Download Animal cognition: History and some big ideas Evolution by natural

Animal cognition:
History and some big ideas
•From
Aristotle to Descartes
–Are animals mindless machines or do
they think and reason as people do?
•Darwin and evolutionary continuity
Psy 362 S 2007, Lecture 1.2 slide 1
Evolution by natural selection
(Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace, 1859)
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Variation among individuals of a species
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This variation is heritable
(kids are like their parents)
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More kids produced than survive
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Therefore individuals with characteristics
that make them better able to survive and
reproduce will come to predominate.
Psy 362 S 2007, Lecture 1.2 slide 2
Evolutionary trees or cladograms: represent
inferences about divergence over time
Extinct
species
Hypothetical
common
ancestor
Psy 362 S 2007, Lecture 1.2 slide 3
Cladogram of evolutionary relationships of
humans, extinct homids, and great apes
Last common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans.
(we did not “descend from” modern-day chimpanzees)
Psy 362 S 2007, Lecture 1.2 slide 4
Evolution also leads to convergence of distantly related
species with similar environmental requirements.
Psy 362 S 2007, Lecture 1.2 slide 5
Back to Darwin and Comparative Psychology
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The Origin of Species (1859).
All animal species are related to
each other through evolution.
Psychological as well as
physical characteristics evolve
through natural selection.
“Psychology will be securely
based on the acquirement of
each mental power and capacity
by gradation.”
(The Origin of Species )
Darwin (1871) emphasized “mental continuity”
“My
object in this chapter is solely to shew that
there is no fundamental difference between
man and the higher mammals in their mental
faculties.”(Darwin, 1871 The Descent of
Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. Chapter
III)
Similarities include
Senses, basic instincts,
emotions (e.g. pleasure and pain),
learning by imitation, tool using,
memory, attention, reasoning
Psy 362 S 2007, Lecture 1.2 slide 7
Early research -- George Romanes
(1892) Animal Intelligence
“If a hand can do
it, why not a paw?”
Anecdotal
Anthropomorphic
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Psy 362 S 2007, Lecture 1.2 slide 8
E. L. Thorndike
(American, 1890’s): The
experimental approach
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Test plausible alternatives to anthropomorphic
interpretations
Puzzle box experiments
Learning by trial and error, not imitation or insight
Psy 362 S 2007, Lecture 1.2 slide 9
“Morgan’s Canon”
“In no case may we interpret an action as the
outcome of the exercise of a higher psychical
faculty, if it can be interpreted as the outcome of the
exercise of one which stands lower in the
psychological scale.” (C. Lloyd Morgan, 1894)
•Problems
– Why should we think it’s correct?
–What are “high” and “low”?
– In practice, “low” often means resulting from
instrumental or classical conditioning.
Psy 362 S 2007, Lecture 1.2 slide 10
History, continued
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Rise of behaviorism
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General processes emphasized, not comparisons
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Clever Hans (1900)
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Tolman (1948) Early cognitivist
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The cognitive revolution in psychology (1960’s)
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Animal research follows along (1970’s)
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BUT cognition is inferred from behavior.
Information processing replaces S-R associations
Psy 362 S 2007, Lecture 1.2 slide 11
Recent trends
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Cognitive ethology (Donald Griffin, 1976)
Should try to study animal consciousness
Problems discussed in next lecture
Cognitive ecology (Real, 1993)
Role of cognition in natural behaviors in the wild
Evolutionary psychology
“The adapted mind” (Cosmides, Tooby, et al.)
Relationship to primatology and anthropology
Interface with cognitive and behavioral neuroscience
Psy 362 S 2007, Lecture 1.2 slide 12
Two current approaches to animal cognition
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Anthropocentric
(centered on humans)
Uses animals to help
understand humans.
A few species used as
“animal models”
Experiments in the lab
Traditional in psychology
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Ecological (animal in its
environment)
How do animals solve
problems in nature?
Looks at a lot of different
species.
More biological
Becoming more popular
Much exciting research combines both approaches.