Animal Behavior; Exam 2
Cognition; lectures 8 and 9
83 Cards in this Set
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the ability of an animal to separate itself from the moment and use information from the past and future
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cognition
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What is the significance of an animal having cognitive ability?
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it will have the ability to connect unrelated facts to solve problems
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Is it easy to test an animal for cognitive ability?
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No - it is difficult to tell if it is really solving a problem or just remembering a cause/effect or if there is a genetic instinct involved
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What 5 qualities can be used to assess the presence of cognition?
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self-awareness
mental time travel
intelligence
insight
personality
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What is self-awareness in animals?
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ability of an animal to assess its own condition and contrast that with others in its population; to compare itself with others
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What is 'mental time travel'?
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using past experiences to forecast the future
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What are indications of intelligence in animals?
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If it can learn, remember, solve problems
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What are indicators of insight in animals?
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consider information and get novel solutions; solve problems mentally
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What should be considered about 'personality' when assessing the potential for cognition in animals?
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it is the sum of behavioral tendencies that distinguish an animal from others in its population
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What are 2 ways to determine if a behavior is representative of thought?
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fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging)
gaze following
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What does 'gaze following' mean?
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If animal A is watching animal B and tracks animal B's eyes to see what it is watching
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Why is gaze following significant?
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A. in order to gaze follow, must have awareness that animal B is not the same as animal A and what it is watching might be significant
B. herd connection is related
C. in humans gaze following is associated with a superior temporal sulcus
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What might be observable in fMRI regarding gaze following?
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homologous areas of brain activity between humans and animal species or between one animal species and another
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Does cognition require language?
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no, it is related to cognition but not required
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what is language?
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the ability to assign meaning to signals, signs, gestures and to understand the meaning of those signals even if they are not always related to the particular action
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Do animals have language (like human language)?
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probably anthropomorphizing to say that animals have language.
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How can we assess if an animal has a concept of self?
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theory of mind
self-awareness/mirror tests
gaze following
self-consciousness
empathy
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What is the theory of mind?
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animals who have a concept of self can form a hypothesis about what another animal is thinking and what is happening to another animal
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How can self-awareness be assessed with mirror tests?
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put an animal in a cage with a mirror
after time change the appearance of the animal
observe how it reacts to its changed reflection
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Does a negative mirror test prove that an animal has no self awareness?
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no, mirror test results are not conclusive evidence of self awareness or cognition
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What happened with elephant mirror test?
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1st round, elephants didn't react to mirrors at al
2nd round, unbreakable mirrors introduced and 2/3 elephants recognized themselves when they had a smudge on them
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Examples of species that have gaze following and what that might indicate
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humans do - babies do even before positive mirror test
dogs do
wolves do not
may indicate strong selection for domestication (important what humans are looking at)
may be ecological tool to indicate competitive edge toward food and other necessities
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What is self-consciousness?
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awareness that there is some kind of 'normal' behavior within a population
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Does self-consciousness require a sense of self?
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yes, it requires an animal to be able to distinguish between itself and others
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What is the term for animals copying the facial expressions of another within their social group?
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facial mimicry
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Is facial mimicry an indicator for cognitive behavior?
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yes
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Is facial mimicry an indicator for empathy?
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yes
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Are the concepts and definitions regarding cognition in animals well established facts or fuzzy ideas?
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fuzzy ideas - cognition is very hard to prove without common 'language' of some kind
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What is empathy?
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the ability to understand another's experiences and responses/reactions to those experiences
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Is guilty behavior in dogs an indication of cognitive ability?
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No, when dogs act guilty they are reacting to their human's displeasure, not actually feeling the human emotion of 'guilt'
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Is there a theory or test to assess the presence of empathy in animals?
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no, but animals that showed a positive result in the mirror test have had a direct correlation to having empathy
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What is chronesthesia?
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related to mental time travel; awareness that there is a past and a future and using that information to influence current behavior
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What are 3 different types of memory?
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Semantic memory
Procedural memory
Episodic memory
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Which kind of memory utilizes an abstract mental representation of a concrete concept and is NOT considered cognitive?
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semantic memory; does not involve mental time travel and does not involve abstract images
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What is procedural memory?
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memory about how to perform a task
could be trial and error
is NOT considered cognition; does not involve time travel
straightforward
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Which kind of memory IS a basis for cognitive ability and involves memory linked to specific experience that happens in a particular place?
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Episodic memory
uses mental time travel to take information from past experiences and apply knowledge to future experiences
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What is time place learning?
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the ability to associate a reward or consequence with a specific space and time and to use that information in the present
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Which kind of memory overlaps with time place learning?
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episodic memory
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Does time place learning utilize an internal 'clock'?
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yes, along with spatial memory
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Does time place learning indicate cognition?
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it is on the edges of cognition because it has the elements of time and anticipation
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What bee activity is an example of time place learning?
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bees returning to the same flower patch each day at the same time to gather pollen
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What is caching?
