CBH 4024 - Exam 1

Review the figures and data tables - what do the data show?

Quiz 1: Which is TRUE about the immediate causation of bird song learning?

a. Scientists know very little about the structure or function of the nuclei that are responsible for song learning and production in songbirds

b. Bird song is entirely innate and genetically programmed so there is little learning involved

c. Female songbirds do not sing and therefore completely lack any form of song nuclei in their brains.

d. Song control nuclei in the songbird brain contain specialized neurons that allow birds to learn song from adult birds and produce learned songs as adults.

Quiz 1: Which would be a proximate approach to studying the causes of behavior?

a. none of these involve a proximate approach

b. analyze levels of stress hormones in the blood after the animal flees from an aversive stimulus

c. compare the survival and reproductive success of individuals that have different variations of a behavior

d. study the evolutionary history of a particular behavior

Quiz 1: Which is false about natural selection and the evolution of behavior?

a. Natural selection is a goal-oriented process by which species are pushed toward complexity and perfection

b. for evolution by natural selection to occur, more offspring are produced than can survive

c. natural selection favors traits that benefit individual survival and reproductive success, leading to change over time at the population level

d. darwin did not propose the theory of evolution, but rather the mechanisms by which evolution occurs.

Quiz 1: Which of the following is true about behavior?

a. behavioral traits evolve not because they benefit individuals, but because they benefit the species as a whole.

b. behavioral choices exhibited by an animal are always adaptive

c. the best way to study animal behavior is to rely on your own thoughts and feelings and try to infer how the animals think and feel.

d. an ultimate explanation for behavior in biology involves the adaptive significance or evolutionary history of behavior.

Quiz 1: What is the adaptive significance of song learning in songbirds?

a. song learning allows birds to sing songs that match their habitat

b. song learning allows males the ability to match songs to social environment thus increasing the effectiveness of male-male communication

c. all of these are adaptive aspects of song learning

d. song learning provides information to females about a male's developmental history

Quiz 2: Dr John Swaddle's research tackles the problems of human-wildlife conflict by taking the following approach:

a. since habituation to aversive stimuli (scarecrows, fake predators, sound) is inevitable, crops must be protected using poisons and animal trapping/removal.

b. treat the conflict as an animal behavior problem: for example change the birds' perception of risk while foraging in crop fields, or use stimuli to alert them to obstacles while flying.

c. try to change human perception of human-wildlife conflict: for humans to engage in technological and sustainable development we must accept that many animals will die

d. protect crops and food stores from wildlife by growing them indoors where animals can be excluded

Quiz 2: Which of the following is false about learning?

a. learning allows plasticity and flexibility in responses to environmental unpredictability

b. learning is a change in behavior based on experience that outlasts the experience

c. imprinting is not a form of learning or the ability to learn

d. the ability to learn is costly in terms of brain size, brain regions, and the energetic costs of maintaining the brain.

Quiz 2: Which of the following statements about behavior and genetics is false?

a. a common garden experiment is used to test the degree to which a behavior is genetically determined vs shaped by environmental conditions

b. genes involved in the regulation of behavior are typically pleiotropic

c. gene expression influences behavior, and behavior can influence gene expression

d. if a behavioral trait can be selected for in an artificial selection experiment, this is evidence that the trait is mostly determined by environmental factors.

Quiz 2: Which is false about hormones and behavior?

a. hormones, on their own, cause changes in behavior

b. hormones are produced within one part of an animal's body (ex. endocrine gland) are released into circulation and act on another part of the body (target)

c. hormones coordinate physiology and behavior by regulating, integrating, and controlling bodily functions

d. hormones change the probability that a particular behavior will be emitted in the appropriate situation

Quiz 2: Which is true about epigenetics?

a. epigenetics refers to behavioral traits that are controlled by many genes

b. epigenetics is a heritable change in gene expression that does not involve changes to the underlying DNA sequence

c. epigenetics is the phenotype that results from activation of a developmental switch mechanism

d. epigenetics involves behavioral traits that are learned and not inherited

Quiz 3: What is the Cognitive Ecology view of the evolution of cognitive abilities?

