Exam 3 Flashcards
(124 cards)
1
Q
RESEARCH PAPER: Define translational tools. What properties should they have?
A
- indices that can be utilized across species and context
- The tools properties should not require modifying existing definitions of emotions, emotion-related processes, affect for each species or having to anthropomorphize.
2
Q
“A young sow approaches a site on the boundary between forest and open field where she found some tasty roots the previous day. She is poised to start rooting the ground when she notices one of her group-mates, a large dominant female, approaching. Instead of digging for the roots, she turns away and continues along the forest boundary”
What are the questions to consider concerning the sow’s behavior?
A
- How does the sow remember where the food source was located?
- visual cues or other senses?
- > like a clump of trees and food
- complete mental representation of the area? - Why didn’t she feed in the presence of the dominant sow?
- Was she protecting a rich source of food by keeping it hidden?
- Does this indicate that the sow had learned what to “expect” if she exposed a feed source to the dominant sow?
- the ability to predict future events?
3
Q
Reference, or Long Term Memory
A
- describes the storage of information for days, months, and years
- has a virtually unlimited capacity
- it is associated with molecular and cellular events in areas of the brain such as the hippocampus, amygdala, and medial temporal lobes
- these can be conceptualized as the laying down of a “memory trace”
- > “memory trace” conceptualization
4
Q
Episodic Memory
A
- term used in humans for vivid conscious recall of events that happened to them in the past
- What-where-when in animals:
- > not clear if this fully exists
- > but reasonably certain that it does exist
- whether memories are consciously experienced in animals like they are in humans is still unknown
- > do animals have episodic memories like humans?
5
Q
Pavlovian vs Instrumental Conditioning BIGGEST difference
A
- In pavlovian conditioning the animal gains the ability to predict the future, whereas in instrumental conditioning the animal gains the ability to predict the future AND control the delivery and timing of its own reward
6
Q
Mutualist Behavior
A
- (+/+) situation
- both the actor and recipients of the behavior benefit
- best for all
7
Q
Social Behavior
A
- the glue that enables interactions among animals and with us
- it happens anytime animals interact
- > crows fighting over picnic scraps, cats cuddling, cow licking a new born calf, dogs playing with us, other people, or with other dogs, etc
8
Q
Hysteresis
A
- a type of delayed negative feedback
- > takes a period of time for negative feedback to start reducing motivation
- tied to a history of the system before feedback
- > failure to fully return to baseline before next behavioral bout
- stops dithering/indecisiveness between behaviors and adds stability to behavioral bouts
9
Q
Give examples of appetitive behavior
A
- food search
- mate search
- nesting-site search
10
Q
Example when appetitive behavior takes on consummatory characteristics
A
- pigeons trained to peck a key for a reinforcement of water learn to “suck” the key with a closed bill as if they were consuming water
11
Q
Discrimination
A
- allows distinctions to be drawn between objects or stimuli that differ in particular features
- enable animals to fine tune their behavior in response to environmental cues
12
Q
RESEARCH PAPER: What is the advantage of emotions for a species/individual when shared socially?
A
- When shared socially, emotions would allow groups to understand evolutionary challenges without having to
experience them directly potentially subserving the
development of the large groups that are characteristic
of human societies - support living in large groups
13
Q
Polygyny Mating
A
- males mate with many females
- female only mates with one male
- female cares for the young
- often seen in herd animals
- males may gain mating opportunities through controlling resources
- > Resource Defence Polygyny
- > Nesting Sites
- > Harems
14
Q
Social Cognition (learning)
A
- social environments can be very complex and changeable
- social learning aids the acquisition of new behaviors for an individual
- learning occurs for a naive animal (the observer) from the behavior of an experienced conspecific (the demonstrator)
- results in faster learning and reduced costs
- > less trial and error
- two learning paradigms
1. Unnoticed Stimulus
2. Imitation and Emulation
15
Q
How do different authors define cognition?
