What is Animal Cognition?
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What is Animal Cognition?
Lecture 1
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“Housekeeping”
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Cognition, broadly defined, means the processing of
information in order to make informed choices…
but when animals are concerned, the definition
becomes muddied
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Views of animal cognition seem to swing, pendulum-style, from one extreme
view to another….
Mindless robot
Furred or feathered
human
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Although we can could discuss humans’ views of
animals in numerous civilizations throughout
recorded history,
we’ll concentrate on Western, fairly modern
civilization, if only to keep this lecture to within a
reasonable length
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On the mindless robot side, we have proponents like Descartes
and the mid-20th century behaviorists…..
On the furred, feathered human side we have proponents like
Romanes and Griffin.
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I hope at the end of the class, you’ll come to
believe that the answer lies somewhere in the
middle…
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In his Meditations in the 1600s, Rene Descartes argued that
animals are purely physical entities,
lack mental and spiritual substance,
can’t reason, think, feel pain or suffer,
are machines with no consciousness
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He surmised that they might have some fleeting responses to stimuli,
but argued that they definitely could not think because they
couldn’t use or didn’t have language demonstrated behavior that was not all that adaptable
reacted mostly instinctually
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Now, Descartes was not the only one to present this
stance, but his writings were widely accepted and fit in with the general view of animals as
creatures that existed only for the benefit of humans:
as sources of food, beasts of burden
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And it’s much more difficult to justify such a
stance
if one believes that animals are sentient beings,
more similar to, than different from, humans
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Although, as we will see, no animal exhibits behavior that is identical to
that of humans
suggesting a continuum
so as to totally contradict Descartes,
many animals exhibit behavior patterns with many elements that
approach that of humans,
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In the 1800s, Romanes, on the heels of the
publications of Darwin,
began to address the inconsistencies in
Descartes’ position
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In 1871, Darwin stated: “the difference in mind between man and the higher animals…is one
of degree, not of kind”
To some extent, Darwin, but mostly Romanes,
went about collecting a huge number of anecdotes to support
this idea
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Romanes classified these anecdotes by phyla and species
The idea was to find a precise phyletic point at which a particular
“new” mental ability emerged
in order to establish a continuum from single-celled
organisms to humans….
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The upshot were great “chains of reason”, with humans at a
pinnacle;
the big problem was that Romanes’ material was simply
anecdotal,
An example:
depending on human recollections and lacking any
level of control
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Another time I found a very few of them passing along at intervals. I confined one of these under a piece of clay at a little distance from the line, with his head projecting. Several ants passed it, but at least one discovered it and tried to pull it out, but could not. It immediately set off at a great rate, and I thought it had deserted its comrade, but it had only gone for assistance, for in a short time about a dozen ants come hurrying up, evidently fully informed of the circumstances of the case, for they made directly for their imprisoned comrade and soon set him free. I do not see how this action could be instinctive. It was sympathetic help, such as man only among the higher mammalia shows. The excitement and ardour with which they carried on their unflagging exertions for the rescue of their comrade could not have been greater if they had been human beings.
This observation seems unequivocal as proving fellow- feeling and sympathy, so far as we can trace any analogy between the emotions of the higher animals and those of insects.
On ants:
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This material, as written, probably seems totally off-the-wall and
unbelievable….
And it was just these kinds of reports that really acted to
discredit Romanes—for decades— as a serious scientist
Moreover, neurobiology seemed at first to be against Romanes
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Researchers argued that certain brain areas—
And, creatures such as reptiles and birds lacked this brain area
specifically those in what was called the cerebral cortex—
were necessary for intelligent behavior
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Songbird Human
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And even in other mammals, including our nearest relatives, the apes,
even if, as much later researchers argued,
the area was considerably smaller….
one took into account brain-body ratios
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From Jerison, 1955
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But, before we go on….
So it seemed as though the term “animal intelligence” or
“animal cognition”
Let me get jump ahead chronologically in terms of
brain data …
was an oxymoron…
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First, papers that came out just about two years ago show
that birds, at least,
but that for some species,
not only have bits of brain that are equivalent to human cerebral
cortex,
this area has about the same brain/body ratio as in primates
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Fig. 10. Scatterplot using independent contrasts of primate and psittaciform data, of log-transformed telencephalic volumes (mm3) against log-transformed body mass (g) contrasts; Psittaciforms are indicated by the gray circles and the primates are indicated by the open circles.
