Numbers Flashcards
What is Relative number judgment?
It’s the awareness that ten is great than 5 (10>5)
More Vs. Less
What is Recognition of “amount”?
20 ants > 2 elephants, despite being much smaller in terms of amount
What is Absolute number judgment?
What do three cars have in common with three people or three seeds? They’re all in the same number group.
What is counting?
When organism is using number names (“tags”) - in a consistent order used to “tag” groups of item. Understanding the last “tag” (or group) is the number of items in a group.
Example: last “tag” is 20, then there is 20 items in that group.
Otto Koehler (1951)
- Studied the numerical abilities of several bird species. (Bird had to pick container with seeds glued to the lid)
- The first to investigate absolute number in animals
Ps could learn to pick based on more or less (Larger difference (7 vs. 4
What was a problem with Otto Koehler studies?
Are they really using number? Could they have just learned different visual patterns?
More items take up more space- 3 makes some characterictic shapes, 5 mak
Emmerton & Renner (2006) - Ps
They trained Ps in an operant chamber to respond to slides w/diff # of dots
What were the three phases of Emmerton & Renner studies?
**Phase 1: **Ps -> R+ for clicking key 1 if “many” dots appeared (6-7) or Pecking key 2 if “few” dots appeared(1-2).
**Phase 2: **Taught to discriminate between 6 & 7 and 1 & 2.
Phase 3: Ps correctly responded when asked about numbers 3, 4, & 5
Later Enmmerton’s work interpretered that?
That Ps can learn relative number as a concept.(Ex: he would make the objects on the fewer side larger to make up for the same amount of space as the smaller but more objects side.
Controlled for size of objects, shape, spacing, & brightness
Relative number concepts have been demonstrated in?
- African grey parrots
- Monkeys
- Dolphins
- Chimpanzees
- American black bears
- Lowland Gorillas
- Several Canid Species (Dogs, wolves, coyotes)
- Rats (if you use sound instead of images)
Otto Koehler - Raven
Also Studied: A raven called Jakob was trained to pick a pot with 5 spots on its lid out of 5 pots with different numbers or spots. Jakob succeeded on this task regardless of the how high the pots varied in number.
Davis (1984) - Racoons
He stuided racoons on absolute numbers:
Pick a cube that contains 3 objects from an array of cubes containing different # of objects (1-5)
R+ for Rocky was eat a grape, wash the metal balls/bowls, or get a hug
Davis & Albert (1986) - Rats
Rats learned how to respond after 3 birsts of white noise
(No Reward(NR) when they responded to 2 or 4, ITI was randomized so they couldn’t use timing)
Davis & Bradford (1991) - Rats
They would restrict their feeding to a fixed # of items
(Ex: Diff groups were assigned 3-eaters, 4-eaters, 5-eaters; if they ate too mant items -> positive punishment (Pu+), or Loud “NO” & a hand clap)
Davis (1989)
Discovered that they can also distinguish and respond to 3 touches to their whiskers
