Numbers Flashcards
Which term is used to describe:
Compare different species in doing certain things
This leads us to assume if animals can do things the same/ differently to what us humans do.
Comparative Psychology
What are the 4 abilities that are involved in numerical competence?
1) Relative numerosity discrimination many v few, more v less
2) Absolute number discrimination 4 v 5
3) Ability to count 1 2 3 4
4) Ability to do arithmetic calculations 1 + 2 =
4 v 5 is known as?
Absolute number discrimination
1 + 2 = 3 is known as?
Ability to do arithmetic calculations
1 2 3 4 is known as?
Ability to count
many v few, more v less is known as?
Relative numerosity discrimination
The ability to discriminate between sets of items on the basis of the relative number of items that they contain is known as?
Relative numerosity discrimination many v few, more v less
Study:
trained pigeons to discriminate between “few” (1/2 items) and “many” (6/7 items). But birds may be ignoring number, and instead using some other feature of the display such as:
LIGHT=few
DARK=many
Then did the same experiments but with opposite key displays:
various light keys with dark display
Found that birds still responded to the correct amount of keys=
evidence that birds have relative numerosity discrimination
Which animal has shown to can tell the difference between many and a few amount/ numbers of stimuli?
(Relative numerosity discrimination)
Pigeons
The ability in understanding that despite differing appearances, 4 bananas and 4 elephants have something in common is known as?
Absolute number discrimination
i.e. number is not intrinsically related to what you are counting
it’s an abstract thing unrelated to physical characteristics
Study:
Bird examples:
Jakob the raven could choose a pot with five spots from an array, even when size of spots varied 50-fold
He could tell 5 apart from all other numbers
Primate examples: Chimp called Ai had to select one of six response keys (labelled 1-6) when shown arrays of red pencils, with 1-6 pencils per array. Achieved > 90% accuracy.
But this is not the same as counting!
Animals could be learning about specific perceptual pattern perceptual matching
Perceptual matching (animals could be learning about specific perceptual pattern) can be mixed up and perceived as…
Absolute number discrimination
This number 4 is different from that number 5
e.g. four objects have more in common with each other
than arrays of e.g. 2 or 7
Pepperberg, 1994
same array – bird must count different components
bird responds with speaking the number when asked how many green blocks
This example is testing for?
Absolute number discrimination
What is the perceptual matching problem?
Often confused with Absolute number discrimination (4 v 5)
Often number is confounded with other factors such as:
Time (for items presented serially) and
Space (for items presented simultaneously)
Animals use other cues such as
Duration of how much display is taken up
e.g. smaller number of items also takes up less space. =<1
May be the the size of the display controls the response, not number.
The size of the difference between each item is the same
eg. 4-3 = 3-2 is known as which type of scale?
Interval scale
Good numerical competence involves what other knowledge besides counting?
Order (ordinal scale)
-how these labels are ordered in relation to quantity
Interval (interval scale)
-the size of the difference between each item is the same
Testing for counting:
Meck and Church (1983): serially presented items.
Rats trained with two signals – 2 or 8 pulses of white noise.
after 2 were rewarded for left lever response
after 8 rewarded for right lever response
Each pulse 0.5 sec –’2 pulse’ lasted for 2 seconds,
‘8 pulse’ for eight seconds.
But unsure of whether animals responded on the basis of the total time, rather than the number of pulses.
What was done in response to this problem?
To investigate this, they devised a test in which both stimuli lasted
4 seconds: so that the overall stimulus was exactly the same duration
If rats were responding on the basis of stimulus duration,
this task should be impossible but they responded correctly showing evidence against perceptual matching.
you can also can make animals respond a fixed number of times – no array involved.
Representation of number in the chimpanzees:
Chimps were trained to order arrays of 1-4 items in ascending, descending, or random/ arbitrary order
order.
What were the findings on their abilities to complete each other?
They could learn ascending and descending orders,
but, NOT the arbitrary (random) order 1-3-2-4
Maths in chimps:
A chimp called Sheba was trained to label arrays with counters and then with Arabic numerals. She also performed well when items were swapped for everyday objects.
She was given extensive training with numbers 0-4
In the final test a number of oranges were hidden in the lab, in any
of three hiding places. Sheba had to find all the oranges, and
then pick the arabic numeral that represented the sum of all the
oranges that were hidden. After 12 training sessions (of around
20 trials per session) she was performing at about 85% correct.
She could also perform accurately when the experimenters hid
cards with numbers written on them, rather than oranges, performing above chance right away.’
This implies chimps can have an understanding of which scale?
implies an understanding of the interval scale
– if she understood only bigger than she would have chosen 4 as often as 3
