Reasoning

Question 1

Reasoning by analogy

Answer 1

A relationship between two objects can imply the same relationship between other objects

Gillan, Premack, Woodruff (1981)
Forced choice:
Sarah chose correctly on 45/60 trials
Same/different: 26/36
Perceptual

Question 2

Reasoning by analogy

Answer 2

Gillan, Premack, Woodruff (1981)

Household objects – requires memory
15/18 correct

Question 3

Reasoning by analogy
Smirnova, Zorina, Obozova, Wasserman (2015)
Crows

Answer 3

Results

77. 78% correct relational matching
78. 69% identity matching

Question 4

Reasoning by analogy
Obozova, Smirnova, Zorina, Wasserman (2015)
Amazons

Answer 4

Relational matching: 80.56%
Identity matching: 74.54%

“We suspect that all of these reported successes are due to the animals’ extensive previous training on a variety of IMTS tasks… As Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in Thus Spoke Zarathustra: ‘‘He who wisheth one day to fly, must first learn standing and walking and running and climbing and dancing—one doth not fly into flying!’’

Question 5

Transitive inference

If…

Answer 5

Alan is taller than John
John is taller than Sarah

Who is the tallest? Alan, John or Sarah?

Question 6

“Are monkeys logical?”

McGonigle & Chalmers (1977)

Answer 6

Squirrel monkeys
Pigeons: von Fersen et al. (1991)
Rats: Davis (1992)

Question 7

Value transfer

Answer 7

Reinforcement history matters

E has high value (always rewarded)

A has low value (never rewarded)

This could transfer to B and D leading to
D > B

Question 8

Evidence

Answer 8

Zentall and Sherburne (1994)

A = high value  ---- some transfer to A
C = middle value ---- some transfer to D
B&D = low value

B > D

Question 9

Why?

Social ranking? Paz-y-Mino et al. (2004) Pinyon jays

Answer 9

Social groups of birds: Letter group (A > B), Number group (1 > 2).
Experimental group: observes member of own group losing
Control group: observes member of other group losing

Test observer (3) against member of other group
Experimental group: show more submissive behaviour than control group

Question 10

Blaisdell, Sawa, Leising, Waldmann (2006)

Causal reasoning in rats
Clayton & Dickinson (2006)

Answer 10

• Common cause intervene < Common cause observe

* Chain intervene = Chain observe

Question 11

However

Others have argued for alternative explanations:

Answer 11

Dwyer, Starns, and Honey (2009)
Replicated Blaisdell et al. (2006) using a within-subjects design

Response competition: Lever press vs nose poke

Burgess, Dwyer, and Honey (2012)
Influence of alternative causes

No support for the idea that rats create causal models

Question 12

Some things to think about…

Language?

Answer 12

People with a language impairment are impaired on reasoning tasks (e.g., Baldo, Paulraj, Curran, Dronkers, 2015)

Failures of reasoning?

System 2?