a. none are correct

b. animals have evolved species-specific and problem-specific processes to solve problems associated with their particular ecological niches

c. the same central processes of learning and memory exist across species and across and extensive range of problems, regardless of a species' environment

d. cognitive abilities are universal properties of all nervous systems, thus the abilities seen in humans can be extended to all taxonomic groups

Quiz 3: Experimental research on face recognition learning in wasps provided:

a. support for the cognitive ecology hypothesis by showing that selection has acted to facilitate face recognition in one species, but not the other, due to a difference in social ecology

b. evidence that the variation in face patterns between the two species is due to differences in diet

c. evidence that variation in face patterns in wasps does not play any role in individual recognition

d. evidence against the cognitive ecology hypothesis because the two wasp species have different social ecology and yet they performed equally well in face recognition learning trials.

Quiz 3: A/an _______ is a neural network that processes a sign stimulus and then coordinates a fixed action pattern

a. stimulus filter

b. morphogene

c. neural fovea

d. innate releasing mechanism

e. none are correct

Quiz 3: We learned that moustached bats detect prey location by listening to echoes of their own bat calls of the prey. However, the bat's hearing is most sensitive to frequencies that are slightly higher than their own calls. Which is true about this phenomenon?

a. spherical spreading at low frequencies shifts the call's echoes up in frequency

b. spherical spreading causes the doppler effect to increase the echoed calls' frequency when the bat is moving toward its prey

c. none are correct

d. the doppler effect results in a slight raise in the frequency of returning call echoes because the bat is moving toward its prey.

Quiz 3: Neuroethology is:

a. a field of study focused on the genetic control of the neural mechanisms underlying learning and memory

b. a field of study that blends a mechanistic understanding of the proximate control of behavior with understanding of the evolutionary mechanism that have shaped behavior

c. a field of study that seeks to understand how and why intelligence has evolved in species that are highest in the evolutionary tree (i.e. most evolved).

d. none are correct

Review the Noguera et al paper that we discussed in groups. What was the hypothesis? What did the results show?

Hypothesis: Micronutrient availability during postnatal development and/or during sexual maturation can affect personality traits in zebra finches as adults.

Results: As a whole, the authors found that low availability of dietary micronutrients during the postnatal period resulted in reduced boldness in males once they reached adulthood but had no effect on adult stress responses or neophobic behavior. No such effects were found in females. In contrast, a low micronutrient diet during sexual maturation led in both sexes to reduced stress responses and neophobic behaviors in adulthood. The study also found that females became more aggressive as adults if they had received a low micronutrient diet during development, regardless of when the availability of micronutrients was modified.

What are Tinbergen's 4 questions? Which deal with proximate explanations of behavior, and which deal with ultimate explanations? Can you explain the difference between a proximate and an ultimate question, or hypothesis? Could you give an example of each of Tinbergen's Four Questions?

o Niko Tinbergen wrote to Konrad Lorenz “Four Questions”

§ 1) What is the immediate causation of the behavior?

· Physical/physiological mechanism that underlie behavior. What genes, hormones, physiological systems are involved in producing the behavior? (Proximate explanation)

§ 2) How does the behavior develop?

· Ontogeny. When does the behavior develop in an individual’s life? What is the developmental process? Is learning involved? (Proximate explanation)

§ 3) What is the evolutionary history of the behavior?

· When did this behavior emerge in evolutionary history? Shared among relatives? (Ultimate explanation)

§ 4) What is the adaptive function of the behavior?

· Is it adaptive? If so, what is it good for? How does it increase an individual’s survival or reproductive success? (Ultimate explanation)

o Proximate explanations – Invoke physiological, neurobiological, anatomical, or developmental mechanisms – i.e. how does the behavior work?

o Ultimate explanations – invoke evolutionary or historical mechanisms- i.e. When and why did the behavior evolve? What’s it good for?

Hypotheses must be falsifiable with data.