A
- For some authors, the study of cognition seeks to understand how information is represented and manipulated in the mind
- For other authors, they use the term in a broader sense to refer to all processes by which animals acquire, process, store, and act on information from the environment
16
Q
Categorization examples
A
- Foal Example of “category formation”
- foals learn to select feed buckets from positional, or visual cues
- > visual cues included solidly black markings on the buckets
- they learn to use positional cues as a discrimination cue far more rapidly than they learn to use visual cues - Abstract Principles example
- primates, parrots, honey bees, and pigeons can form such relational categories
- > there is limited information about whether domestic animals can do so
17
Q
Communication in Social Behavior
A
- most all social behavior involves communication
- signals (callers) can effect receiver behavior through their communication
-> when a calf is separated, its bleating will cause the cow to respond and move in their direction - can occur through a range of modalities
-> such as sound (calf bleating), smell, visual or tactile - communication occurs contextually
-> some animals vocalize when they are injured and others do not
Examples:
-> young benefit from attracting a parent when in pain
-> an adult may only alert a predator which is not beneficial - communication is thought to have been shaped by natural selection
18
Q
WD Hamilton’s explanation for kin selected altruism; example
A
- altruism occurs when the reproductive cost to an individual (C) is less than the recipients reproductive benefit (B) multiplied that the probability (r) that the recipient carries the gene for the altruistic trait
- > B(r) > (C)
- Example:
- > male honey bees share 75% of their genes with their sisters
19
Q
Polyandry Mating
A
- females mates with many males over a season
- Example: some fish species
20
Q
Altruistic Behavior
A
- (-/+) situation
- actor bears a cost and the recipient benefits
- reduces reproductive success of the individual
- Two common ways in which these behaviors can be selected for:
1. kin selection
2. reciprocation
21
Q
Flycatcher Experiment (Lars von Haartman)
A
- showed the power of the begging calls of young for food
- he studied flycatchers that were raising their young in a specially designed nesting box containing a hidden compartment where there was a second flock of hungry nestlings
- > The hidden nest begging calls caused parents to continue to bring food to those in the nest located in the compartment
22
Q
Two Phases of Motivated Behavior
A
- Appetitive
2. Consummatory
23
Q
Social influence on rewards and punishment; example included
A
Example
- dogs taught to give paw to handler for a food reward will continue this behavior even when food is omitted
- BUT, if their food reward is withheld and another dog is giving paw and receiving a food reward in their presence the dog will STOP giving paw
- > suggests a degree of sensitivity to the fairness of outcomes within a social setting
- rewards may be deemed context specific
- complex rewards such as social contact, or social justice may be important in guiding learned behavior, BUT they are difficult, or even impossible to implement in practical training
24
Q
Competition in Social Behavior Questions and Types
A
- Why do animals defend select resources?
- Why don’t animals defend some resources?
- Two Types of Competition - Deference Competition
- Aggressive Competition
25
Procedural Representation Examples
1. when the light is turned on, crouch
| 2. if you smell a predator, hide
26
Consummatory Behavior
- follows appetitive behavior
- typically more stereotyped, not learned, species-typical and motivational-typical
- movements comprising behavior may have a distinct sequence
- all phases of behavior seem to be driven by a single motivational state
- generally occurs in a discrete bout of defined length
EX:
1. Specific movements used in foraging
- cows and giraffes tongue twirl
- sheep and goats bite
2. Drinking Examples
- cats and dogs lap water
- pigs and humans suck in water
3. Mating Example
- Thrusting by males
- Lordosis by female quadrupeds
27
Reciprocation in Altruistic Behavior
- altruism between non-related individuals when reciprocation may, or can occur
- an individual will incur a cost to help others, but will later be paid back at a later time when these individuals come to their aid
- possible cheating restricts this type of altruism to social networks that are stable and that individuals encounter each other frequently
- > Example: Vampire Bats
28
Avoiding Predation Social Learning Example
- alarm calling behavior of cockerels, or young roosters
- there are different calls for aerial versus ground predators approaching
- calling modulated for the audience that may be listening
