Primate Cognition Flashcards
Social cognition
• individual recognition
• knowledge about relationships in group
• social learning
• deception
• cooperation
• communication
• perspective taking => desires, what can they see => see food experiment
• Theory of mind (what others believe can be wrong) => two representations at same time (how world actually is and how another individual is constructing it in its mind)
Reconciliation
Restores opponents to baseline tolerance levels
often from relative of agressor to victim
What is the false belief task
Maxi and chocolate => change storage place
Explain theory of mind
Annticipate what someone is going to do
Physical cognition
• Memory
• Pattern discrimination
• reversal learning
• inhibitory control
• tool use
• causal reasoning
• spatial orientation
• quantities and numerical discrimination
What is general intelligence? Positive manifold
If one individual is good at one task, it is likely to be good at other tasks as well
What are social benefits of a larger brain
• outwit others
• team up
What are ecological benefits of large brains?
• extraction of food
• alarm calls
How can variation in brain size be explained?
Trade off benefits and costs
What are the life history consequences of big brains?
• late AFR
• long gestation
• longer juvenile periods
• longer life-spans
=> overall lower fertility
Demographic costs of large brains
The bigger the brain, the lower the fertility
=> more difficult to maintain or grow/reestablish a certain population size
=> more prone to extinction!
What does cooperative breeding require?
High prosociality and social tolerance
=> if mothers perceive there is not enough help they will reduce investment in offspring (in marmosets even infanticide possible)
=> not in other great apes EXCEPT for humans
What is social selection on immatures?
Traits favoured that increase investment of helpers
E.g. babbling in non-human cooperatively breeding primates (costly: predators)
What is the g-factor?
General intelligence coefficient