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And, as we will see later in the semester,
those birds with such large areas (the crow and parrot
family)
perform at about the level of young humans
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Second, an article in the January 12th, 2006 issue of the journal Nature
reports evidence for teaching in ants:
They performed less efficiently than they would outside the “classroom”
Their pupils learned faster than they would have learned by themselves
Feedback existed between teacher and pupil
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[go to desktop]
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So, although Romanes likely over-interpreted what he did find,
But back at the turn of the last century,
some grain of truth likely existed in his material
Romanes’ material was thought to be so outre
that the pendulum swung wildly in the opposite direction….
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Enter Morgan, who, in reaction to Romanes’ “mentalistic” approach,
In no case may we interpret an action as the outcome of the exercise of a higher psychical faculty, if it can be interpreted as the outcome of the
exercise of one which stands lower in the psychological scale (1894).
formed his famous canon:
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Or, in its revised version of 1903:
In no case is an animal activity to be interpreted in terms of higher psychological processes, if it can be fairly interpreted in terms of processes which stand lower in
the scale of psychological evolution and development.
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Add the comments of Thorndike (1898):
“… anecdotes give really the abnormal or super-normal psychology of animals.”
Scientists “…have looked for the intelligent and unusual and neglected the stupid and normal.”
“Only a single case is studied, and so the results are not necessarily true of the type; the observation is not repeated, nor are the conditions perfectly regulated; the previous history of the animal in question is not known.”
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And:
“Such observations may tell us, if the observer is perfectly reliable, that a certain thing takes place, but they cannot assure us that it will take place universally among the animals of that species, or universally with the same animal.” “Nor can the influence of previous experience be estimated.”
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Basically, the argument was that if a behavior could be
interpreted as a simple response to a given stimulus,
THAT was how it should be viewed.
an instinctual reaction,
or anything that did not require any level of information processing,
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Morgan’s canon led to a very different approach to animal studies….
The good part was that careful experimental design became an
important criterion
Again, from Thorndike:
“To remedy these defects experiment must be substituted for observation and the collection of anecdotes.”
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Thorndike argued that:
“You can repeat the conditions at will, so as to see whether or not the animal's behavior is due to mere coincidence.”
“A number of animals can be subjected to the same test, so as to attain typical results.”
“The animal may be put in situations where its conduct is especially instructive.”
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Whether the next part was good or bad depends on
one’s point of view…
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The idea that there was some kind of continuum of intelligence
began to wane
Instead, researchers became concerned with discovering
general mechanisms and laws of learning
that applied across all phyla
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Although researchers expected to find quantitative differences in learning
across species,
they believed that the underlying principles would be the same.
And, critically, all such experiments were to be carried out in a sterile lab,
where all conditions could be controlled.
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By isolating the animal,
one would avoid all extraneous input
and be able to determine what was left
—the basic ability—
with respect to intelligence
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Of course, such a stance did not appreciate that the
absence of social stimuli
of the environment or of other individuals
was in and of itself a specific—and unnatural—situation for most
animals
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Models of behavior were now to be based on associationist principles:
Simple laws were formulated to explain how external sensory input caused
observable behavior
Laws were few and were universal
(i.e., standard “stimulus-response” interpretations)
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Thus there was no need to examine “cognitive” skills,
which, in part, included learning, remembering,
problem-solving, rule and concept formation,
perception and recognition
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And one didn’t need to study a variety of species,
And only the receipt of reward or punishment controlled behavior
because none would respond any differently from that of a pigeon
or a rat
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So, an animal would see an environmental stimulus, such as a green-lit button in one location, and at some point in its random
behavior it would come across another green button; if it pressed the button it got some
rewardA weak association thus formed between “green” and reward; if the animal hit a
nearby red button instead, nothing happened, or it got a shock…and this latter behavior would thereby be ‘extinguished’
The next time the rat saw the buttons, hitting green was more likely because of the reward
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At issue was not a memory for reward:
Although some researchers did argue for memory, most didn’t care how the
rat chose to behave,
And researchers argued that any complex behavior could be broken
down into a series of such simple S/R laws
but rather only the extent to which it DID behave..
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These researchers, known as behaviorists, did have some initial
success.