- > they will call more in the presence of novel females, than familiar ones
- Bantam males and broody females adjust their calls based on the size of the aerial predator in relation to their own chicks
29
Concept Formation
- an entirely abstract category
- the stimuli stand for the same idea, but they are not physically related
- it is currently theoretical in animals
- coming up with viable methodologies to study it are a problem
30
Habitual Behavior
- "model-free" behavior
- > typical in over training
- devaluation of an outcome can not be incorporated into a decision model
- the animal continues to perform the behavior in an inflexible manner
- > continues to acquire food that previously made it sick
- alters slowly with repetitive experiences to change the model
- computationally cheaper than goal-directed model-based learning, so it is advantageous
31
Example of Pavlovian Conditioning
- sounding a bell just prior to food arrival will cause a salivation response in dogs
- Unconditioned stimulus is the food
- unconditioned response is salivation
- conditioned stimulus is the sound of the bell
- conditioned response is salivation due to the sound of the bell in anticipation of food arriving
32
Sow Example Parent-Offspring Interactions
1. Sow gives birth to a large number of fragile offspring
2. She will separate herself from her herd mates the day, or so before birthing
3. Builds a nest
- protection from the cold
- keeps piglets close for protection from predators
4. Lays still during birthing and a short period after for the piglets to find the teats
- also limits the chance of squashing her piglets
5. The sow learns to discriminate her own by pigs by day 2, or later
- hence, it is relatively easy to foster piglets in the first 2 days
33
Switching cost example
- doves switch less between drinking and eating if a barrier is placed between the sources
34
Selfish behavior
- (+/-) situation
- the actor benefits, but the recipient bears a cost
- natural selection is powerful at the individual level
35
Ewe Example Parent-Offspring Interactions
- give birth to one, or two offspring
- will usually move away from the flock
- lambs are exposed to the ewes bleats while in utero
- > so they already know its moms voice
- lambs when born are licked
- > ewe can tell own lambs from immediately after birth
- > makes fostering very difficult
- lambs are very mobile, but the lamb and ewe generally remain together
- Interestingly, ewe may try to steal another lamb before she births
36
Feed-Forward Processes examples
1. Sequences of behavior are adaptive (feed-forward behaviors)
- one behavior typically follows another
- eating motivates drinking even before food alters osmolality of the blood
- grooming follows eating in cats
- preening follows water bathing in birds
2. Some feed forward effects are a result of learning and past experiences
- when animals are exposed to hot temperatures they will drink water before dehydration occurs
37
Switching costs
- cost of switching to a different behavior may delay the switch if the cost is high in:
1. Time
2. Energy
3. Exposure to predator
- switching to another behavior will not occur until the threshold for the other behavior is met
38
Smell Advantages in Domestic Animals; Example
- humans have a poorly developed sense of smell in comparison to domestic animals
- dogs are 100 million times more sensitive to some smells than humans
- many species use chemical scents for communication of territorial boundaries or reproductive status
- some mammals have vomeronasal organs
- > used to detect chemical signals and triggers the flehman response
39
Importance of Social Play
- Psychologist Harry Harlow conducted an experiment involving monkeys
- monkeys were raised without social contact
- they soon showed signs of:
- > emotional disturbance and dysfunctional social behavior
- > they circled in their cages and sat rocking repetitively
- found that 20 minutes a day of play alleviated the issues
40
Reinforcement vs Punishment
1. Reinforcement
- increases/maintains behavior of interest
2. Punishment
- decreases the behavior of interest
41
How is Habitual Behavior learning advantageous to Goal-Directed Behavior?
- habitual behavior is computationally cheaper than goal-directed response learning
42
Unconditioned Stimuli Characteristics
- may be referred to as rewards (reinforcers), or punishers
- rewards and punishers may be context, or animal specific
- > it is impossible to predict fully which stimuli or situations will be rewarding, or aversive for any given individual
- Important for animal welfare
- > establishing which stimuli are rewards and punishers is important for animal welfare
43
Positive vs Negative
1. Positive
- presentation of an unconditioned stimulus
2. Negative
- removal of an unconditioned stimulus
44
Animal Welfare and Cognition; Examples
