Lecture 8 Flashcards
Animal Cognition and Learning
What is the definition of cognition?
1pt
The mechanism by which animals acquire, process, store and act on information from the environment
What do common husbandry practices require?
3pt
Common husbandry practices require considerable physiological and behavioural adaptation by the animal:
* Failure to adjust to environmental conditions represent a welfare problem
* Cognitive research has the potential to highlight mismatches between current husbandry practices and adaptive abilities of livestock
What do parasites do to sheep visual attention?
1pt
Parasitic infestation/Immune status appears to have a detrimental effect on visual attention, learning and memory
What are the cognitive domains?explain them.
2pt
Physical cognition: An organism’s understanding of objects and their various spatial and causal relationships.
Social cognition: Discrimination and recall of conspecifics, either at the individual or group level.
What are the implications of cognitive domains?
1pt
Perceived predictability of the environment (food acquisition, handling, enrichment, group number and cohesion,…), and potential novel stressors.
what are the cognitive traits of physical cognition? explain them.
5pt
Categorization - Ability to group items based on common features.
Numerical ability - Discrimination and judgment of distinct quantities
Object permanence - Notion that objects continue to exist when they move out of the visual field
Reasoning/Inferences - Establishment of an association between a visible and an imagined event
Tool use - Manipulation of objects to reach a goal - IMPLICATIONS: Complexity of cognitive enrichment
What is learning?
1pt
Learning is the change in behaviour resulted from information from outside the brain
What did Ivan Pavlov do?
2pt
Classical conditioning
* A form of associative learning, where a stimulus (unconditioned stimulus) that normally produces an involuntary response is paired with an arbitrary stimulus (conditioned stimulus) until the later alone elicits the same response.
What is the predisposition to learn?
2pt
- Out of an array of detectable cues, animals are much more likely to learn to associate some of them with an action or another cue
- Following the same training methodology and timing, NOT all stimuli can be equally well associated with a given reinforcer
What is operant conditioning?
3pt
- Another form of associative learning, where the individual changes the form, intensity or frequency of a behaviour based on the consequences this produce
- Is the foundation of training, with either rewards or punishments immediately following the behaviour to acquire or to extinct
- Includes superstitious learning
What are learning variations and explain them?
3pt
- NON-ASSOCIATIVE LEARNING (ONE-EVENT LEARNING) - The behaviour toward a specific stimulus changes in the absence of consequences or other stimuli (rewards or punishments) that would induce such change
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Habituation (extinction) - The waning of a response to a repeated stimulus.
Sensitization - the repeated presentation of a stimulus lowers the threshold for the elicitation of a response
What is motivation?
1pt
The strength of the tendency to perform a given behaviour, taking into account internal and external factors.
What are motivational control systems?
2pt
Feedback control: A displacement from an initial state within the tolerable range occurs, this change is monitored and some corrective action is taken that restores the state to the former condition
Feedforward control: A change in state is predicted and corrective action taken before it can occur so that the state changes little from its former condition
* Previous unpleasant experiences often result in expectation
How do you measure motivation?
2pt
- The amount of ‘work’ the animals are willing to do to access a resource/reward can be measured as a proxy for motivation
- Would cows work more to access feed after 1.5 h of fasting, or to access pasture after eating?
What is motivation like in dairy cows?
3pt
- Dairy cows are as motivated to access pasture as they are to eat fresh feed
- Motivation to access pasture was not driven by hunger, but rather motivation to be outside.
- Further research could investigate the nature of this motivation (e.g. providing grazing opportunities vs. outdoor access only)