They could explain how animals learned via trial-and-error on a
number of laboratory tasks
(things like maze running or adapting when the experimenter
reversed the correct and incorrect choices)
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And they had some success on ‘learning sets’ (e.g.,
Harlow), in which animals learned one task on one set of exemplars (e.g., to
choose the odd object among three)
and then responded more quickly when given the same task with different exemplars.
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Ditto for Thorndike’s puzzle boxes,
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which were used to show not only trial-and-error learning,
but also species differences in such abilities
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Interestingly, these boxes showed that dogs and cats were
particularly incompetent….
But from the perspective of a dog or a cat,
The animal never was shown the correct response.
what did pulling a string have to do with opening a door?
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And, in nature, animals rarely can rely on trial-and-error learning….
They get only one chance to avoid a predator, and only a limited amount
of time to figure out what to eat before they could starve….
And folks like the Brelands found they could not extinguish certain behavior
patterns in the lab no matter what they tried
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At first, behaviorists acted like classical physicists at the turn
of the 20th century,
who believed that their current paradigms would
eventually answer things like particles acting like waves…
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But eventually, some behaviorists, like the
physicists,
began to realize that new paradigms were needed
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But, at the same time that the behaviorists were arguing for
essentially a “tabula rasa” (blank slate),
innate releasing mechanisms and fixed action patterns
ethologists like Lorenz had been focusing on stereotypic behavior
in the wild….
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So, there’s the classic story of a stickleback fish….
Males get a red patch when they come into breeding condition, and fight other red-patched males for their territory…
Tinbergen saw a male stickleback go bonkers when it sighted a red
van through a window…
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And a male European robin will tear apart a red sock that is
attached to a branch…
Either the animal is really dumb,
or it can’t overcome some innately specified behavior pattern,
or maybe hormones just overcome cognition…
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[gray.mov]
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So, IRMs and FAPs were initially used to explain issues like
predator avoidance and food preferences and mate choice
But, although some things did seem to be hard-wired…
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Additional studies showed that what seemed to be innate mechanisms were often
learned…
albeit very rapidly
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So, for example, Hailman showed that the so-called innate
predisposition of newly-hatched gulls to peck at a red dot on their
parents’ beaks
Hatchlings learned within a day that the red spot was a good sign for what to
hit…but they learned
was actually only an innate predisposition to hit a moving
target…
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And then there were studies such as Köhler’s on “insight” in
apes…
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And although researchers subsequently argued that the animals
may have seen something related that gave them the idea,
and that they definitely had toys that enabled them to gain experience with
stacking….
And that the chimps were actually pretty incompetent…
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i.e., they balanced precariously on the corner of the box…
and other researchers had trouble replicating the data…
other studies have indeed shown novel problem-solving abilities
(.e.g., Goodall’s drum-using chimps, crows, parrots)
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Weir movie
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And if you let a bee explore a field
and then release it from a novel spot in the field
it returns to its hive by the most direct route possible, as tho’ it has figured out a cognitive map of the
field
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So, it seemed that neither the innately specified
systems of the ethologists
or the simple rule-driven explanations of the
behaviorists
could fully explain animal behavior
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Thus, a number of scientists from the behavioral stance broke rank,
where researchers were beginning to look at issues such as selective
attention, memory, and information processing
and decided to adapt these ideas to the study of animal behavior
and began to look at what had been going on in the realm of human
behavior,
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So, with a breakthrough book in the late ’60s, Hulse, Fowler, and
Honig argued that
behavior is best explained by mental representations and information
processing,
and started the so-called “cognitive revolution” in animal behavior
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But this was not quite as much of a change as one
might have hoped or expected….
These folks were interpreting their results differently and proposing slightly different
hypotheses,
But they still retained the physical techniques of behaviorism….
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That is, locking animals up in what are called ‘operant chambers’ (aka “Skinner boxes”): Studying them
in social isolation
under sterile laboratory conditions and with the same type of tasks (e.g., match-to-sample, oddity, two-choice decisions)
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They attempted to, for example, examine whether
animals understood abstract concepts
So they gave the animals tasks like the following where the
correct response lights up and errors darken
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*
**
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This gives an idea of what the animals had to
uncover…
Choose odd color when objects are backed in white and odd shape if
objects are backed in black…
But is this a concept of same/different?