- welfare may influence an animals cognitive abilities, or have a direct impact on their welfare
- Examples:
- > pigs raised in enriched environments demonstrate improvement in learning spatial tasks
- > cannibalism in chickens is facilitated by prior observations of the demonstrator
45
Example when consummatory behavior can take on appetitive behavior
- guppy reproduction
- male courtship is appetitive for mating, and yet clearly as stereotyped and species typical as many consummatory responses
46
Decision Making Components
1. Discrimination
2. Generalization
3. Categorization
4. Concept Formation
47
Consummatory Behavior as a fixed action pattern
- movements comprising consummatory behavior themselves have a distinct sequence
-> with all of the phases within the sequence appearing to be motivated by a single state
EX: dust baths in chickens
48
Four Common Social Behaviors
1. Competition
2. Sexual Behavior
3. Parent-Offspring Interactions
4. Play
49
Monogamy Mating
- one male and female that bond for a period of time
- both parents often participate in raising their young
- Ex: Wolves
50
Appetitive/Consummatory Distinction
- it is not a rigid distinction
- appetitive behavior can take on consummatory characteristics
- > pigeons
- consummatory behavior can take on appetitive behavior
- > guppy reproduction
51
Genetic vs Environmental Influence on social cognition
- genetic determinism is the belief that if there is genetic control, then the behavior is determined at fertilization and is inflexible
- genetic traits are predispositions
52
Behaviorist view of associative learning; example
- studies of associative learning was the bedrock of behaviorist research
- in many cases, it was possible to explain changes in behavior in terms of a simple stimulus
- > response connections that required no reference to unobserved mental processes
- In some cases the simple stimulus response connections elicited no change in behavior
- > example: in rats sound of a tone predicts light change, so they exposed them to two physiological stimuluses, light and tone, and they showed no change in behavior
- > behaviorists assumed that nothing had been learned
- > but they did not look at the mental processes, only the observed behavior
53
Consummatory Behavior bout lengths and examples
- generally occurs in discrete bouts that last a certain length of time
Ex:
1. animals typically eating in meals as opposed to nibbling constantly
2. Dust bathing in hens occurs for about 20 min every two days
3. Rumination in cattle
4. Play
5. Sleep
54
RESEARCH PAPER: Define the “Classic View of Emotion”
- It stipulates that it is possible to understand animals’ emotions by measuring behavioral and biological outputs and categorizing them into human emotion categories
- Example: freezing equals fear
55
Hysteresis Example
- if an animal is equally thirsty and hungry it keeps the animal from constantly switching between eating and drinking
- it increases the length of bouts of each
56
Sow behavior examples answers to the questions
- answering these questions are complex multiple factors need to be taken into account
1. Associative learning
2. Memory
3. Decision making
- discrimination
- generalization
- categorization
- concept formation
4. Cognition
57
Tactile Visual Communication Sow Graph Example
- the nuzzling of the sow's udder by her piglet's during a nursing bout
- shows the relationship between the sow's grunt rate and milk ejection
- litters signal their desire to nurse by gathering at the udder and nuzzling with their snouts, even though no milk is available at the time
- In response, the sow will lay on her side and begin grunting rhythmically
- If enough piglets are present and continue massaging the teats, the sow will likely respond by releasing oxytocin from the pituitary gland
- The hormone travels through the blood stream to the udder where it results in the ejection of milk
- however, if the nuzzling stimulus is too weak because some of the piglets have not assembled, then the release of oxytocin will not occur and the piglets will have to try again later
- this prevents a few piglets from triggering a milk ejection, when the rest of the litter is asleep
- the sow increases her rate of grunting at the time of the oxytocin release
- > when the piglets hear this voice signal, they stop their vigorous nuzzling of the udder and switch to sucking on the teats in anticipation of the arrival of milk
58
Group Living in Domestic Animals
- most domestic animals live in social groups, or like pets with humans
- the ability to live in groups may have been a prerequisite to domestication
59
Pavlovian Conditioning
- Classical Conditioning
- an environmental event, or stimulus elicits a predictable behavior from the animal
- > conditioned response
- > allows the animal to predict the future
60
How has the history of defining cognition changed from the early 20th century to now?
