Animal Cognition
Angela Kelling
2/12/03
Definition
• Roitblat defines animal cognition as, “the
study of the minds of animals and the
mechanisms by which those minds operate”
(114).
– Leaves so many questions, ie what are minds?
• Better definition-how animals process
information (Shettleworth)
• Some disagree with the information
processing definition
– procedural vs. declarative
– mental representations
Definition (cont’d)
What do I mean by cognition?
• The mechanism by which animals
– Acquire information
– Process information
– Store information
– Act on information
• Processes-perception, learning, memory,
and decision making
• Does not necessarily imply conscious
awareness/thinking
Animal Cognition and Cog Sci
• Can help answer many questions, sheds
light on many issues
• Aids humans in interactions with animals
• Shettleworth (1998) stated that, “The
evolution of the animal mind is one of the
most exciting problems in the cognitive
sciences”
Potential Questions
Roitblat (pg 114)
• What do we mean by mind?
• What role does language play in the mind?
• What are the cognitive processes that
operate during perception and recognition?
• What is the nature of memory?
• What is the relation between brain and
behavior?
• How does experience affect behavior?
Potential Questions
Shettleworth (1998, pg vii)
• Issues are raised by all the feats animals can perform, ie navigating
bees and birds, counting rats, self-aware chimpanzees
– How do bees or pigeons find their
way home?
– Can other animals navigate as well as
they do, and if not, why not?
– Do parrots really talk?
– What use would counting be in the
wild?
Potential Questions
Shettleworth
• Do monkeys and apes, which look so much
like us, think like us, too?
• What is the relationship between the
human mind and minds of other species?
Consciousness
• “The quality or state of being aware,
especially of something within oneself”
• Can animals be considered conscious?
– Yes, no, maybe so
– Behaviorism vs. cognitive ethology
• In humans-
– automaticity, blindsight=unconscious
• Can animals be conscious without the full
realm of human language?
– Is thought tied to language?
Learning
• Protozoa
• No IQ test for animals
• Constraints on Learning
– Rats will pair saccharin with illness and a loud
noise with shock but not vice versa
• 3 basic learning questions (Shettleworth)
– Conditions for learning
– Content of learning
– Effects on Behavior
Memory
• Memory research is
often separate from
learning, but need
retention to learn
• Methods
– Habituation
– Delayed Response
– Radial Arm Maze
• Giant Pandas
– Species Comparison
(ie bird Songs, food
storing)
Learning from others
• Living in groups-costs and benefits
• Costs
– Competition for food and mates
– Disease
– Aggression/Stress
• Benefits
– Finding food
– Predators
Culture/Teaching/Imitation
• Location specific behaviors-shared by
individuals in one population/area, but not
by other members of the same species living
elsewhere
• Analogous to human culture
Examples
• Potato washing in Japanese macaques
– independent learning, not social
transmission
• Birds peeling tops of milk in Great
Britain
– stimulus enhancement, natural
behavior
• Food preference in rats
• Mobbing behavior of birds
• Two-action test/Artificial fruit
• Bird Songs
• Crow and coke bottle
But is any of it really imitation?
• Hard to say, hotly debated
• So many options to consider and rule out
– individual learning based on same
circumstances
– stimulus enhancement
– emulation
– imitation-does true imitation really exist?
Tool Use
• Defined as the use of an
external object to serve
as a functional extension
of the body, ie hand or
beak, to reach an
immediate goal
• Once thought a
distinction of humans
from animals, now seen
in many animals, but still
debated
Examples of Tool Use
• Crabs and anenomes
• Widespread in primates
– Termite hills
– Leafs as cups
– Anvils
– Golden Lion Tamarin
How do they learn to use tools
• Often animals not seen using tools in the wild
will use them in captivity
– Capuchin peanut task
• Trial and error
• Insight
– Köhler-was species typical behavior-chimps already
tend to climb on boxes, play with and put sticks
together
• Imitation
– Still debated if true imitation exists, may be stimulus
enhancement combined with trial and error
Communication
• A signal intended to influence behavior
– Dog’s snarl=hostility
– Principle of Antithesis (Darwin)
Language versus
Communication Systems
• Language • Natural Nonhuman
– Unbounded-can add communication
new words and use – Limited set-ie
based on rules of aggression, sex, food,
syntax predators, could not
– Situational freedom- talk about Martians
object does not have to – Lack situational
be present to refer to it freedom-Bees dance?