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animals storing food for future use and remembering where their cache is
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Is caching a cognitive behavior?
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definitely
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What is thievery?
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finding and taking another animal's cache of stored food
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What example of cognition in jays involves thievery?
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jays that had been thieves themselves were particularly careful about where they put their cache, especially when other birds were around;
birds who had not been thieves were not so cautious
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What is cognitive mapping?
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mental representation of an animal's landscape
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How is cognitive mapping useful?
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it can give an animal a guide for mental routes from one place to another and allow them to optimize a route or alter a route if necessary
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What factors are used for cognitive mapping?
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reflection about environment
foresight about destination
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Is personality necessary to have a cognitive map?
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no
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What example of cognitive mapping involved Bonobo chimps?
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learned to use a tool to obtain a reward
allowed to choose a tool and store it in a room
returned to the room an hour later to repeat the task
about half completed the task of choosing the tool, doing the task, and returning the tool
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Is problem solving ability associated with cognition?
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yes
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Why is counting a skill useful to animals?
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to keep track of young
to manage stores of food
to 'recognize if there is an outside'
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Is it important for animals to know numbers of things?
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no, but it is important for them to compare more and less to manage future needs
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Intelligence is frequently paired with what type of cognition?
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social cognition
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Why are many intelligence tests inaccurate or not useful?
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they are often based off measurements that are gender, culturally, or environmentally biased and so give skewed results
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What 4 factors will be found in a good intelligence test?
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1. consistent results within a population or species
2. demonstrate those attributes we associate with intelligence
3. be a predictor of performance
4. be relevant to an animal's umwelt.
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What is umwelt?
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world as it is experienced by a particular organism
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Does intelligence have a genetic component?
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yes, but how much is genetic and how much is environmental is a hard question without an answer
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list 6 types of animals we consider intelligent
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1. primates
2. mammals
3. carnivores
4. corvates
5. birds
6. marine animals
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The animals we find intelligent often fall under 1 of 2 categories, or both - what are those categories?
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social lifestyle
predator lifestyle
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Who discovered that a social lifestyle is important for the evolution of intelligence?
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Nicholas Humphrey
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Do social predators have the same type of intelligence as animals organized into well-defined societies? (like bees, for example)
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No, different types of intelligences for different types of environments
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What is vengeance?
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punishment in a social context
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Which kind of altruism is the social opposite of vengeance?
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reciprocal altruism
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Is cognition required for vengeance to occur?
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yes; a vengeful animal must understand the situation that is in the past, predict a future path, and carry it out
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What is spite?
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to deliberately hurt, annoy, or offend
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Who does spite damage?
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both recipient and giver
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What is personality?
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collection of responses that characterizes the social responses of an individual
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How can awareness of personality be useful to animals?
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animals with this awareness can predict the reactions of others in different scenarios
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Is there more or less risk when other personalities are known?
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less - knowing a personality helps shape interactions; not knowing a personality = not being able to predict another's reaction
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What are behavior syndromes?
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sets of correlated responses of an individual that are stable over time but does not require a social context -these are often inherited
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what are the 2 ways behavioral variation within a population can be explained?
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1. if every individual in a population is plastic in its behavior (i.e., can do a number of things themselves) then heritability will be quite high
2. if every individual is predictable but different from others (specialized tasks/different responses to the same environmental changes) - …
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Why aren't all personality types the same? (4 reasons)
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1. environment can change an individual (different responses to environmental influences)
2. different personality traits may be more suitable in different situation (shy vs bold)
3. ? research on frontal lobe has to do with social restraint and impulse control
4. impulse control and f…
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Is impulse control necessary for cognition?
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yes, or.. the lack of impulsive behaviors is necessary for cognition
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Can social restraint have a negative effect?
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yes, it causes stress
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Do low ranking animals within a population/society have more or less stress?
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more, as indicated by high cortisol levels
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What is cortisol?
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a hormone associated with chronic stress
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What do animal emotions do in terms of cognition?
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emotional state separates concept of self from self-body
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Do animals have emotional lives?
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very hard to measure; tend to anthropomorphize
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Dog guilt experiment 4 conditions
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1. owners thought dog got treat and it did
2. owners thought dog got treat but it didn't
3. owners thought dog didn't get the treat, but it did
4. owners thought dog didn't get the treat and it didn't
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Under which conditions would the 'guilty dog' experiment actually demonstrate that dogs feel guilt?
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only when the dogs actually got the treat, even if the owners didn't know
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If dog guilt is a reaction to human disapproval, when would the 'guilty dog' experiment show guilt?
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when the owners thought the dog had received the treat, regardless if it did or not
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What did the 'guilty dog' experiment show?
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The dogs acted guilty when the owners were told the dog had received the treat and reacted as if the dog was bad.
So, dogs did not show guilt for having a treat. People are projecting human emotions onto the dogs.
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Animal Behavior; Exam 2