1. Early 20th century
- For much of the 20th century mental processes were ignored
- through the work of J.B Watson, B.F. Skinner and others they sought to explain all behaviors without referring to unobserved mental processes
- > In fact, they thought that mental processes could not be studied at all
2. Latter part of the 20th century to now
- they began focusing on studying these hidden mental processes
61
Tactile Visual Communication; Examples
- include:
- > social grooming in primates
- > suckling and nuzzling in mammals
- > many behaviors associated with social play
62
Declarative Representations Examples
1. Light predicts shock
2. Food smell predicts food will be served
3. High environmental temperature, being hot, predicts dehydration
63
Reciprocation in Altruistic Behavior Vampire Bat Graph Example
- COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS of blood sharing among vampire bats indicates that recipients benefit more than donors lose
- The author weighed adult females returning to the roost after feeding and then weighed them every hour for the next 24 hours
- An individual who had fed might return at 130 percent of its pre-feeding weight
- > half the weight of a blood meal is lost through urination within the first hour after feeding
- whereas a bat who failed to feed on two successive nights might return at 80 percent of its earlier weight
- by regurgitating five milliliters of condensed blood to a hungry roost mate, the donor bat might drop from 110 to 95 percent of its pre-feeding weight, but lose only six hours of the time it has remaining until starvation
- The recipient bat, however, gains 18 hours and so benefits more than the donor loses
64
Imitation, or Emulation Social Cognition
- more cognitively demanding
- imitation is where an animal copies the physical movements of a demonstrator
- emulation is where the animal reproduces the results of a demonstrator's actions
65
Appetitive Behavior
- first phase of behavior
- comprises active, flexible searching behaviors
- may include learned operant responses
- > operant means modification of behavior as effect of its consequences
- appetitive behavior may appear quite similar even when motivated by quite different states
- > EX: the appetitive phases of food search, mate search and nesting-site search are all quite similar both within and between species
66
Deference Competition Characteristics, When does it occur, and Who gets the most of the resource?
1. submission
2. yielding
3. consideration
- occurs when plenty of resources available
- > no reason to fight or protect, it would be a waste of time
- the most efficient in collecting the resource will get the most of the resource
67
Cognitivist view of associative learning; example
- conducted the same experiment with rats
- > tone predicts light
- > light predicts electric shock
- > rats learned to avoid tone to avoid the shock
- > postulated that the rats learned that "tone predicts the shock"
- > rats avoided not only the light, but the tone as well
- -> indicates rat form mental predictive outcomes for tone via tone, light, and shock association
- further postulates that information gained can be stored by two different methods
- > declarative representation
- > procedural representation
68
Memory Related Questions
1. How is information acquired, stored and retrieved?
2. What factors affect acquisition, storage and retrieval?
3. How long can information be retained?
4. What type of information is stored?
69
Categorization
- if the shared features of a class of stimuli are based on physical properties such as color, shape, and size it can result in "category" formation
- abstract principles such as bigger, or paler are cognitively more demanding
70
Why may animal biases be crucial for successful domestication
- Example:
- > social bonds predispose a hierarchical system
- > allows humans to adopt the role of a dominant group leader
71
Stimulus/Behavioral Response Categories and Examples
1. Unconditioned Response (UR)
- salivating at the smell of food
2. Conditioned Response (CR)
- salivating at the sound of a bell in anticipation of food
- not a new response
- reaction is the same form as the unconditioned response
3. Unconditioned Stimulus (US)
- smell of food
4. Conditioned Stimulus (CS)
- sound of bell linked to food coming
72
What does the male contribute in sexual behavior and what does the female contribute?
1. Male Contributes:
- gametes
- maybe will help feed, or protect the young
2. Female Contributes
- gametes
- the environment for fetal development
- feeds and protects the young
73
Aggressive Competition Characteristics, When does it occur, and Who gets the most of the resource?
1. Combative
2. Attacking
3. Quarrelsome
- Occurs when there are limited resources available
- > fighting, or protecting them may be necessary to attain, or keep the resource
- the dominant animal will get most of the resource
74
Group Living Advantages
1. Dilute their risk of predation
2. Defense of young
3. In Detecting Danger
4. Feed detection
5. Increase the capture of prey
- animals like lions and wolves
6. Young will start eating solid food sooner
- young will be less neophobic (afraid of new food items)
75
Working, or Short Term Memory; example
- describes the storage of information over a few minutes to hours
- EX: when an animal is foraging for food it will use its memory to avoid revisiting locations that it has just searched
76
Social Play in Farm Animals; Example
- It is thought to be less important than it is for primates and pets
- Example:
- > pre-weaned dairy calves that are raised in groups play more
- > they are more likely to become dominant over animals that have been individually reared
- > they develop better coping mechanisms for unusual situations such as maintaining balance on slippery surfaces
- > they have better mental skills and show greater performance in learning tasks
77
Promiscuity Mating
- mixture of polygyny and polyandry
- most domestic animals
- > Examples are livestock and dogs
78
Two Types of Associative Learning
1. Classical, or Pavlovian Conditioning
| 2. Instrumental, or Operant Conditioning
79
Mating System Categories
1. Monogamy
2. Polygyny
3. Polyandry
4. Promiscuity
80
Rewards vs Punisher
1. Rewards
- what an animal wants and will work for
2. Punishers
- aversive stimuli that an animal does not want and works to avoid
81
Give examples of consummatory behavior
1. Specific movements used in foraging
- cows and giraffes tongue twirl
- sheep and goats bite
2. Drinking Examples
- cats and dogs lap water
- pigs and humans suck in water
3. Mating Example
- Thrusting by males
- Lordosis by female quadrupeds
82
Example of how can rewards and punishers be context, or animal specific?