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According to scientists like Premack,
And, moreover, can label exactly what is same or different
an animal that knows ‘same/different’ can transfer to any situation and any modality
and any type of exemplar….
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Different color, same shape, same material,
same size
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Same color, different shape, different size,
different matter
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So, how were scientists really going to understand the abilities
of animals?
Into the fray came Griffin, the man who had determined that bats navigated and hunted via
sonar—
something that was viewed as totally impossible when it was first
proposed
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Griffin wrote “The Question of Animal Awareness”, in which he
argued that:
Animals were capable of complex cognitive processing
Such processing likely had to be studied in nature
And that animals were also likely fully conscious
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But Griffin did even more than that;
He argued that each anecdote was a data point
And that, if nothing else, should be the basis for a testable hypothesis
he went back a Romanes-like stance, basing many of his arguments on anecdotes
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Griffin at the time was ridiculed and dismissed as an aging has-
been
But as we saw from the ant example toward the beginning of
the lecture,
maybe he was on to something…
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And, adding even more interest…
or confusion…
to these issues were scientists who were, at this same time in history,
attempting to teach animals to communicate with human
language
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Now, remember, Descartes had argued that one reason that animals couldn’t think
was that they couldn’t learn or use human language….
And some researchers had argued…and some still do…that concept formation is impossible
without language
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And, of course, such a stance doesn’t even begin to address the issue of whether animals’ natural
communication systems demonstrate possible concept
formation
[and, yes, some evidence suggests they do…e.g.,
neighbor/stranger discriminations]
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Given that Griffin argued that animal communication was a
‘window into the mind’….
Was human communication necessary?
Could we develop other ways of questioning animals without using
human language?
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Well, the answer is definitely “yes”, although we will see
that even basic forms of ‘language-like’ behavior
simplify the experiments….
As in simply asking what is same or different for two objects…
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And, of course, an animal that can ‘talk’ can give
interesting and unexpected answers
Answers that, in fact, suggest a higher level of cognition than
possibly the experimenter expected
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But I still haven’t really answered the question of
“What is animal cognition?”
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All I’ve done so far is show that over time,
researchers have argued either that animals are dumb
robots
or fully equivalent to humans….
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But clearly they are something in between,
and we have to figure out what we are looking for
before we begin our search
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There are actually as many definitions of “cognition” as there are researchers in the
field
And we’ll be examining different types of cognition in different
species
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We’ll see that different species may be specialized for a particular ability, …
But that are no better than pigeons on match-to-sample tasks in the
lab
like nutcrackers that remember 10,000 caches each
winter
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But basically cognition is defined as
an organism’s ability to make a decision by evaluating—or
processing—
current information based on some representation of prior
experience
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And, of course, that brings up the definition of a
‘representation’…
but let’s just assume that it exists for now,
and not worry as to whether it is pictorial, verbal, auditory,
etc.
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Cognition is thus based on the supposition that the organism does not
react robotically to environmental stimuli,
but rather processes the input and chooses to react in
certain ways
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Of course, we have to remember that what seems a logical cognitive process for
humans
And that in itself is another interesting issue
may not be logical for an animal….
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If an animal doesn’t much care about the banana slice reward,
but would much rather try to use a tool in a weird interesting way other than the one it has seen work to get the banana slice….
Is it being intelligent or stupid?
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Each rake has a hard edge and a floppy rubber edge; the chimp should pull the rake with the food by the hard edge…
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Or is the challenge of trying to get the food through a novel action *much* more rewarding than the food
itself?
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Thus I’m going to argue that cognitive ability is not simply
the choice of a logical response, but
that the decision-making process include the capacity to choose
from among various possible sets of rules that have been acquired or
taughtthe set that appropriately governs
the current processing of given data
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What does this mean and why is it important???
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It is important because it means that
organisms limited to examining information
according to a single set of rules (e.g., a matching
procedure)
do not have the chance to exhibit complex cognition
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It also means that cognition requires the ability
to transfer a set of skills learned in one context to
another
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And, I argue, that many animals in nature need
complex cognitive skills to survive
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A foraging bird that has learned to associate green with
unripe/bitter and red with ripe/tasty might do OK in some
instances…
But it also needs to know that for some fruits, red could indicate spoilage and green is optimal
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Now, I’ve given just a really brief overview, and there’s a
LOT more to the study of animal cognition…
It is still a relatively new and exciting field, with much to be
learned