What are the hypothesized benefits to a bird that can sing the local dialect? That is, why is song learning adaptive?

Song learning is costly, but has benefits

· Hypothesis: Learning allows birds to sing songs that match their habitat

o Great tits songs are different in dense forest habitats vs open woodlands.

· Hypothesis: Learning allows males to match songs to social environment

o Song sparrows – young males learn songs of established neighbors in order to fit in. Also, have non-shared song types that can de-escalate and thwart potential fights.

· Hypothesis: Females use learned aspects of song as an indicator of developmental history.

o Females preferred the males who could better copy the tape songs.

o Song learning quality is strongly influenced by the early natal environment: food availability, food quality, stressors, pathogens.

What is the scientific method and how it is used to study behavior? What are the steps of the scientific method? What is the difference between a question, a hypothesis, and a prediction?

Make observations -> Think of questions -> Formulate hypotheses -> develop testable predictions -> gather data to test predictions -> refine/alter/expand/reject hypotheses -> develop general theories.

o Hypotheses must be falsifiable, with data

o Our understanding depends upon a “body of evidence”

o Hypotheses vs Prediction

§ HYPOTHESES – IS A STATEMENT, AN EXPLANATION

§ Prediction – is the way you would test that.

What is natural selection? Where/how did this idea originate?

Mid 19th Century - World was stagnant, with no plausible mechanism for change.

§ 1) Evidence from geology – Charles Lyell – Gradualism – Species can change over time.

§ 2) Evidence from comparative anatomy – homologous structures are similar in position, structure, and evolutionary origin but not necessarily in function.

§ 3) Evidence from Paleontology – FOSSILS

Darwin did not come up with idea of evolution, but proposed a mechanism by which evolution COULD occur – “Natural Selection”

o Evolution by natural selection:

§ Individuals within species are variable

§ Some variations are heritable – easily seen in domesticated animals.

§ More offspring are produced than can survive (idea from economist Thomas Malthus)

§ Some variations are more successful in the prevailing environment

§ Individuals with the most favorable variations are more likely to survive and to reproduce

§ Naturally selected individuals contribute relatively more offspring to later generations, leading to a gradual increase in the adaptive traits.

o Both Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace came up with the same theory

§ Published Darwin-Wallace theory of evolution by natural selection in 1858

§ On the Origin of Species – 1859. Established evolutionary descent with modification as the dominant scientific explanation of diversification in nature.

o Natural selection is a passive filtering mechanism

§ Not “goal” oriented, not an attempt to create the perfect organism.

What are the conditions required for natural selection to act on a trait and lead to evolutionary change? What is group selection and how does it differ from Darwinian natural selection? Is group selection an equally plausible mechanism of evolution as natural selection?

o Natural selection acting on differences among individuals within a population will usually have a stronger evolutionary effect than group selection acting on differences among groups.

§ The self-sacrificing individual will have much lower reproductive success than the selfish individual.

§ Natural selection acts on individuals; populations and species change over time as a result.

What defines behavior? What is true about how behavior is determined and how it evolves?

o “Behavior is the coordinated responses of whole living organisms to internal and external stimuli” – Lee Alan Dugatkin

§ Behavior is not everything an animal does.

· i.e. Sweating -/ not a behavior…. A physiological response of the skin organ to internal and external stimuli.

· i.e. moving to shade and resting IS a behavior.

o Behavior is… how animals cope with things and solve problems

§ Phenotype

· Traits of an individual resulting from the interaction of its genotype with the environment

§ Heritable

§ Shaped by evolution by the process of natural selection

§ Situationally flexible

§ Behavior develops as a product of genes and the environment

o Phenotype = genes x environment

o Interactionist position

§ Both genes and learning can affect the development of behavior·

What makes a behavior an adaptation (an adaptive trait)?

A behavior is adaptive if it improves survival or reproductive success.

What is John Swaddle's approach to solving the problem of how birds can be effectively repelled from economically important areas? What is a sonic net? What is an acoustic lighthouse?

o Behavioral approach: What influences where a bird occupies habitat? What influences foraging strategies?

o Perception of risk

o Birds are highly reliant on acoustic communication and on being able to hear approaching predators.

