PSYCH 515 - Lectures 4 & 5 + Harlow and Tolman

Ocellus

• Found in many insects

• Not good at detecting shape, distance, or resolution

• Main task is to detect light/darkness changes (supplementary)

Pigment cup

• Curvature allowing different areas to detect light

• Still not able to pin point direction of light, slightly better resolution

Pinhole Eye

• Full curvature, allowing for detection of directionality of light

• Still open, allowing water to freely flow in and out

Primitive Lens

• A sheet of cells covering lens

• Introduction of lens, only lets in light, even better at directionality

Complex Eye

• Introduction of muscles that help focus lens

Octopus vs Human Eye

• These are both compound eyes, but have two different evolutionary histories = Analogous Structures

• Mammals have a blind spot where the optic nerve leaves the eye, octopus do not have this blind spot

Compound Eye

Evolved independent of other known eye structures, very low in resolution

Eye Placement

Eyes on sides - Prey

• Have greater coverage - need to keep an out for prey

• Less detail - don’t have a large binocular vision overlap

Eyes in Front - Predator/Fruit eater

• Greater detail - larger binocular vision overlap, better at depth perception

• Less coverage - they need to lock on prey/fruit

Color Vision

Depends on number of different color receptor types

Ultraviolet Light

• Less than 400 nm

• Bees and Pigeons

• Some flowers under this light look like a bulls eye

Infrared Light

• More than 780 nm

• Vipers - Pit Organs, kinda like '“thermal vision”

Plane of Polarization

• Used to tell the sun’s position from dominant band of light

• Improves contrast under water

• Cuttlefish uses it to define objects (prey)

Sand fleas

Sand fleas actually use camouflage, but to use they are very visible, for birds they are hard to see

Sound

• Frequency - changes in pressure over time

• Waves travel better in water than in air

Echolocation (Sonar)

• Bats click faster (=higher frequency) creating echoes that are able to detect size, shape, and texture

• Dolphins do the same to produce echoes in water

Ultrasonic Sound

Higher frequency, shorter distances, over 20,000 Hz

Infrasonic Sound

Lower frequency, longer distances, under 20 Hz

Elephants and Whales

Sound Localization

Owls have disk shaped faces that help funnel sound in

They also have asymmetrical ears, allowing to locate sound better

Lateral Line Organ

Able to detect the rate of vibrations in water - “water ears”

Somatosensory Homunculus

Representation of how much brain an animal dedicates to a touch-sensitive area of the body

Star-nosed Mole

• Have most nerve ending in nose

• Nose able to be used for touch, smell, and taste

Taste

• water-borne chemicals

• Types of receptors to alert animals to avoid poison and seek nutrients

Garter Snake

• They use their tongue as a way to taste air and move air particles into nose

• Males are able to sniff out the directionality of females

Silk Moth

• Male silk moths are able to detect the faintest traces of female pheromones

• This is done using their antennae, which are covered in scent receptors

Bloodhounds

Have six times the amount the scent receptors as humans do - their olfactory epithelium is larger

Electrical Sense

• Platypus have electroreceptors that help them detect prey

• Electrical current is released from prey’s muscles -n great for muddy conditions

Electrical Fields

• Some fish are able to generate an electrical field allowing them to detect if fish are swimming near them

Mormyromasts

Electroreceptor that detects object echoes

Knollenorgans

Electroreceptor that detects other electric fish

Ampullary Receptors

Electroreceptor that detects muscle activity of prey

Magnetic Fields

• There is not great evidence on if animals use magnetic fields

• Bacteria contain particles of magnetite which would make them sensitive to magnetic fields

Innate Behavior

• Fixed and genetic that are triggered or enhanced by learning

• Fixed action patterns, releaser stimuli, supernormal stimuli

Learned Behavior

• Acquired and modifies over development that can be affected by innate biases

• Classical Conditioning, Operant Conditioning, Latent Learning

Fixed Action Pattern

• A behavior that once triggered must be completed, not modifiable

• Ex: once a frog sticks out its tongue it cant stop

Graylag Goose

• Once the goose sees anything egg shape, it will use its beak to roll it back to the nest, even if you remove the egg

Stickleback Mating

• Female follows red bellied male into the nest, where it lays its eggs, then leaves following the male

• This is an example of a releaser stimulus

Releaser Stimulus

• Stimuli that trigger innate behaviors

• Ex: the red belly of a male stickleback for a female

Supernormal Stimuli

• Objects with extreme and unnatural features that release an innate behavior

• Ex: Herring Gull Egg Rolling Preference

Herring Gull Egg Rolling Preference

This is an example of a supernormal stimulus, herring gulls would roll bigger normal looking eggs more preferentially than smaller ones.

Australian Digger Wasp

• The wasp does not know what the tunnel should look like, rather it shows us how behavior can be coded by genetics

• If there is a hole it will create new tunnel from that hole, if neck is buried in will make the funnel in the ground

Innate Behaviors in Humans?

• There are some during infancy, but they go away

• There is not a clear innate human behavior

Conditioning

Associative learning

Unconditioned stimuli

Any event or thing that naturally and automatically triggers a reaction without any prior learning or training

Unconditioned Response

an automatic, natural reaction to something that happens without any prior training or learning

Learning in Classical Conditioning

US → UR

US + NS → UR

CS → CR

Blocking

When the addition of a second cue has little to no effect, the first cue is already effective

Contiguity

Occurring together (1 then 2, 2 then 1)

Contingency

Occur together in a predictive order (1 then 2, always)

Contiguity vs Contingency

Contingency forms the basis of learning

Shaping

Animal discovers the response that leads to reinforcement through trial and error

Postive

The addition of a stimulus

Negative

The removal of a stimulus

Reinforcement

Continue the behavior

Punishment

Stop the behavior

Appetitive

When an animal shows preference for a stimulus

Aversive

When an animal avoids a stimulus

Reflex Chain

Behaviorist say that animals learn a motor program

Mental Map

Cognitive People will say animals create a image of the space that they can use flexibly

Rats were able to create a mental map telling them where food was, therefore they woudl often pic the fastest path to the food

Latent Learning

Animals spontaneously combine information to produce behavior that is not explicitly trained or conditioned

• On Day 1 rats freely move from room to room

• On Day 2 rats receive a shock once they enter the black room

• On Day 3 rats do not enter the black room at all rather just go to the white room

Innately Biased Learning

• Animals are born with genetic predispositions that bias learning

• The timing that is needed for learning depends on the stimulus

• There are fixed modalities for the cues that can be associated with certain outcomes

• Ex: Rats can learn to jump to avoid shock but not to get food

Mobbing

• This is an innate behavior, but the bird still has to learn which predators to mob

• Experiments show that you can teach a bird to mob to non predators

Imprinting

• Chicks have this innate behavior, but they have to learn who to imprint on

• Pigeons might be able to detect the polarization of light

• will peak in the direction of polarization

Pigeons use both perspective and shading to recognize the three-dimension-ality of two-dimensional images

Pigeons can perceive two-dimensional projections as representations of three-dimensional scenes much as we humans do

• cattle (A), roe deer (B), and red deer (C) tend to sleep head facing north and rump facing south

• Could be a sign of magnetic field sensing

• After some training, the animal started to close the gill flap when just the mantle was touched

• It learned that a mantle touch would follow with a shock (classical conditioning)

Baboons recieved attention when they would hurt themselves, but when they were ignore the rate of negative behaviors went down

• Shows the percents of monkeys solving the task and if they made any errors

• Those that made 1 error solved it 27% of the time

• There were similar results for reversal

• Reward conditions learned faster

• The addition of the starved state made learning even faster