- While one dog may decrease barking when shouted at, another may like its owner shouting and bark more in response
EX:
-> if a dog stops barking because is yelled at by the owner it is deemed a punishment
-> if a dog is barking more when it is yelled at by an owner it is deemed a reward
83
Visual Communication (Static vs Visual); Examples
- Close range mode of communication
1. Static Visual Communication
- transmits stable information such as sex, or species
- Example: deer antlers or colorful plumage
2. Fluid (body Movement) Visual communication
- has an advantage for signaling information that changes depending on the situation
- Example: holding the tail erect in dominant dogs
84
Declarative Representation
- involve knowledge of about things or relationships that:
- > allow different representations to be combined in different ways
- > confer flexibility in how the animal uses the information to guide a behavioral response
85
Social Play
- often emphasizes the process over the result
86
Consummatory Behavior fixed action pattern example
- A bout of dust-bathing in a chicken starts with:
1. Bird scratching and bill-raking at the substrate
2. Erects its feathers, squats in the substrate and performs a sequence of vigorous dust-bathing behaviors
3. The bird flattens its feathers and lies on its side
4. Last, it stands up and shakes the substrate from its plumage before switching to another activity
87
Goal Directed Behavior
- representation of the possible behaviors an animal can perform and their resulting outcomes
- If the value of the outcome changes, the animal updates its representation, or model
Ex: if a previously palatable food makes an animal sick the next time they encounter this food the animal will suppress its behaviors in a flexible and adaptable manner
88
Positive Feedback (example)
- behavioral activity reinforces its motivation to continue bouts of activity
Ex: Mice were fasted for 24 hours
- mini-bouts of eating increased in length and the gaps between mini-bouts of eating decreased
-> within each meal and particularly at the start, mini-bouts initially also increased in length and occurred closer together
---> Thus, the 5th mini-bout of a meal was longer than the first
89
Same, or Different Categorization; Examples
- the only relational categorization that has been studied to any real extent in domestic animals
- Example:
- > the ability to categorize geometric shapes as "same, or different" has been shown in Shetland Ponies
- > learned the difference between circles and crosses
- > were able to apply this categorization learning to specify the difference in triangles and rectangles
90
Competition Factors in Social Behavior
1. Dominance
2. Body Size
3. Strength, Speed and Agility
4. Teeth, Claws, Horns, Antlers
5. Comparative Skills (experiences)
6. Is the animal the current resource holder?
- asymmetric advantage
- the territory holder will know the territory best
- there is a need for the resource
91
Unnoticed Stimulus Social Cognition
- least cognitively demanding
- the demonstrator draws the observer's attention to a previously unnoticed stimulus
- acquisition of a new response, or behavior develops by "instrumental, or operant conditioning"
92
Generalization
- shared features are grouped with a range of stimuli
- enables the animal to be able to respond to new stimuli in an adaptive manner based on previous exposure to related, or a range of stimuli
93
Which would you expect to be more selective in gaining a mate, a male or a female? Why?
- we expect the female to be more selective in gaining a mate
- the female makes a larger investment by maintaining pregnancy and feeding the young by producing milk, whereas males contribute only gametes which are inexpensive to produce
- > females have a large reproductive cost and therefore have a lower potential reproductive rate
- the male is able to father young at a much faster rate than females can produce them, so we expect females to be selective in their choice of mates
94
Spatial Memory in cattle, sheep, dogs, and swine. How long can they retain the memory, what is the memories of, and is it short-term or long term?