§ If we block the ability for birds to hear each other and hear danger when foraging, we will alter their perception of risk.

§ A Sonic Net - highly directional noise to maximally mask avian acoustic communications.

o Acoustic lighthouse - alert birds w/ sound to help them avoid a collision.

Why should we study animal behavior?

1) Practical applications: conservation, agriculture, or wildlife management.

§ Pingers on nets/lines at Seaworld.

2) Insight into behavioral mechanisms & evolution of humans.

§ Can help us understand our own evolutionary biology + diseases

3) Curiosity about the living world, which is inherently interesting.

§ Male pregnancies, sex changes, tool use, ornaments, and courtship

o Animal behavior is on the front line of response to social and environmental change.

§ Respond to Conspecific, heterospecific, and environmental change.

What is a spandrel in terms of evolutionary biology? How did Gould and Lewontin use a spandrel analogy to warn against the "adaptationist paradigm?"

o Perils of adaptive storytelling.. Beware the spandrels!

§ The spandrels of San Marco (spandrels = triangular spaces between tops of two arches + the ceiling) – spandrels are for artists to display work FALSE – it’s to hold up the roof.

§ In evolutionary biology, a spandrel is a phenotypic characteristic that is a byproduct of the evolution of some other characteristic, rather than a direct product of adaptive selection.

§ Gould and Lewontin warned against "adaptionist paradigm"

- do not assume adaptation

-traits make up an individual, and each of those traits experiences selection, but there's still just one individual who lives or dies.

What is a polyphenism? A developmental switch?

§ Salamanders –

· Polyphenism: discrete phenotypes develop from a single genotype as a result of differing environmental conditions during development

· typical morphs vs cannibal morphs. Same genetic material, environment is different

· Cannibals develop when:

o Many salamander larvae live together

o Larvae differ greatly in size

o Population consists of lots of non-relatives

· Developmental Switch Mechanism –

o A regulatory mechanism that integrates current and past information from the environment with the individual’s genotype. As a result, the individual’s developmental trajectory is shifted along alternative pathways.

o Salamanders exploit whichever food source is optimal in their pond: either smaller larval salamanders or small invertebrates.

Could you compare/contrast behaviors that are instinctual, imprinted, or learned?

§ Learning – A durable and often adaptive change in an animal’s behavior traceable to a specific experience in the individual’s life. A change in behavior based on experience that outlasts the experience. Behaviors that are learned depend at least in some part on the environment

§ Imprinting – development of the ability to learn occurring at a particular age or life stage

§Instincts = Innate Behavior – inherent inclination of a living organism towards a particular complex behavior. A behavior is instinctive if it is performed without prior experience (in the absence of learning) and is, therefore, an expression of genes and other biological factors.

What is learning? What do we know about the costs and benefits of learning?

§ Learning is costly

· Requires neural infrastructure, brains are energetically expensive, takes longer to grow a larger brain, brains have high metabolisms

· Benefit? Ability to learn allows plasticity and flexibility: adaptive responses to environmental unpredictability

What is associative learning, habituation, and sensitization? What is a fixed action pattern, a sign stimulus, and an innate releasing mechanism?

§ Associative Learning – an animal learns to associate two stimuli

· Operant conditioning – an animal learns to associate a stimulus that has biological meaning for it with a neutral stimulus

o Ex: dog learns when bowl (neutral) picked up, dog will be fed // yellow lids have food for birds.

§ Habituation – responses to the same stimulus grow weaker with subsequent presentations

· Ex: crabs responding to shadows

· Adaptive - less energy wasted on unimportant stimuli, more attention paid to novel stimuli, important in complicated sensory environment

§ Sensitization – responses to the same stimulus grow stronger with subsequent presentations

· Ex: sea hare syphon (vulnerable orifice, more danger, more defensive response)

· Adaptive – enhances response to potential danger

§ Fixed Action Pattern (Tinbergen and Lorenz)

· Fixed action pattern: Series of motor movements that once initiated, proceed to completion without continued influence of stimulus.

