Animal Cognition Exam 2

What are the 3 main challenges foragers face?

1. Locating food sources

2. Competition from co-feeders

3. Avoiding predators

What is the OFT?

Optimal foraging should provide the most energy for the least cost (energy expenditure, time, risk of conflict). Each type of forager has a different currency they are trying to optimize.

What are the 5 types of foraging strategies?

1. Random walks: Effective if food is scattered in space

2. Established routes

3. Path integration: Random search but return straight home

4. Landmark navigation: Must know association between landmark and food, remember spatial relationship, and navigate to landmark

5. Cognitive maps

   1. Route-based: Integrates landmark navigation and path integration

   2. Global: Relationship between all items in region

How do displacement studies work?

1. Move animals to a new location before migration

2. Track path or wait to capture marked individuals in different locations

3. Test whether they follow familiar movement pattern or if they can reorient themselves to correct for displacement

What were the findings of Thorup et. al 2007?

Adult white-crowned sparrows could reorient themselves after being displaced while juveniles could not. Indicates that they rely on a genetically programmed compass, not a learned map

What are the benefits to recognizing and representing others?

1. Identify conspecifics

2. Distinguish between potential mates

3. Avoid inbreeding or fighting with kin

4. Recognize allies, partners, and offspring

5. Avoid conflict

What was the design and findings of Sheehan & Tibbets (2011)?

They used a T-test to compare discrimination of faces vs non-face stimuli in paper wasps. They found that facial recognition relies on specialized perceptual/cognitive mechanisms, not general visual learning

What was the design and findings of Stoddard et al (1991)

They used playback to see if parent cliff swallows could discriminate between their own and unrelated offspring. They found that chick calls are individually distinctive and parents use these calls to identify chicks

Define gaze detection, gaze following, and perspective taking

1. Changing behavior when others are watching, doesn’t imply understanding of gaze

2. Following anothers gaze to find food, avoid danger, acquire info, can be more or less based on actual gaze

3. Understanding what others can/can’t see. Important for mating, hiding things, competing

What are the 4 types of social learning?

1. Imitation: Copying technique

2. Emulation: Recognizing goal of others but not copying technique

3. Affordance learning: Learning what can be done in the world

4. Stimulus enhancement: Attention being drawn to a location more, increases probability they will learn it on their own

What is the theory of mind?

An animal’s ability to understand what other animals are thinking and using those understandings to predict or explain behavior

What is the Sally-Anne False Belief Test?

The Sally–Anne task involves showing a character placing an object in one location, having it moved in their absence, and asking where they will search upon return. It tests whether the subject understands that others can hold false beliefs about reality.

How do apes understand intentions?

They recognize others intentions, behaving differently in relation to others’ actions based on their motives for behaving. They can distinguish between desire and ability

What were the design and findings of Krupenye et al. (2016)

They used eye-tracking and videos to test whether apes anticipate an agent’s actions based on false beliefs. Apes looked toward the belief-consistent location, suggesting sensitivity to others’ false beliefs.

What is the difference between moral behavior and moral cognition?

Moral behavior is acting in ways that align with social norms about right and wrong, regardless of the underlying reasoning. Moral cognition is the mental ability to represent, evaluate, and reason about moral situations

What is the evidence for “proto-morality” in non-human animals? (De-Waal Studies)

Capuchin monkeys have sensitivity to unfair outcomes. Chimpanzees provide consolation behavior more often to distressed group members and help others retrieve objects.

What counts as a tool?

To alter the form, position, or condition of another object, another organism, or the user itself when the user holds or carries the tool during or just prior to use

What are the 4 cognitive mechanisms involved in tool use?

1. Causality: Relationship between cause & effect

2. Physical reasoning: Ability to understand and predict how objects interact in the physical world

3. Insight: A sudden and often novel understanding of a problem’s solution

4. Planning: Organizing actions to achieve a specific goal

What is the design and goals of the trap tube task?

An animal sees food inside a clear tube and uses a stick to either push food into the trap or to itself. It is used to test whether animals understand why the food falls (causality), whether its learning reasoning or patterns, and can it adjust if the pattern changes

What was the design and findings of Teschke et al. (2011)?

They tested the trap tube experiment in corvids. They could learn to avoid the trap in the basic task, but avoided the trap even when it didn’t work and failed in different setups. Shows they don’t have true causal reasoning, but rely on visual cues and learned habits

What are Tinbergen’s 4 questions?

1. Mechanism: What are the immediate physiological/psychological mechanisms that cause trait/behavior?

2. Development: How does the trait/behavior develop over an individuals lifetime?

3. Function: How does the trait/behavior help with problems in the current environment?

4. Phylogeny: How was the trait/behavior advantageous in the past?

Define signal

Something that has evolved to convey info about signaler/environment to a receiver

Define cue

Any feature an organism can use as a guide to display a particular behavior

Define coercion

Signaler evolved the behavior, but receiver behavior didn’t evolve to be impacted by signal.

What are 3 ways to establish honest signaling?

1. Indices: Meaning is causally related to form

2. Handicaps: Costs are incurred by reliable signalers

3. Deterrents: Costs are incurred by unreliable signalers

What are audience effects?

Effects of an audience on signaling behavior may have cognitive implications, but before an appeal is made to higher order mechanisms, the possibility that an audience simply raises a signaler's general arousal level must be explored.

What are the 5 questions for determining intentionality?

1. Not directly effective

2. Audience effects

3. Sensitive to state of recipient

4. Persistence when goal has not been met

5. Elaboration when initial events fail