Reasoning Flashcards
define reasoning
reason is a process of thinking during which the individual os aware of a problem, identifies, evaluates and decides on an answer
Reasoning by analogy, Gillan, Premack, Woodruff (1981)
A relationship between two objects can imply the same relationship between other objects
- working with Sarah the chimpanzee
- forced choice task: Sarah shown different shape, some bigger, some smaller/change in colour
- Sarah has to choose what shape she would add in to make the right side equal to the left
- Sarah was getting 45/50 on forced choice tasks
- Sarah also did another type of trail to choose what sign fits with the pictures e.g. equal sign
- was getting 26/36 on these trials
- researchers concluded that Sarah didn’t need to know the relationship/meaning between the objects to get the answer
- also tested on household objects which requires memory and Sarah scored 15/18 correct
Crows: match-to-sample, Smirnova et al., (2015)
- Crows shown 3 cards
- had to choose a card from the side to match a card from the middle
- e.g. if shown 2 circles they would pick the card that had 2 of the same shape over the one with 2 different shapes
- Results: 77.78% correct in relational matching
- Results: 72.69% correct in identity matching
criticisms of the crows: match-to-sample
- crows could be smelling or hearing the mealworms which inform their choice instead of the symbol
- also could respond how they wanted so could be using a different system than expected
Parrots: Match-to-sample, Obozova et al (2015)
Relational matching: 80.56%
Identity matching: 74.54%
Can we look at animals ability to look at differences and similarities at the same time?, pepperberg (2021)
- Objects can have multiple features: colour, material (matter), shape
- Alex the parrot could vocalize features of objects, when asked “what’s same?” or “what’s different?” about two objects, he could respond (80% accuracy [chance 33%]). On novel objects he was correct 85% of the time on the first trial.
- To check he was responding to the question and not just vocalizing the singular feature that was different, in other tests he was asked questions where there were two possible answers (~90% accuracy [chance = 66%])
Are monkeys logical?, McGonigle & Chalmers (1977)
Squirrels will always choose container A as they have always been rewarded peanuts when choosing this
- they never choose E as they have never been rewarded from it
- shows reinforcement history matters
- This could transfer B and D, leading to B>D as B is assoicated woth A and D is associated with E
- Further evidence from Zentall and Sherburne (1994) used pigeons: A reinforced 100% of the time and C os rewarded 50% of the time
- found there was some value transfer to B and D and B>D
Social dominance, Paz-y-Miño et al. (2004)
- study look at Pinyon Jays (birds)
- Social groups of birds and worked out their social rank by looking at contest over peanuts
- Letter group (A>B), number group (1>2) based on dominance, A and 1 were more dominant
- Experimental condition: observes member of own group losing
- Experimental group: show more submissive behaviour than control group
- Control condition: observes member of other group losing
Test observer (3) against member of other group