Flashcards
Perception and Cognition TB10
Cards in this deck (87)
- 1Conditions for successful learning• If US-CS are repeatedly paired will learning occur?
o No – not necessarily!
• CS needs to be attended to
o US needs to be surprising / unexpected
• Rat heard a bell then presented with an electric shock
o Group A - Stage 2 – the new strong association (bell and shock) blocked the new association (light and shock) from being formed
o Group B (no initial conditioning stage)– Light formed association with shock - 2Rescorla-Wagner model• Aim of model: explain and predict changes in associative strength in different situations
• What is associative strength?
• Strength of connection between internal representations of CS and US which determines strength of CR - 3How does magnitude of the US affect learning over trials? How does intensity of the CS affect learning over trials?- Magnitude of US increases associative strength
- CS intesity alters the rate of learning not the ultimate level of associative strength between US and CS --> Stronger CS = faster learning - 4• Can the model explain blocking?• Yes with a modified formula:
o US is accurately predicted by compound due to pretraining with noise: US is not surprising so no association forms between light and US - 5Can the model explain overshadowing? • Yes! • When will learning asymptote (what is maximum associative strength a CS-US association?o Overshadowing = disruption of conditioning with 1 CS due to presence of another CS
o Stimuli within a compound will gain less associative strength than if they were paired with US on their own - 6CS-US contingency• Degree to which CS and US overlap
- 7• Positive contingency:US more likely to occur in presence of CS than absence of CS
o Learning will occur and the bigger the difference in probability of US occurring with and without the CS, the more learning occurs
Shocks more likely to occur with bell
Shocks overlap with bell - 8Negative contingency:US more likely to occur in absence of CS than in presence
o Little learning occurs: CS is a poor predictor of the US - 9CS-US contingency: Rescorla-Wagner model• CS is presented in a CONTEXT
o Context acts as another CS, so all conditioning experiments are effectively using compound stimuli - 10• Negative contingency:US more likely to occur in absence of CS than in presence
o US is well predicted by the context – associative strength between context and US grows and blocks the conditioning between CS and US
• The greater the associative strength between context and US, the less can be learned about potential association between CS and US - 11Instrumental conditioning • Thorndyke’s Law of effecto Stimulus-Response (S-R) associations are formed
o No anticipation of goal: challenged by empirical evidence
• Response-US associations are formed: animals learn about consequences of actions
o Rat highly motivated to press both levers (sugary drink or food reward)
o Drink is devalued (add LiCl makes the rat feel nauseuos)
o Test – no reward, how long does it take for the rat to stop pressing the lever?
Devalued reward – want to press lever is already down – formed an association between stimulus, response and (bad) consequence
• R-US associations
• Learning occurs best with a high value reinforcer (US) - 12Beyond trial and error learning? • Can all animal problem-solving accounted for by trial and error learning? • Claims of ‘insight’ (Kohler, 1925)• Animals learn complex associations between stimuli and their actions
• Claims of ‘insight’ (Kohler, 1925)
o When given a problem, after a period of incorrect responding animals appear to have a moment of insight and immediately provide a correct response
• Period of incorrect responses -> AH-HA! -> Correct response
• Prior experience with boxes may have provided necessary trial-error learning? (criticism)
o Knowledge accumulated by trial and error learning before allowing the monkey to resolve the problem? - 13Physical cognition / Folk physics• Can animals understand abstract properties (e.g. rigidity, connectedness, gravity) that explain how objects behave and use that understanding to solve problems without trial and error learning?
Trap tube task (Horner and Whiten 2007)
o Most animals fail (Chimpanzees, capuchin monkeys, New Caledonian Crows)
o Individual animals who pass seem to rely trial and error learning about perceptual features rather than functional understanding – continue to avoid the trap when its inverted and non-functional - 14Trap tubes: reevaluation• Inverted trap tube is not a good control:
o Adult humans also continue to avoid the trap when not functional! (Silva et al, 2005)
• Tool is a confound:
o 8/8 chimpanzees pass a modified version where fingers can be used rather than a stick tool (Seed et al., 2009)
• Chimpanzees successfully transferred knowledge to solve other variants of the trap box:
o Understanding of functional features not just perceptual ones? - 15Clever corvids?• Ravens showed ‘folk physics’ problem solving - they accessed dangling food by pulling it up on to perch (Heinrich & Bugnyar, 2005)
• ‘Insight’ / folk physics?
• Operant conditioning - trial and error, then each pull the food looks nearer, which reinforces the pulling response, so it is repeated to form a sequence - 16• New Caledonian (NC) Crows pull strings to get meat like ravens do• Naïve NC crows given apparatus where visual feedback obscured (A) and failed
• Naïve NC crows given apparatus with visual feedback restored via a mirror (B) and they performed as well as the experienced group
• String pulling best explained by trial+error and operant conditioning - 17• Betty the tool-making New Caledonian crow…• Weir et al (2002) – choose between straight and hooked stick to get bucket out of well
• When hooked tool unavailable Betty bent the straight wire into a hook and retrieved food with it (Rutz et al., 2016)
o Insightful tool making?
• NC Crows are proficient tool makers in the wild – stick tools to get hidden grubs
o Rutz et al (2016) studied tool manufacturing in 18 temporarily caught wild NC crows. 10 bent their stick before use using methods very similar to Betty…
Tool bending part of natural behavioural repertoire - 18Animal memory • “How information is acquired at a particular time can influence future behaviour” (Pearce, 2008, p.191)• Information is:
o STORED
o RETAINED
o RETRIEVED
What sort of information? How much information? How long retained?