· Sign stimulus aka Releaser: a simple stimulus that activates or releases a behavior

· Innate releasing mechanism: a neural network that processes the sign stimulus and coordinates fixed action pattern.

o Ex. Egg rolling in geese. Releaser= egg. Geese continue process of rolling egg into nest even if egg is removed

Cook & Mineka performed an experiment to test the effects of learning and genetics on the development of fear responses in macaques. What was the experiment and what evidence did it provide?

§ Both genes and learning can affect the development of behavior

· Hypothesis: fear of snakes is learned

· 1) do monkeys learn to fear snakes through social learning? – yes, lab macaques learned to fear snakes

· 2) can any fear be induced by social learning? – snake group feared snakes. Flower group did NOT learn to fear flowers

· Many of the fears are socially learned/triggered, but there is a genetic predisposition to fear it. – Both genes and learning can affect the development of behavior.

What are the differences between an artificial selection experiment, a common garden experiment, a cross-breeding, experiment, and a cross-fostering experiment?

Methods used to understand the degree to which genes influence behavior

1) Crossbreeding experiments

· Blackcap warblers migrate in different directions. Crossbred birds go straight down the middle

2) Artificial selection

· Size of nests that mice build is under genetic influence, since it can be selected for

3) Common Garden

o Raise offspring under same conditions/ remove environmental influences

o 1) take 2 populations differing in behavior. 2) raise individuals from both in the same environment. 3) if differences persist, then those differences have a genetic basis. 4) removes major environmental effects that can shape behavior

4) Cross-fostering experiments

-Swap offspring among parents/ removes developmental effects like learning.

o Tests effects of genes vs rearing/learning.

How do hormones work to modulate behavior? What do they do and what do they NOT do?

o Hormone are major mediators of behaviors with critical functions in reproduction and survival.

o Because hormones can respond to environmental changes and affect many aspects of phenotypes, hormones are thought to be proximate mediators of behavioral evolution

o Hormones coordinate physiology and behavior

§ -by regulating, integrating, and controlling bodily functions

§ -can change gene expression and cellular function

§ Hormones – organic chemical signals produced within one part of an animal’s body (endocrine gland) released into circulation to act on another part of the body (target).

§ All behavioral systems are composed of…

· Input systems (sensory systems)

· Integrators (central nervous system)

· Output systems (muscles)

o Hormones do not cause behavioral changes

o Hormones change the probability that a particular behavior will be emitted in the appropriate situation

What are the differences between Organizational and Activational effects of hormones?

“Organizational Activational Hypothesis”

§ Hormones can affect behavior during early development and in adulthood

· Organizational effects

o Occur early in development

o During a specific critical period

o Are irreversible

· Activational effects

o Occur in adulthood

o Are reversible

o Only occur when the hormone is present.

How can behavioral aggression be maintained when testosterone levels drop?

· Spotted Antbirds

o Aggressive year round... but, circulating levels of sex steroids are very low in the non-breeding season. How is aggression maintained when testosterone is low?

o Sensitivity to hormones in target tissues = behavioral variation.

§ Non-reproductive brain shows increased sensitivity to sex steroids.

Why is stress bad for us?

· Threat triggers “fight or flight” mediated by Adrenalin (epinephrine)

· Glucocorticoids (CORT = cortisol, corticosterone) – metabolic hormones involved in stress response

· Effects of acute CORT elevation? – mobilizes glucose and fat for fighting or fleeing

· Longer threat = psychological stress, damaging over time.

o Impaired immune system

o Lower reproductive function, more anovulatory cycles, delayed puberty

What does it mean for a behavior to be polygenic? Pleiotropic?

o Polygenic behavior – lots of genes are involved. The control of complex behavior is typically polygenic

o Pleiotropy – a single gene has multiple effects.

