Lecture 20: Human and animal Flashcards
Describe the history of human and animal comparisons
Kohler did an experiment on apes in 1916 to see how intelligent they were.
Kellogg and Kellogg 1933 did a study to compare the environmental influence on early behaviour in humans and apes.
Anecdotes aren’t data, what makes something good data when studying animals?
It needs to be systematic and controlled. The animals need to be confronted with different situations to see if their behaviour is flexible. It needs to be interpreted carefully and statistical tests need to be done.
True or false
Closely related animals can’t be used to understand our evolutionary past
False. If all individuals have it then the trait is likely to present in a common ancestor. If they’re present in other species then it’s likely that the trait is caused by selection pressures. This is the comparative approach.
What are the two types of animal cognition?
Physical cognition like food acquisition and social cognition like reproduction.
List some types of social cognition
Communication, intention reading, perspective taking, cooperation.
List some types of physical cognition
Causality, quantities (if most people are there), tool use (e.g. chimps using sticks) and spatial cognition.
What are the challenges for foraging animals?
Locating food, quantifying food and extracting food. They need to be able to assess information flexibly, especially organisms that are mobile and live in changing environments. All of the above require cognitive abilities. Locating food requires spatial knowledge. Quantifying food requires numerical competence. Extracting food requires problem solving and causal understanding.
What did Scheumann 2006 find with orang-utans in terms of locating food?
They found that if given a banana cue, the orang-utans would visit the banana locations significantly more than the grape locations and vice versa with a grape cue. This shows that they have spatial memory.
What did Clayton 1998 find in their study in terms of locating food?
He found that birds remember where certain food is, what food it is and when it’s available. This was shown via cache sites and different foods being available, the birds picked the food that was last available in the next trial.
What did Mendes 2008 find in their study in terms of quantifying food?
He found that when chimps were presented with a visible apple and an unexpected banana, they took longer to find the banana but they reached for the banana significantly more. This is a non-verbal measure of searching behaviour.
What did Hanus and call 2007 find in their study in terms of quantifying food?
What about Suda and call 2004?
They found that bonobos, chimps, gorillas and orang-utans were able to pick the plate with a higher quantity of food on it, they could even do it when the food was placed in an opaque cup and was presented sequentially versus simultaneously. A different study found that dogs could do the same but they quickly develop a bias towards one side.
Suda did a study with continuous quantities of liquid but used the piaget method. The piaget conservation found that chimps were less able to pick the one with more quantity but it was still a lot higher than the level of chance.
Describe Manrique 2010’s study about extracting food
They found that chimps, bonobos and orang-utans were able to pick a rigid object out of 1 rigid and 2 flexible objects. They were best when manipulating the object and then observation was second most successful.
Describe Mendes 2007’s study about extracting food
A lot of chimps have innovative problem solving. For example, 5 out of 6 zoo orang-utans were able to solve a floating peanut task whereas other species were less successful. Another study was done with children and the peanut was presented in an empty test tube, there was a jug of water on the table. 4 year olds were unsuccessful compared to 8 year olds who were a lot more successful, they were active and had a productive aspect compared to the 4 year olds who were passive and were only comprehensive. So they comprehend it but don’t know how to solve it.
Discuss abstract, unobservable features in terms of causal cognition
They need to have functional relevance which is inferred from surface features. There needs to be a causal imperative from the successful event which is inferred by co-variation. People gather information visually, auditorially and tactically.
Describe the inclined board task, this is a visual clue for causal cognition
It involved a piece of food, the primates chose the board that was inclined via food compared to one that was inclined via a wedge, this shows that they visually chose and recognised the food.