1. Cattle (30+ days)
- develop a good long term memory of where high quality feed is
- how to traverse a maze
2. Sheep (40+ days)
- develop a good long term memory
3. Dogs
- short term memory
- can remember the location of buried food for 90 minutes
- younger dogs from 1-4 yrs old, perform significantly better than dogs over 8 years old
4. Swine
- short term memory
- can be trained to search an arena for food in a novel location and retain that memory over the next 1-2 hours
- they can remember the location of two different sized food sources
- > they will locate the larger food source first when there is no competitor
- > if there is a competitor present they will not go to either food source
- can store complex spatial information and recall/use it in an adaptive way
- > it is not exactly known how
95
Stepping into Another's Shoes Social Learning Example
- social cognition's most advanced form
- to take the visual perspective of another, to understand that the individual has a mental state like ones self, and even use this knowledge to deceive them
- evidence for this in animals is very difficult to develop
- think about the subordinate sow/dominant sow example
- > does this example approach stepping into another's shoes ?
- > why, or why not?
- > it can not be clear
- > pigs show behavior that allows them to minimize exploitation of their knowledge of where food in a foraging arena is to another individual
- > BUT, it is probable that this clever behavior is the result of the knowledgeable animal learning that it is likely to lose to its larger companion and thus is avoiding competitive encounters.
96
The Benefits of Social play
- it is not well understood
1. May serve as practice for adult activities
2. Allow animals to become familiar with their environment
3. Develop social skills
4. Develop relationships
5. For proper health and welfare
97
Group Living Costs
- must share resources
| - > sometimes there are free loaders
98
Kin Selection in Altruistic Behavior
- altruistic behaviors are inherited when it benefits an individuals kin, or relatives
- increase the population by increasing the reproductive success of their kin
- > their genetics are passed through to their kin to a degree
- WD Hamilton is an evolutionary biologist that summarized this
99
RESEARCH PAPER: List the 4 ingredients of emotions the paper stipulates can be used under the “Theories of Constructed Emotion” to explain emotional development/status of an animal. Which one is considered to be found in all animals? Which is essentially limited to humans and animals like great apes, dolphins and parrots?
1. Affect
- considered to be found in all animals
2. Conceptual Knowledge
3. Language
- limited to humans and animals like great apes, dolphins and parrots
4. Social Context
100
Discrimination and Generalization Examples
1. Riding School Pony
- must respond appropriately to numerous similar, but different inputs
- > many diverse riders
- generalization example
2. Dressage Horse
- generally one rider that is focused on precision and consistency
- discrimination example bc generalization in this contact would be disastrous for show performance
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Feedback Systems affecting the length of behavioral bouts
1. Negative Feedback
2. Positive Feedback
3. Hysteresis
4. Switching Costs
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Acquisition of Feed Social Learning Example
- chicks are sensitive to social guidance about which feeds they should and should not suggest
- hens will attract their young to food using staccato food calls and pecking at the ground
- > the hens display is more intense in the presence of high-quality food items, if the chicks move away, or if the chicks make errors in the objects they select
- older chickens can learn to eat, but not to avoid differently colored feeds by watching a demonstrator
- the relationship between the observer and demonstrator in birds is very important
- > older birds are more likely to learn new behaviors from dominant birds over social subordinates
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Examples of Negative Feedback
1. Negative feedback as a direct consequence of behavior
- water absorption following drinking reduces motivation to drink
- activation of safety mechanisms after eating
2. Negative Feedback from performing the behavior itself
- Water injected into blood does not decrease drinking as effectively as the act of drinking the water does
- Featherless hens still dust bath despite the bath having no effect on their plumage
- > proves that behaviors lead to benefits above and beyond the apparent direct physiological effects
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Types of animals that have a large bias towards group living
1. Ungulate (hoofed) mammals
2. Gallinaceous (Order: Galiformes) Birds
- > heavy bodied ground feeding birds
3. Social omnivores, or herbivores
4. Weak mating bonds
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Parent-Offspring Interactions
1. parents provide:
- > shelter, protection, food and nurture
2. offspring provide:
- > a chance to pass the parental genes forward
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Positive and Negative Punishment
1. Positive Punishment
- presentation of an aversive stimulus DECREASES the behavior of interest
2. Negative Punishment
- removal of a pleasant stimulus DECREASES the behavior of interest
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Feed-Forward Processes
- transitions between one type of motivated behavior and another are often rather predictable and seem to be designed to usefully anticipate, rather than react, to deviations in homeostasis
- Sequences of behavior are adaptive (product of feed-forward behaviors)
- some feed forward effects are a result of learning and past experiences
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Behaviorism
- studies behaviorism
- > the theory that human and animal behavior can be explained in terms of conditioning, without appeal to thoughts or feelings, and that psychological disorders are best treated by altering behavior patterns
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When does associative learning take place?
