Visual Perspective Taking and Metacognition

Question 1

What is visual perspective taking supposed to show?

Answer 1

Theory of mind - being able to put yourself in anthers shows and understand what they see

Question 2

Give 2 studies looking at visual perspective taking in chimps

Answer 2

Tomasello 1999
- only small proportion of chimps looked around barrier towards stimulus, but of these few the majority of them only did so when the experimenter did too.
Povinelli 1990 - bucket head blinded guesser and knower paradigm - didn’t perform well to being with indicating some learning occurred

Question 3

Give a study looking at visual perspective taking in dogs

Answer 3

Miklosi 1998 - gesticulating/looking at bowls

perform better than monkeys probably due to prior experience of gesticulating

Question 4

What is deemed to be a more ecologically valid approach to studying visual perspective taking?

Answer 4

Tomasello 2003 - Sub/dom looking at food hidden behind barrier

• sub can see food being placed, dom cannot
• only goes for food when thinks dom hasn’t seen it ie. behind barrier
• other interpretations and corresponding controls
• > barrier = safety, perspex used, sub avoids food when barrier is see-through even though still protective. Only one monkey used, no preference for eating next to barrier in its own right.
• > “evil eye” - Dom intimidates sub by looking at food. Doms door kept shut while sub choses food.

Question 5

According to Povinelli and Vonk, 2003, how is behaviour predicted?

Answer 5

Contingencies and situational clues

• may not necessarily require understanding of mental states of others, despite using very complex ways of prediction
  eg. Don’t go after the food if the dominant has orientating to it [because he has seen it and knows where it is]
  eg. he was present and facing the food when it was placed [so he saw it being placed and knows where it is] therefore he is likely to go after it

Question 6

Does the presence of higher cognitive abilities influences likelihood of consciousness and ability to suffer?

Answer 6

Who knows?!

Question 7

What are the two types of memory?

Answer 7

Implicit - behaviour changed but subconsciously, subjects cannot verbally report on contents
Explicit - can verbally report on contents

Question 8

Who investigated “do animals know what they remember?”

ie. metacognition

Answer 8

Hampton 2001 - within study either forced to continue with memory trial or given the option to opt out and not receive such a good food reward

• performed better when choosing to do the task than if forced
• will choose to decline more often if time period between stimuli is increased (indicating more likely have forgotten and know they have forgotten?)
• > may still be subconscious just two levels

Question 9

How may cognitive complexity impact “feelings consciousness” based decisions if not directly linked?

Answer 9

• May increase range of situations where animals are able to anticipate +/- events -> anxiety, expectancy
• Increase range and complexity of situations leading to socially induced stress eg. witnessing others suffering
• May increase COPING mechanisms - predicting behaviour of others, avoiding situations, learning that a procedure is only short lived i.e. could decrease stress

Question 10

Define metacognition

Answer 10

Cognition about cognition - thinking about thinking - knowing what we know!