Observational Methods 1 Flashcards
Why use observational methods?:
- Questionnaires of limited applicability
· Only one animal species with language, out of millions of animal species.- Apparatus limits generalisability
* E.g., if behavioural measuring equipment is noticeable, then results only apply to organisms that are habituated to that apparatus. - Context-dependent behaviour where context might be difficult or infeasible to replicate in controlled environments.
· For example, behaviour of riotous mobs
- Apparatus limits generalisability
Linguistic animals:
· Circle graph which is almost completely yellow with a tiny black slice
· Demonstrates that there is only linguistic animals (humans) among millions of non-linguistic animals
- Questionnaires of limited use, one needs observational methods with non-humans
Lana the chimpanzee - Rumbaugh, 1977:
· Lana was being trained to use the keyboard to request activities, food, and drink
· The chimpanzee is embedded in a highly technical environment
· Results from studies of this chimpanzee are not generalisable to other chimpanzees.
Rat in Skinner box:
· Heavy reliance on rat performance in a Skinner box limits generalisability to rats in similar testing circumstances.
· Observational methods allow us to view rats in many different contexts.
Spelman et al, 1991:
· Complex schematic of the technological system supporting data collection in a study of simultaneous physiology and behaviour
Spelman et al, 1991 - heart rate:
· Staying relatively steady at 120 beats-per-minute while the animals is at rest
· Rapidly increasing from the moment the animal starts running to about 185 BPM.
Spelman et al, 1991 - blood pressure:
· Staying relatively steady at about 107 millimetres of mercury until about 12 seconds when a relatively steep rise in blood pressure begins
· Peaks at about 114 mmHg at about 17 seconds into the record, then rapidly declines to about 106 mmHg even while the animal continues to run.
Spelman et al, 1991 - renal flow:
· While sitting, it is steady at around 4.7 kHz, but at the moment of transition to running, it plummets quickly to a low of 3.6kHz at 19 seconds, then rising slightly to 3.8 kHz in the final second.
Spelman et al, 1991 - femoral flow:
· Pattern is opposite of that shown by the renal flow data
· Steady rate around 2.2 kHz while sitting rises steeply from the moment of transition to running, to about 3.7 kHz by the end of the record
Spelman et al, 1991 - 2:
· Scientific breakthrough
· Allow scientists to examine both internal physiology and external behaviour simultaneously.
Human behavioural coder - Spelman:
· Essential component is the human being who is applying the coding scheme to the behaviour of the monkeys.
· Need a trained human being to allocate behavioural codes to behaviour.
· On the verge of being able to automatically categorise behaviour, but existing systems for doing this are relatively unreliable or expensive or both.
· Human judgements is a key component in behavioural measuring systems
Riotous mobs:
· Some behaviours cannot be studied in controlled, laboratory conditions.
Are observational data necessarily subjective?:
· Female chimpanzee named Elvira
· Elvira displays a complex series of communicative actions apparently to try to capture the attention of the human.
· Elvira displayed both persistence and elaboration
· It is easy to achieve impressive inter-observer reliability despite a complete lack of prior training
· Observational methods are not necessarily weak or unreliable.
Joint attention as neurocognitive adaption - derived from human adaptation for speech:
· “. . . no infrahuman animal is known to point. . . ” (Werner & Kaplan, 1963, p. 78).
· “. . . pointing with the outstretched arm and index finger at objects in visual space seems to be unique to humans” (Corballis, 1993[1991], p. 157).
· “. . . pointing is a species-specific form of reference that is basic to human nonverbal communication” (Butterworth, 1995, p. 335).
· “The pointing gesture is exclusively human, and universal within mankind” (Degos, 2001, p. 263).
· “. . . human index-finger pointing is biologically based and species-specific” (Butterworth, 2003, p. 28).
· “Index-finger pointing is apparently unique to humans” (Masataka, 2003, p. 69).
Steps in observational research - Observational stream:
- Ask
- Observe informally
- Choose measures
- Choose recording method
- Collect and analyse data
* Science is an iterative process, that finding some answers usually raises more questions