Numerosity, Transitive Inference and Object Permenance

Question 1

Give three examples of time based phenomena

Answer 1

Circadian rhythms
Interval timing
Episodic memory

Question 2

Are circadian rhythms always 24hours?

Answer 2

No - wild caught mice in constant conditions show free running circadian rhythms, an endogenous biological clock

• when 12hour light/dark regime instigated, activity adjusted (ENTRAINMENT) , adjusting internal rhythm by external factors
• transient environmental changes can mask rhythm eg. eclipse - birds stop singing, predator - wake up

Question 3

What is another word for an entraining agent, able to alter innate circadian rhythms?

Answer 3

Zeitgeber

Question 4

How is interval timing usually studied?

Answer 4

Operant conditioning procedures - eg. rats and levers, stop/start clock

• “Peak procedure” - fixed interval reinforcement schedule - rate of pressing will increase up until rewards (scallop pattern of response)
• Roberts 1981 - if some empty trials are incorporated where rewards not received, pressing declines after 30 seconds showing some concept of time
• Webers law, longer the time, less accurate the responses
• “Time left procedure” - Gibbon and Church 1981 - as time goes on less of the responses are directed towards the lever (?) look up

Question 5

What does Webers law state?

Answer 5

Longer the time you are trying to count, less accurate the responses

Question 6

Give a study showing episodic like memory in non humans

Answer 6

Clayton and Dickinson 1998 - Scrub jays - remember when food items are stored, searching preferentially for wax worms if fresh but ignoring if had been a long time and worms had gone off

Question 7

How may understanding of time have implications for animal welfare?

Answer 7

Lighting regimes in animal housing
Feeding regimes in animal housing
- eg. Haskell 2000, effect of delayed feeding on post-feeding behaviour of sows

Question 8

What is the “cardinal number”

Answer 8

Count total number of objects in set

Question 9

How was initial numerical competence investigated?

Answer 9

Anthropocentric - using numerons to denote numbers and leaving the impression that most numosity related abilities are human specific. (Davies and Memmot 1982)

Question 10

How did Gallistel 1993 describe numerical competence?

Answer 10

“not surprising if number is taken as a mental primitive rather than something extracted from the brain with difficulty and long experience”

Question 11

How has numerical competence been evaluated in lions?

Answer 11

McComb 1994 - Relative numbers of lions in a pride to number of roars heard on speaker impact likelihood of approach to speaker

Question 12

How has numerical competence been investigated in rats? What are other interpretations of their response?

Answer 12

Meck and Church 1983
8 pulses -> press lever x
2 pulses -> press lever y
Confound of duration rather than number
So repeated will 2 long tones v 8 short ones (take up same duration) and 2 v long tones v 8 v short ones (take up inverse duration as should do)
Performed equally as well
- breukelaar and dalrymple-Alford 1998 found discrepancies between temporal and numerical counting in rats with measurement of time taking precedence over numerosity.

Question 13

Under what circumstances are differences in numerosities detected more readily?

Answer 13

Analogue magnitude system -
When they are small - ratio between them is larger than the same absolute difference between two big numbers
- fuzzy Webers’ Law based discrimination system

Question 14

What is the object tracking (file) system?

Answer 14

Applied to small number sets only (typically 3/4)

Precise discrimination - ratio or absolute difference doesn’t matter

Question 15

When does number become “hard” according to Feigenson 2004?

Answer 15

When going beyond the analogue magnitude and object tracking systems

• for larger numbers, verbal or symbolic representation is necessary which takes many years to learn, differs between cultures and some people lack all together
• as number becomes more abstract, incorporating fraction etc. they move further from the intuitive sense of number provided by core systems

Question 16

Which animal other than humans that have learned to count is able to label quantities precisely with words or symbols?

Answer 16

Alex the parrot (Pepperberg 1994)

• how many keys?
• How many blue items?

Question 17

What is transitive inference?

Answer 17

If A>B and B>C then subjects given the choice should choose A over C

• Pigeons and rats do
• > Other interpretation that A has been reinforced before whereas C has not
• Von Fersen 1991 invented 5-element procedure where all elements are reinforced equally in respect to each other - still chose B
• > “value transfer” as B has been paired with winner A whereas D has been paired with loser E
• Zentall 2001 -if A v B is reinforced 100% time, and C v D reinforced 50% time then B v D -> B chosen indicating value transfer

Question 18

How does transitive inference have implications for animal welfare?

Answer 18

Pas y Mino 2004 - Pinyon jays use transitive inference to predict social hierachy

• > Dominance hierachy and social structure and management of animals in larger groups
• > Evidence that large stable social groups have increased cognitive abilities

Question 19

What is object permanence?

Answer 19

Knowledge that objects still exit when they are out of sight

Question 20

What did Piaget develop with respect to child development?

Answer 20

Six stages of object permanence - to begin with out of sight is out of mind
Older infants search for object but cannot cope with displacement
2 years + can cope with invisible displacement
- many non human animals show different levels of object permanence

Question 21

How may species learn object permanence?

Answer 21

Searching using trial and error eg. chicks 
Other species (parrots, dogs, great apes, corvids) can cope with invisible displacement