Animal Cognition

1
Animal Cognition

• Past, present future

2
aims

• To discuss abstract levels of perception
• to review evidence for object permanence in other
  species.
• To discuss evidence for numerical ability in
  other species
• To discuss animals ability to judge the passage
  of time.

3
Object permanence

• The understanding that objects which are out of
  sight continue to exist.
• Studied in humans by Piaget (1952)
• Do infants search for a hidden object?
• Visible displacement
• Only around 1 year old, on average
• When object is moved between containers out of
  sight
• Invisible displacement
• Children pass the test at 18 months, on average.

4
Gagnon Doré (1994)

• Dogs
• visible displacement
• object hidden behind one of three boxes.
• Puppies went to the correct container around 7
  weeks
• invisible displacement
• toy placed in an opaque container then removed
  from container behind one of three screens. Puppy
  shown empty container ?
• Dogs over one year old would learn to solve the
  task, but may reflect trial and error learning.

5
Visible displacement

• Many species can pass
• Chimps, orangutans, gorillas
• cebus monkeys, crab eating macaques, Japanese
  macaques, rhesus macaques, squirrel monkeys
• cats, dogs, hamsters
• chickens, doves, parrots

6
Invisible displacement

• Few species can pass
• Apes can, monkeys seem to find the task
  difficult.
• Adult dogs
• Parrots related species
• why?
• Visible displacement more ecologically
  meaningful Wynne
• Recent studies include rigorous controls for
  alternative strategies.

7
Other evidence

• Hauser (2001) rhesus monkeys search in bottom of
  two boxes, when items dropped from above
• Santos Hauser (2002) expectancy violation test
  does reveal surprise when item appears in the
  bottom box.
• Surprising event is examined for longer
• Dissociation between looking reaching also
  described in infant studies.

8
Number

• Clever Hans, appeared to be able to count, but
  was responding to social cues
• Expectancy Violation technique
• Hauser (1996) Rhesus monkeys can add subtract
  small numbers.
• West Young (2002) provided similar evidence for
  dogs.
• The ability to order stimuli is related.

9
Number

• Matsuzawa studied a chimp named Ai, and her son
  Ayumu.
• As well as learning to press numerals in
  sequence, they can select numerals to count
  small numbers of dots.
• http//www.pri.kyoto-u.ac.jp/

10
Time

• Most species show Circadian (Daily) rhythms
• Plants opening closing leaves
• Varying activity day/night
• Also longer rhythms
• E.g. seasonal changes in body colour

11
Short time intervals

• Responding on interval schedules/trace
  conditioning shows sensitivity to time intervals.
• how?
• ? Internal representation of time
• memory decay (Staddon Higa, 1999)

12
Uses of timing?

• Circadian timing allows activity to match
  environmental conditions
• E.g. feeding times, nesting, etc.
• Navigation
• Time of day needed to use a sun compass for
  navigation.
• Interval timing may aid foraging, intimately
  linked to memory.

13
Conclusion

• Similarity between other species and humans on
  various measures of conceptual experience
• object permanency
• number
• sense of time of day
• short time intervals

14
Reading

• Chapter five in Wynne covers topics from this
  lecture.
• Fedor, A., Skollar, G., Szerencsy, N. Ujhelyi,
  M. (2008). Object permanence tests on gibbons
  (Hylobatidae). Journal of Comparative Psychology,
  122, 403-417.
• Papers by Hauser(2001) and Santos Hauser (2002)
  are available from http//wjh.harvard.edu/mnkylab
  /publications/learnconcept.htm