Cognitive Ethology II
Dogs vs. wolves
Brian Hare tested the canid generalization hypotheses using wolves raised by humans
No cue given
Results showed support for the Domestication Hypothesis because dogs
outperformed wolves at interpreting/following human gestures
Monique Udell and colleagues defend wolves
In previous studies: wolves tested outdoors with barrier
between them and human experimenter, dogs tested indoors
with no barrier
Dogs vs. Wolves II
Battle for the treat in the container
Support for the
domestication hypothesis
is mixed
Attention to human cues in the domesticated fox
Dmitri Belyaev
Russian geneticist interested in
the genetics of domestication
Bred silver foxes for their fur
Artificial selection experiment
1. Selection for tameness
towards humans
2. Over time, foxes became Belyaev also maintained a
control group of foxes
tamer
3. Experimental foxes exhibited
other morphological traits not under
selection
White patches, floppy ears, shorter legs, and
short, curly tails
After 45 years of selection, Brain Hare tested
the domesticated foxes on ability to follow
human gestures
Dog puppies and tame fox kits perform the
same: born with the ability to follow human
cues
Tame foxes out-perform control foxes
Support for the cognitive ecology hypothesis as an
explanation for how cognitive abilities evolve
Behavioral trials with caching birds, paper wasps,
domesticated canids
neural mechanisms remain unresolved
Two key questions about animal cognition:
1. Are cognitive abilities adapted to the environment and species ecology?
Cognitive ecology view General process view
Yes cognitive abilities shaped by No cognitive specialization
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 ?
How does cognition evolve?
Pitfalls of subjective inference when
studying animal cognition
Clever Hans
the Wonder Horse
Berlin, ~1900
Hans answered
questions by
stamping his foot
Hans could add,
subtract, divide,
convert fractions to
decimals
Knew the calendar,
past and future
Oskar von Pfungst:
How to test Clever Hans’s
mathematical abilities?
-Test without trainer
Hans did well
-Test by skeptic
Hans did well
-Test him blindfolded
Hans did poorly
-Test him by someone
without the answer
Hans did poorly
How was Hans performing
these cognitive feats?
“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
Use care when designing behavioral
tests of cognitive abilities to eliminate
the “Clever Hans effect.”
Morgan’s Canon
British psychologist C. Lloyd Morgan
Animal behavior should be explained as simply as
possible.
“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.”
Insight and apparent problem-solving behavior can be
explained using trial and error learning.
Crows, nuts, and cars:
why parsimony matters
People in Davis CA watched crows drop nuts onto roads
They inferred that the crows were using the cars to crack the nuts
A carefully designed research study showed that crows were
using the road and gravity to crack the nuts, but not cars
Despite the Clever Hans story, some animals
do have numerical competency
Counting
How do we define it?
On the next slide which pile has more stones, right
or left?
How many green ovals do you see?
Numerical competence:
Relative numerousness: judgments of
more or fewer
Subitizing: the ability to 'see' a small
amount of objects and know how many
there are without counting.
Counting: serial application of ordered
number tags
Can birds count or subitize their eggs?
Why do some species have better
problem-solving skills than others?
Corvid problem solving video on YouTube
[Link]
The social brain hypothesis
Proposed to explain why primates have unusually large brains for body
size compared to all other vertebrates: Primates evolved large brains to
manage their unusually complex social systems
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
If the social brain
hypothesis is correct:
Species of social mammal
will have particularly
large brains for their body
size
Case in point: spotted hyenas:
-highly stratified clans
-cooperatively hunt prey
-work together to battle other clans over resources
Research by 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 do the trick.
Overall: Support for the social brain
hypothesis is mixed
• Studies of brain sizes in primates
show that diet is often a better
predictor of brain size than sociality
• The 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
Cognitive bias
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 = Cognitive biases result from our brain's attempt to
mental shortcuts, simplify information processing.
heuristics
They are rules that help us make sense of the world
and reach decisions with relative speed.
Examples of cognitive
biases in humans
Confirmation Bias: favoring information that conforms to your
existing beliefs and discounting evidence that does not conform.
Halo Effect: your overall impression of a person influences how you
feel and think about his or her character. This especially applies to
physical attractiveness influencing how you rate other qualities.
Functional Fixedness: tendency to see objects or people as only
working in a particular way. If you don't have a hammer, you never
consider that a big wrench can drive a nail into the wall. Extends to
people's functions, such as not realizing a personal assistant has the
skills to be in a leadership role.
Misinformation Effect: tendency for post-event information to
interfere with the memory of the original event. Memories are easily
influenced by hearing about the event from others. Knowledge of this
effect has led to a mistrust of eyewitness information.
False Consensus Effect: tendency to overestimate how much other
people agree with you.
Cognitive biases in
non-human animals
Cognitive bias in animals is deviation in information
processing whereby inferences about other animals
and situations may be affected by irrelevant
information or affective states.
Early study of cognitive bias in rats: laboratory rats in
unpredictable environments developed a more “pessimistic
attitude” than rats in predictable environments
Pessimism is a belief that things are mostly bad. An example of
pessimism is seeing a glass as half empty instead of optimism
when the glass is seen as half full.