§ Gene responsible for synthesizing nitrous oxide is a neurotransmitter. Researched created knockout mice, their gene is inoperative. This makes them more aggressive. In addition, they had abnormal appearance, resistant to stroke damage, abnormal sexual behavior. One gene had MULTIPLE effects.

o Two generalizations about genetic control of complex behaviors

§ 1) behavioral traits are likely to polygenic

§ 2) behavior genes are likely pleotropic

What is an audiogram, what does it tell you about an animal? What is stimulus filtering and how is this trait adaptive as it relates to behavior?

§ Audiogram = a hearing curve (typically U shaped). Threshold: how loud does the sound need to be heard? (vertical axis) vs frequency (horizontal axis)

· The frequencies of best hearing are shown at the lowest points of graph

Stimulus filtering occurs when an animal's nervous system fails to respond to stimuli that would otherwise cause a reaction to occur. ... This enables the animal to conserve energy as it is not responding to unimportant signals.

What is Neuroethology? What is feature detection?

· Neuroethology – study of how the central nervous system translates biological stimuli into natural behavior

§ Feature detection – nervous system sorts key information from the “background noise” … filters complex natural stimuli to extract cues (stimuli) associated w important objects or organisms in their environment

§ Feature detectors – individual groups of neurons that code for perceptually significant stimuli

Pioneered by Jorg-Peter Ewert via his study of feature detection in toad vision. Toads snap at the horizontal moving bar, but not a perpendicular bar.

What adaptive traits in the hearing system of the bat have evolved, and why? What problems do bats face when they use echolocation? What about moths -- what advantages have they evolved in order to escape predation?

§ Bats produce a biological sonar called echolocation (hypothesized by Donald Griffin and Robert Galambos)

· Emit high-frequency pulses and use returning echoes to navigate around obstacles and capture prey while flying.

· Hearing, not sight, is critical to bats’ navigation and prey-finding ability (bats are nocturnal!)

· Detecting echoes is a problem due to spherical spreading losses (esp. at high frequencies). Must have acute hearing at the right frequencies.

· Kenneth Roeder: Nocturnal insects must face strong selection pressure to detect bat sounds and avoid them.

· Moth ear: two auditory receptor cells (A1 and A2) linked to a tympanum that vibrates when exposed to sound. Much less intricate than a bat’s.

o Sensory neurons relay information to interneurons in the thoracic ganglia, which connect to motor neurons that control the wings. Signals are not sent to the brain, but rather directly to the wings.

o A1 receptors – fire faster with increasing sound intensity

§ Varies depending if sound is from L/R side, above or below, or in front or behind. So, based on the A1 receptors firing, the moth knows what direction a bat is coming from.

o A2 receptors – fire only at a high sound intensity.

What is caching? What is brood parasitism? Are there sex differences in these behaviors? If so what does the sex difference tell you about the costs and benefits of learning?

- caching in animal behavior is the storage of food in locations hidden from the sight of both conspecifics (animals of the same or closely related species) and members of other species.

o caching behavior differs between sexes during the breeding season.

§ Sex difference suggests trait is costly, must be a strong benefit for trait to evolve. females are worse at caching.

o Sex differences in the hippocampus of brown-headed cowbirds.

§ Brood parasite: female lays eggs in the nests of other species, which then rear the parasitic young.

§ Hippocampus: brain structure related to learning, memory, and spatial navigation

§ Female hippocampi are larger in females than males

§ Relatives of cowbirds that do not reproduce via brood parasitism have similar hippocampi.

What are the General Processes view versus the Cognitive Ecology view of the evolution of cognitive abilities?

Cognitive ecology view-

yes, cognitive abilities shaped by natural selection

General Process view -

No cognitive specialization

What are the two major categories of questions that researchers ask about animal cognitive abilities?

1) Are cognitive abilities adapted to the environment and species today?

§ Yes, cognitive abilities are shaped by natural selection

2) How far do various cognitive abilities extend taxonomically?

§ Do other taxa possess cognitive abilities seen in humans? How distantly in the evolutionary tree do we see this cognitive ability?

What did Elizabeth Tibbets hypothesize about facial recognition in social paper wasps? What did her experiment show?

