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Animal Problem Solving Techniques

The document discusses various aspects of animal problem-solving, including Thorndike's Law of Effect, navigation techniques in desert ants and gerbils, and cognitive maps in rats. It also highlights insights from Gestalt psychology through experiments with chimpanzees, pigeons, and New Caledonian crows, showcasing their ability to solve problems using tools and reasoning. Additionally, it touches on the concept of analogical reasoning and questions the evidence of animals solving problems without trial and error.

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6 views3 pages

Animal Problem Solving Techniques

The document discusses various aspects of animal problem-solving, including Thorndike's Law of Effect, navigation techniques in desert ants and gerbils, and cognitive maps in rats. It also highlights insights from Gestalt psychology through experiments with chimpanzees, pigeons, and New Caledonian crows, showcasing their ability to solve problems using tools and reasoning. Additionally, it touches on the concept of analogical reasoning and questions the evidence of animals solving problems without trial and error.

Uploaded by

greensofa33
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Animal Problem Solving:

Thorndike’s Law of Effect:

If a response leads to a satisfying outcome, it will be strengthened.

Thorndike (1898) animals solve through trial and error

Deductive reasoning: the conclusion necessarily follows from the


premise.

Inductive reasoning: the conclusion is likely to follow the premise.

Navigation:

Dead reckoning/path navigation:

Wehner and Srinivasan 1981- dead reckoning nor path integration in


desert ants.

Desert ants calculate their return route. They use path integration or dead
reckoning for this phenomenon. They figured out that ants used the
polarised light that the sun created to know their direction. They did this
by using a lens that reversed the polarisation. They also doubled the ants’
legs with a pig’s bristle, making them go 2x the distance, meaning they
count steps. Wow…

Piloting:

Cartwright and Collet 1983- Piloting with a single landmark in


gerbils.

They put a circular tube inside a circle shape and buried some sesame
seeds under some granite chips. Then they revealed the gerbils from all
directions. The results were that the gerbils knew their location based on
landmarks they were seeing and their height/location.

Cognitive Maps:

Tolman, Ritchie and Kalish (1946a) worked at a time when behaviourism


was the predominant view (e.g. Tolman and Hull) He ran an experiment
with Ritchie and some other guy with rats in which he tried the rats to run
along an apparatus and these routes. Then he put them in a sunburst
maze and the rats. There was an H which is a houselight.

Richard Morris (1981)- wanted to see if rats could reduce or find a novel
route in a water maze. It was more like a 2m long pool. The rats swam.
There was a control, a same-place and a new-place hole.

Pearce, Good, Jones & McGregor (2004)- if you train a rat in a rectangle
something

Insight: Gestalt Psychology

Wolfgang Kohler (1925): He gave his chimpanzee problems which involved


using tools to get food. His fav ape Sultan solved one. He wrote a book
called the mentality of apes

Epstein et al. (1984) did a similar experiment, but with pigeons and
bananas. The pigeons had to move a box to a hole to get a banana.
There’s even a video of this experiment: the pigeon has to stand on a box
to get the banana.

Weir, Chappel, Kacelnik (2002)- They experimented with New Caledonian


Crows. They got a crow named Betty and gave her problems to solve.
They got Betty to solve a problem where it needed to use a stick to push
out food from a tube, it instead turned the stick into a hook.

Analogical Reasoning (type of inductive reasoning)

Is there any evidence that animals can solve problems without trial and
error?

Gillan and Premack (1981)-

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