Do animals have a Theory of Mind?

Question 1

example of social learning in pigeons

Answer 1

The pigeons are set up as shown, the bird on the left is the “Sender”, that on the right the “Receiver”. The Sender can see two lights that cannot be directly viewed by the Receiver, the Receiver can, however, see the Sender. The Receiver has two response keys, Left Hand (LH) and Right Hand (RH) to peck, and once again the Sender cannot directly view these keys. The contingencies in play are such that the Sender and Receiver both get rewarded if the Receiver pecks RH when the green light is on and LH when the red light is on. Can they communicate to solve this problem? The answer is that they can solve the problem after a lot of training on it, but it’s not quite what most people would mean by “communication”.

Question 2

example of monkey vicarious conditioning

Answer 2

• e.g. fear of snakes in monkeys
• based on CC
• naïve monkey doesn’t fear snake
• sees fear reaction in other monkey when snake present
• fear of snakes conditioned
• may be particularly important in phobias

Question 3

what is enhancement

Answer 3

• demonstrator’s behaviour draws observer’s attention to location or stimulus

Question 4

example of enhancement

Answer 4

e.g. blue tits and milk

• Other blue tits will see this behaviour of pecking milk
• Chance of others picking at milk top greatly increases
• This reinforces the behaviour

Question 5

what is imitaiton

Answer 5

when enhancement and observational conditioning can’t explain new behaviour

Question 6

example of imitation

Answer 6

• “Two-Action Test”- given a reward no matter what behaviour it does
• with quail (+), rats (+), budgerigars (+), pigeons (+)
• BUT: never a new behaviour?

Question 7

what was Heyes et al sutdy 1999

Answer 7

Heyes and colleagues (1990, 1992, 1999) have looked at imitation in the rat. The response used was pushing a hanging joystick either to the left or right (so not a typical rat behavior, and the bi-directional nature of the response controls for effects of enhancement, cf. Grindley’s demonstration of instrumental learning in the guinea pig). Rats observed a demonstrator rat e.g. pushing the joystick to the demonstrator’s right, then were transferred to the demonstrator chamber and reinforced for pushing in either direction. They preferentially pushed in the same direction as the demonstrator - imitation?

Question 8

example of imitaiton in primates

Answer 8

• potato washing in Japanese macaques:
o spreading in population too slow to be imitation (stimulus enhancement)
• Anecdotal evidence - problem of anthropomorphising
• Conclusion - evidence for true imitation at present inconclusive

Question 9

what is teaching

Answer 9

An intentional facilitation of learning, with costs for the teacher

Question 10

what is not an example of teaching

Answer 10

• Flavour preferences in rats or mobbing in birds are not examples of teaching

Question 11

examples of referential communication

Answer 11

• releaser/FAP communication: no decision, direct instruction to the receiver
• referential communication: messages give varied information about matters external to sender and receiver
o vervet alarm calls
o other primate species
o The “dance language” of honey bees is referential

Question 12

who did Terrace et al train

Answer 12

Nim

Question 13

example of animals learning language

Answer 13

evidence such as Washoe’s famous “water bird” example. But it’s not particularly impressive when you realise that Washoe is looking at both a bird and water, and is signing both terms over a period of time. See Terrace et al (1979) in Science for more on this (the Nim project – which I consider next).

Question 14

Story of Terrace and Nim

Answer 14

 Terrace was originally convinced that Nim could form sentences – i.e. “More banana” would be signed rather than “Banana more”.
 But then he spotted something: Nim was using the signs provided by his tutors to produce his signs –he was effectively copying them or responding to them – but at such a short lag that they didn’t notice. You could only spot it on film.
 His conclusion ultimately was that Nim did not acquire language. He was smart, he was fast, but he did not communicate in the way that humans can. He didn’t really generate his own sentences. He was simply good at producing responses that achieved the goal of getting food.
 Terrace took a lot of flak for this conclusion and for this experimental work. There’s a recent documentary “Nim” which portrays him in an unflattering light. He stands by his conclusions, and feels that his portrayal in this documentary is unfair.

Question 15

what is tactical deception

Answer 15

Dishonest signals might derive from operant conditioning
Anecdotes of primate dishonesty
Deception and intention
Understanding the intentions of the individual to be deceived
 some kind of Theory of Mind…

Question 16

what are the 3 levels of evidence about animals’ apparently deceptive acts

Answer 16

 Level 0: Unintentional - the result is a “windfall gain”
 Level 1: Activities apparently directed towards a goal that can only be achieved if the receiver is deceived (but is learned, not understood)
 Level 2: “Mindreading”, involving the attribution of intentions to another animal

Question 17

facts about mindreading

Answer 17

• Ability to infer what another animal can and cannot see
• Attributes mental states to others
• Acquired by age 5 in most children

Question 18

theory of mind example

Answer 18

A typical TOM problem is illustrated below (sally anna). In it two observers are depicted, one of whom knows what is in the box. Which one should a child select to learn what is in the box? The ability to answer this question correctly would suggest that the respondent had some idea that one observer possessed mental states that differed both from their own and from those of other observers

Question 19

ToM task applied to chimpanzees

Answer 19

Here we see some of the techniques used by Povinelli to address the same issues in chimpanzees. Whilst say 5 year olds will pass the problem 1 slide back, chimpanzees do not perform satisfactorily on these tasks even after extensive training on the basics. They cannot select the correct observer unless trained to do so over a number of trials, and then fail to transfer to a novel but conceptually related situation.

Question 20

self-concepts in primates

Answer 20

• Theory of others’ minds -> theory of their own minds -> concept of the self
• The mirror self-recognition experiment
• chimpanzees, orang-utangs, (some) gorillas = pass
• dolphins = pass
• parrots = not demonstrated so far

Question 21

what is Gallup mirror test

Answer 21

• Gallup (1970) studied the reactions of chimpanzees and macaques to their mirror reflections (8 hours per day for 10-14 days)
• Over time, chimpanzees showed an increase in the number of self-directed behaviours that relied on the use of the mirror
– Grooming parts of the body that would otherwise be visually inaccessible
– Picking bits of food from the teeth whilst looking in the mirror

Question 22

what is the mark test

Answer 22

• After the exposure period, all subjects were anesthetised and bright red marks were placed on visually inaccessible locations on the body
– one eyebrow ridge
– the opposite ear
• Upon re-exposure to the mirror, chimpanzees touched the mark more than other parts of their body
• The monkeys did not touch the marks any more than any other part of the body

Question 23

what did Epstein, Lanza and Skinner (1981) train

Answer 23

• Epstein, Lanza and Skinner (1981) trained a pigeon to peck at a mark on its breast using a mirror

Question 24

who criticised Epstein, Lanza and Skinner

Answer 24

• Gallup (1982) has criticised this experiment for the artificiality of the training and also the lack of any other evidence of mirror self-recognition

Thomson and Contie (1994) reported difficulty replicating this result

Question 25

dolphin MSR example

Answer 25

• Reiss and Marino (2001) exposed two dolphins to reflective surfaces
• Using a mark test procedure, they claim that the dolphins showed clear evidence of using the mirror to investigate marked parts of the body