Animal Cognition: An introduction

Question 1

what is cognition? Shettleworth, (2010)

Answer 1

the mechanisms by which animals acquire, process, store and act on information from the environment

Question 2

Why do we study animals?

Answer 2

• Psychology is the science of mental life, James (1890) therefore need to learn about animals and humans
• Helps us to understand humans i.e. the evolutionary development
• Animal welfare, help to make sure we have good standards of animals welfare

Question 3

what is anthropomorphism?

Answer 3

attributing human characteristics to animals

Question 4

what is anthripocentrism?

Answer 4

viewing animals from our own human perspective

Question 5

charles Darwin and the mechanism of evoultion

Answer 5

• Variation - there are many offspring which are variable
  selection - some offspring
• survive to reproduce due to advantageous characteristics from the variation
• the outcome is adaptation (animal’s suitability to environment)

Question 6

what was Charles Darwin’s contribution to psychology?

Answer 6

• behaviour and psychology also subject to evolution
• Darwin observed commonalities between species’ mental characteristics
• beginnings of comparative psychology

Question 7

what did George Romanes do?

Answer 7

• write a book on animal intelligence in 1882
• collection of anecdotes about intelligent behaviour

Question 8

what did Conway Lloyd Morgan do?

Answer 8

• argued for better study of animal intelligence
• his dog called Tony could open the gate in their garden by moving his head in a certain way to lift the latch
• performance improved over time and this was concluded by trial and error learning

Question 9

what is Morgan’s Cannon? 1984

Answer 9

• explaining behaviour using simple processes
• use the simplest explanation

Question 10

what are Tingbergen (1963) 4 questions?

Answer 10

• Function
• Phylogeny (evolution)
• Ontology (development)
• mechanisms

Question 11

How did Thorndike (1898) contribute to animal cognition studies?

Answer 11

• experimental methods used in animal studies
• developmental approach

Question 12

How can we compare brain size?

Answer 12

Cephalization index (K)
- size of brain relative to body size
- higher values mean a larger than average brain fro body size
- rats=0.1, primates and whales = 0.2-0.3
- dolphins = 0.65, humans = 0.89

Question 13

what can we learn about learning speed using the cephalization index? Pearce (2008)

Answer 13

• a simple instrumental conditioning task
• respond → reward
• measure how many rewards needed before criterion reache

Question 14

what can we learn about concepts using the cephalization index? Wynne & Udell (2013)

Answer 14

• look at learning on trail 2 after a number of problems
• most animals improve and get more food the more tasks they do as they learn what shapes get them food
• However, may depend on lifestyle – Dunnarts reach 90% after 12 problems. They forage in open areas and need to quickly learn about signals in the environment.

Question 15

what are some issues with testing with animals?

Answer 15

• Learning with some stimuli seems easier than with other stimuli, e.g., it is easy for a rat to learn to press a lever for food, but not to press a level to avoid a shock.
• Contextual factors (Bitterman, 1965) says this is to do with sensory, motivational, and motor processes that influence learning

Question 16

what is Bitterman’s systematic variation?

Answer 16

• training on a task across a range of conditions (different stimuli, reward size, hunger levels etc.)
• However, difficult to implement because of time, number of subjects, facilities

Question 17

who was Clever Hans?

Answer 17

• Clever Hans was a horse that was claimed to have performed arithmetic and other intellectual tasks. After a formal investigation in 1907, psychologist Oskar Pfungst demonstrated that the horse was not actually performing these mental tasks, but was watching the reactions of his trainer
• shows we need to be careful when doing research with animals to avoid giving them these cues. for example use a video camera or a screen or a different experimenter who doesnt know the answers

Question 18

what is perception?

Answer 18

• Perceptual abilities vary between species
• The world you experience is due to the processing ability of your brain
• This is important when researching animal behaviour

Question 19

Vision and colour preception in different animals, Troscianko & Stevens

Answer 19

• Humans have 3 colour receptors (blue, green, red)
• (Most?) other species can see more of the spectrum than humans
• Bees: green, blue, ultraviolet (see Hempel de Ibarra, Vorobyev, & Menzel, 2014)
• Birds: e.g., blue tits perceive UV (Hunt et al., 1998),
• pigeons have >6 colour receptors

Question 20

how is smell used for survivial?

Answer 20

• finding food
• finding predators
• finding home e.g. chicks finding their nest

Question 21

how is smell used for communication?

Answer 21

• attracting mates
• recognising individuals

Question 22

what are the uses of dogs sense of smell?

Answer 22

• Can identify an individual odour in mixtures of odours (< 11 odours in a mixture with 100% success).
• Detection of illegal substances, food, explosives, disease (cancer; Jezierski, Walczak, & Gorecka, 2009; COVID; Jendrny et al., 2020)

Question 23

Why is it important to consider about hearing when studying animal cognition?

Answer 23

• some animals use echolocation
• e.g. bats produce sounds and listen to the echos to assist with flying in the dark, tracking and catching prey

Question 24

why is it important to consider about magnetic sensitivity when studying animal cognition?

Answer 24

• many animals have shown to be sensitive to magnetic fields
• e.g. pigeons, bats, migrating fish, bees, ants, cattle, sea turtles
• Lohmann et al (2004). found that sea turtles can distinguish between different locations by using the magnetic field