling: carrying, clacking, rubbing on surface, playing music
-going into hot springs in the winter
capuchin examples of prototyping
- use rocks to break open pine nuts
- cultural passing on
Jill Pruetz
- chimps to to entrance of caves on hot summer days
- not common behavior
Gordon Gallop
- which primates can do this?
- which ones can’t?
- mirror test to see if primates have a sense of self
- see reflection and they use it, this means they have a sense of self
- apes can do this, monkeys can’t
- monkeys ignore it/can’t tell it’s them
controversy over mirror test
-some don’t believe it works
mirror neurons
- special nerve cells that are designed to imitate
- may explain mechanisms for behavior
- sets foundation for more complicated learning
- actions–>sounds and sounds–>actions can be traced back to mirror neurons
Emil Menzel and Sally Boysen
- what did they study?
- what did they find?
- object constancy
- are objects out of sight out of mind?
- or can they remember something when it’s not there
- find object from real world on TV
- they DO show object constancy
things to look for when studying awareness of time
- memories of the past
- sense of loss
- anticipation of the future
sense of death
-chimp example
- old matriarch Flo dies in 1972
- son Flint would not leave the body to forage and died one month later
- Jane Goodall says that chimps do have a sense of loss
Theory of Mind
- what is it?
- what else does this relate to?
- sense that there are other intelligent beings in our midst
- chimps have empathy; they see the world kind of like we do
Sense of fairness/equality
- food sharing
- test this - use grape test
- take token for cucumber or grape or not, on basis of what another monkey was given
- response to unequal rewards
response to unequal rewards
-who studied this?
- Frans de Waal
- when monkey sees that they are getting unequal reward, they stop playing
- shows that they know there’s another being and that there’s a sense of fairness
Deception and not sharing
- Michael Tomasello
- one chimp finds food, may purposely decieve others by eating first and not making food call when supply is low
Basic math in monkeys and college students -rdg
-nonverbal arithmetic is not unique to humans but instead part of an evolutionary primitive system for mathematical thinking shared by monkeys
Rhesus monkeys do recognize themselves in the mirror-rdg
- indication of self awareness
- most monkeys are not self aware
- but rhesus monkeys observed head implant and genitals in mirror
- support for evolution of self-recognition