Waggle Dance
• Info about distance and direction
• Convey by direction, number of
waggles, amount of buzzing, etc
• Can potentially use odor of bee who visited to
find site, so may not be communication
– Studies tricking the sensory systems of bees provide
evidence that supports the language hypothesis
– Evolution-many insects wind down after flight, so
what needed to develop was interpretation
• Displaced?-It just happened
Monkey Speak
Cheney and Seyfarth, 1990
• Vervet monkeys have 3 distinct calls that refer
to type of predator
– Leopard/big cats-run to trees
– Eagle-Look up in air, run into bushes
– Pythons-Stand bipedally, search grass
• Found differential response, even in playback
• Infants often make mistakes, must learn-but
not corrected, so observational
Trying to Teach Human
Language to Other Species
• Problems with Early Studies
– Earliest (i.e. Vicki) tried to train chimps to
produce spoken English words
– Anatomic problem-lack right angle bend in
vocal tract required for human speech
– Training resulted only in comprehension and a
few very difficult to train speech sounds
Why they failed
• Asking the wrong
question
– Asked can apes learn
language-yes/no
question
– Need to look at aspects
they do learn and
compare with correct
population-children
learning ASL
• ASL not seen as a full
human language until
60’s
Spoken English vs. ASL
English ASL
-structure lies in -order less
order of words important
-uses inflection
(i.e. place and
direction)
-context
A New Set of Studies
• Brought in ASL or lexigram boards
• Still had some problems
– often began training as adults
– no opportunity for reference development,
trained to make response for reinforcement
Koko
• 20 mos learned
“baby”-applied to
specific toy, then new
doll, and then human
baby
• Vocab 1,000 words,
understands 2,000
• 3-6 average/statement
• Initiates majority of
conversations
Washoe
• 1st nonhuman to be said
to learn a human
language (ASL)
• 1st production was
delayed imitation-she
identified a toothbrush
• After 10 mos, small
vocab about 12 words
• Spontaneously
combined “gimme
sweet” and “come
open”
Kanzi
• A bonobo
• Spontaneous lexigram
learning-no rewards
• Can understand spoken
words and use word order
• Can make requests,
comment
• Still slower than a
human, maybe similar to
language of evolutionary
ancestors
A Wrap-Up Comparison
• Similar-vocab content,
non-sign gestures
• Apes tend to peak at the
level of a 2-yr. old
• Main differences
– rate
– pattern
– complex grammar
– utterance length
Parker and McKinney, 1999
A rate comparison
Human Koko
10 signs 13.3 months 16 months
50 signs 23 months 25 months
Average 7.8 signs/month 4 signs/month
Self-Awareness
• What does it mean to have a mind?
• Roitblat says 2 schools of thought
– phenomenology-ask questions like what is it
like to be a bat, focus on the idea that to have a
mind is to have experience of self-conscious
existence
– functionality-focus on what kind of mind,
processes, can lead to strong AI, but claim
animals have sensimotor to set them apart
Self-Awareness
• Mirror test or mark
test
– chimpanzees,
orangutans, bonobos
– gorilla issue
– monkey borderline
data
• touching tufts
• using mirror to guide
them to objects
– confused monkey
Good ol’ T.O.M.
• Attributing mental states to others
– Children cannot separate their representation
from another’s until about 4
– Knower/guesser tests
• all knowing humans?
• Deception-mostly anecdotal
– eat/mate out of sight-reinforcement?
– Wait to eat when see food hidden
• Does it require language?