- greatest chance when importance of the unconditioned stimulus to the animal is high
- takes place only when the unconditioned stimulus is of biological significance
- For future behavioral responses
- > Reinforcement or rewards such as when the animal either wants, or needs something
- > Punishment such as when the animal wants, or needs to avoid something
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Social Learning Examples
1. Acquisition of Feed
2. Avoiding predation
3. Stepping into another's shoes
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Secondary reinforcers example
- used for the training of rats to detect TNT
- secondary reinforcers (click) are essential to procedures during landmine detection because they could not give food in the middle of the landmine field
- > scratching the ground is not a natural response for rats when detecting TNT
- > first they are trained that a click (secondary reinforcer) will get them food (unconditioned stimulus)
- > second odor discrimination training for detection below ground is conducted and they would only receive a banana when they sniffed TNT
- > third when they scratch the sand, or soil when they smell TNT they are rewarded with a click and later are given food
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RESEARCH PAPER: Define the concept(s) behind the “Theories of Constructed Emotion” ???
1. Emotion Concepts
- what we know about emotions
- which the brain constructs on an ongoing manner based on past experiences to serve as predictive signals for incoming sensory information
2. Language
- symbolic representations
- is used to represent emotion concepts
3. Social relationships
- used for the emergence of emotion, or the cognitive representation of situations in which emotions occur
4. Affect
- a global state characterized by valence and arousal that forms the basis of emotions
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Instrumental Conditioning
- Operant Conditioning
- Obtaining a reward leads to the animal:
- > directing its behavior to a new part of its environment
- > learns to perform a new behavior
- animal gains the ability to predict what happens next AND controls the timing and delivery of its own reward
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Sexual Behavior Importance of Mate choice
- the importance of mate choice to females and males will depend on the time, energy, distance travelled, and other resources (etc) that the animals invest in producing the offspring
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Why is establishing which stimuli are rewards and punishers important?
- it is a goal because it is assumed that animals will suffer if important rewards and are missing from their environment, or if aversive stimuli are present
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Sow-Piglet Weaning Conflict Graph Example
- The graph showed the number of nursing episodes per day by sows in relation to the age of the piglets
- The control group was a group of sow and piglets that were not separated
- > there was not much of a change in nursing bouts
- the experimental group was sows that could get away from their piglets because there was a low barrier they could step over
- > those that could leave the young gradually reduced the number of nursings to wean the piglets earlier
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How did social Behavior evolve?
- to answer this question, social behavior is divided into three broad categories
1. Mutualistic Behavior
2. Selfish Behavior
3. Altruistic Behavior
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Conspecific Memory Example
- SHEEP
- can discriminate between pairs of conspecifics faces
- can generalize from frontal views to profiles
- they can perform this accurately after a gap of 2 years
- neurological evidence indicates that the temporal and medial prefrontal cortex fire when sheep view a familiar conspecific
- > this response continues to occur even when the conspecific had not been encountered for 8-12 months
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Positive and Negative Reinforcement
1. Positive Reinforcement
- presentation of a pleasant stimulus INCREASES the behavior of interest
2. Negative Reinforcement
- removal of an aversive stimulus INCREASES the behavior of interest
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Procedural Representation
- involve knowledge about what to do
- > a simple stimulus response connection
- > can only be used in an inflexible way, has a set response
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Example of instrumental conditioning
- animal is given a toy containing food items
- its initial interaction is to explore the toy
- > Unconditioned response (UR)
- after the animal successfully gets the food, it will start to manipulate the toy in a way that is predictable to provide food
- > conditioned response (CR)
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Negative Feedback
- execution of a behavior reduces the motivation to continue the behavior
- important in limiting the length of bouts of many different behaviors
- it may come from direct consequences of the behavior
- performance of the behavior itself may lead to negative feedback
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Conspecific Memory
- retain memory of others in the species
- cues come from facial appearance, smell and perhaps other senses
Ex: Sheep
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Secondary reinforcers
- potential stimuli that are at first neutral, but when paired with an unconditioned stimuli become reinforcers
- these reinforcers do not always work, or increase retention of learning