§ P. fuscatus is a highly social species with a dominance hierarchy maintained by aggression. Individual females have distinctive facial patterns.

§ P. metricus is a solitary species with little aggression among females. Individual females do not have distinctive facial patterns.

§ Wasp facial recognition experiment – forced choice experiment.

§ Females of P. fuscatus learn to associate a particular face of a female of their species with a safe refuge in T-maze. Females of P. metricus perform at roughly chance levels. So, do P. fuscatus have superior facial learning skills?

§ Even when the faces of P. metricus are used in the experiment, the results are the same.

§ Cognitive ability of face recognition has evolved in one species but not the other due to the species social system.

What are the three hypotheses that Brian Hare proposed to explain why dogs excel at reading human social cues? What data support or refute these hypotheses? (review the figures we discussed in class about dogs vs. wolves and domesticated versus control foxes).

·1) Canid generalization: all canids are good at interpreting social cues – genetic ✗ (because wolves did not interpret well)

2) Human exposure: dogs are good at interpreting human cues because more exposure during lifetime – learned ✗ (because even wolves who have grown up with humans as babies still did not interpret cues well)

3) Domestication: selection during domestication has led to evolution of better cognitive abilities – evolved ✓

What is the Clever Hans Effect? What is Morgan's Canon?

o “Clever Hans Effect” – do not attribute higher mental faculties, like mathematical abilities, if the animal’s actions can be explained by a simpler mechanism like unconscious cueing.

· Morgan’s Canon – British psychololgist C. Lloyd Morgan

o Dog learned to open the gate.

o Animal behavior should be explained as simply as possible.

o “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.”

o Insight and apparent problem-solving behavior can be explained using trial and error learning.

What is the difference between relative numerousness, subitizing, and counting?

· Some animals do have numerical competency (the ability to count)

o Relative numerousness – judgements of more or fewer

o Subitizing – the ability to ‘see’ a small amount of objects and know how many there are without counting

o Counting – serial application of ordered number tags

What is the Social Brain hypothesis?

· The Social Brain Hypothesis – Proposed to explain why primates have unusually large brains for body size compared to all other vertebrates:

o Primates evolved large brains to manage their unusually complex social systems

o Living in large complex societies requires advanced cognitive abilities:

§ Communication

§ Recognition skills

§ Intense forms of pair-bonding

§ Reciprocity and retaliation

§ Maintaining group cohesion during conflicts

o If hypothesis is correct, then species of social mammal will have particularly large brains for their body size.

§ Spotted Hyenas

· Highly stratified clans

· Cooperatively hunt prey

· Work together to batter other clans over resources

§ Christine Drea at Duke University –

· Captive pairs of spotted hyenas worked together to tug two ropes in unison to earn a food reward. Learned the maneuvers quickly with no training. Experienced hyenas even helped inexperienced partners to do the trick.

§ But, overall: Support for the social brain hypothesis is mixed.

· Studied of brain sizes in primates show that diet is often a better predictor of brain size than sociality.

· Relationship does not hold up consistently in other taxonomic groups

· Species like meerkats have much more complicated social systems than their small brains would suggest.

What is a cognitive bias? What is the Dunning-Kreuger Effect?

o In human psychology – a cognitive bias is a type of error in thinking that occurs when people are processing and interpreting information in the world around them.

§ The human brain is powerful, but… cognitive biases result from our brain’s attempt to simplify information processing

o In non-human animals – cognitive bias in animals is deviation in information processing whereby interferences about other animals and situations may be affected by irrelevant information or affective states.

o Dunning-Kreuger Effect – a cognitive bias in which people mistakenly assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is.

§ David Dunning: People with substantial, measurable deficits in their knowledge or expertise lack the ability to recognize those deficits, and, therefore despite potentially making error after error, tend to think they are performing competently when they’re not.

§ What causes the Dunning-Kreuger bias?

· In contrast to high performers, poor performers do not seek out, pay attention, or learn from feedback that suggests a need to improve.