Animal Behavior L4

Cognition

Mechanism by which animals acquire, process, store, and act on information from environment

Cognitive Ability

a factor that determines how an animal goes through their life interacting with others + environment

Umwelt

specific way in which they experience and interact with their environment

Highly individualistic

Object Permanence

Ability to picture objects without them being explicitly in front them

Learning by Observation Cognitive Ability

High

Detour Paradigm

Modifying information about the location of a resource in order to obtain it

Animals who perform self recognition

chimps, elephant, dolphins, magpies

Animals who perform object recognition

pigs

Time Estimation

Chimps will wait longer when given choice of larger reward

Metacognition

To know what you do and be aware that there things you don’t know

Brain Function vs Size

Body weight ratio is more important than size (smaller = more neurons)

Larger Brain =

more energy

why younger = big brain

Mammals vs Bird Analysis Brain Location

Mammals in cortex

Birds in striatum

Short Term Memory

seconds-minutes

Learning

A change in the brain resulting in behavior being modified for longer than a few seconds

Positive Stimuli

Adding a stimulus

Negative Stimulus

Taking a stimulus away

Positive Reinforcement

Encouraging by adding reward

Negative Reinforcement

Encouraging by removing unpleasant stimulus

Positive Punishment

Reducing behavior by adding unpleasant stimulus

Negative Punishment

Reducing behavior by removing pleasant stimulus

Habituation

Long-term stimulus specific reduction of a response

Counter-Conditioning

reduce unwanted behaviors to a certain stimuli

Animal learns to perform new behavior instead of old

Requires desensitization

Classical Counter-Condtioing

Dog exposed to problem stimulus, immediately exposed to something that results in opposite behavior

Expose to thunder → bring toys out

Operant Counter-Conditioning

Dog is exposed to problem in small increasing amounts, animal is asked to perform task that’s incompatible

Chaining

Series of response

Sit, shake, lie, roll

Discrimination Learning

learning to discrimination or recognize the difference between visual, auditory, tactile

Conditioned Taste Aversion

Learned to react a certain taste from negative consequences

Imprinting

animal identifies an object and responds to or follow it in preference to other stimuli

During sensitive phase

Instinct

Not learned

not determined on genetics but dependent on gene-environment interaction

sign stimuli