• Learning and memory theoretically indistinguishable
o Short term memory (STM) / working
o Long term memory (LTM) / reference - 19STM: methods for studying • HABITUATIONo Memory of stimulus 1 formed
o If subsequent stimuli match memory for stimulus 1 then small response to it
o If memory not maintained (interval too long) or disrupted get no habituation
o Habituation requires existence of memory of repeatedly presented stimulus
o Other explanations ruled out
+ve: no training required
-ve: only events that evoke a well-defined response can be used - 20• TRACE CONDITIONINGo Although learning is most effective when CS and US overlap temporally, learning can occur when they are temporally separated.
o What is the maximum delay between CS and US and learning still occurs?
• Taste aversion in humans and animals can be acquired with intervals of hours (1 event, long time interval, yet association is still made)
• Is this something special about taste aversion conditioning? - 21• D’mato et al., (1981): T-maze• Rats can retain memory of CS (arm of maze) for several hours and successfully associate it with US (food): trace conditioning
- 22RADIAL MAZE• Beatty & Shavalia (1980)
• Break after visited 4 arms
• < 4 hrs retention interval, rats very accurate
• > 8 hrs retention interval, systematic decline in performance
o Advantages: ecologically valid task
o Disadvantages: time and space consuming procedure - 23DELAYED MATCHED TO SAMPLE (DMTS)- Presented with stimulus then after a delay presented with a choice of previous stimuli (target) and another option
o Disadvantage: Take extensive training to learn the task (MTS) before a delay can be introduced - 24Different methods produce different results • Why?o Number of trials/day
o Complexity of stimuli
o Ecological validity (foraging/working for reward) - 25STM: Sources of forgetting• Proactive interference
o Information PRIOR to target disrupts storage / retention of target
• Retroactive interference
o Forget due to distraction AFTER the target
• Habituation
o Habituation to 2 identical tones disrupted by 2 sec flashing light in retention interval (Whitlow 1975)
o DMTS (Grant 1988)
• Light increase disrupts habituation
• Auditory distracters and luminance decrease do NOT effect performance - 26Higher order memory strategies• Do animals deliberately forget information?
o Roper and Zentall 1993
• Performance on ‘forget’ trials lower than on remember trials
• BUT difficult to prove due to memory strategies - 27Serial order learning• Learn list of items
• U-shape curve graph ONLY at intermediate retention intervals
o Long intervals:
Primacy>recency
o Short intervals:
Recency>Primacy - 28Recency effect in animals• Widespread in many species
o e.g. Sound paradigm with dolphins
- Radial maze - visit arms in serial order, performance good with arms late in list - 29Primacy effect in animalsRadial maze - visit arms in serial order determined by experimenter, must go to arm already visited to get reward, performance good with arms early in list
- 30• Serial probe recognition• Primacy effect shown with different intervals for each species (Wright et al 1989)
• Retention interval critical:
• Primacy effects rare, but shown in a number of species when the task is correct
• Primacy effects NOT due to verbal rehearsal? - 31Chimpanzees outperform humans on STM task • Inoue & Matzusawa (2007)• 3 chimpanzee mothers
• 3 chimpanzee infants
• Taught to sequence numbers 1-9
• Memory tasks
• Unlimited time to study pattern. Numbers 1-9 masked once first number touched
• Chimpanzee infants (4 years) faster than human adults
• Memory tasks
• 2. ‘Limited-hold memory task’: top performing chimpanzee mother & infant and 9 students
• Five numbers (from 1-9) appear for limited duration before being masked
• Durations: 650ms, 430ms, 210ms (close to duration for 1 human saccade)
• Have to press them in correct order
o Young chimp Ayumu outperforms humans and older chimpanzee at 210ms
o Eidetic imagery – accurate detailed image of complex scene - 32Metamemory• Awareness of strength, accuracy and accessibility of certain memory
• Forced choice accuracy = 65%
• Free choice = 90%
• (Hampton, 2001) - 33Long Term Memory (LTM) Clark’s nutcrackers• Clark’s nutcrackers store around 30,000 seeds each year and they recover 80-90%.
• Striking memory CAPACITY - 34Long-Term Memory • Vaughan and Greene (1984) trained pigeons• Vaughan and Greene (1984) trained pigeons to discriminate between pairs of photographs. (160 +ve / –ve pairs: total 320 photos) The photos were paired up and shown together on a viewing screen. The bird had to learn to peck a particular photo in each pair in order to receive food each time it saw a pair of photos.
• This is a LTM task because a pigeon may not see a particular pair of photos for days at a time. The bird had to remember which one to peck over this time period.
o Estimated that pigeons remembered 800 photo associations - 35Pigeon test phase and results• The birds were then tested with half of the pairs after 237 days (during which time they were working in other tasks); then tested again with other half of the pairs after 629 days. Although there was some loss of accuracy, the birds still remembered which photo to peck well above chance. Performance was really quite remarkable (bird not only had to remember whether they’d seen a photo before, but which of the two it had to peck in order to receive food).
• Indicates that pigeons have a high capacity, long duration LTM.Long-Term Memory - 36LTM duration• Pigeons: Photo discrimination above chance after 2 years
• Rio the Sea Lion: no change in performance on DMTS task after 10 years with no practice inbetween - 37Episodic memory• Tulving 1983 “conscious awareness of earlier experience in certain situation at certain time”
• Episodic-like memory in animals (Clayton and Dickonson,1998)
o When
o Where
o What
• No conscious awareness necessary
• Reactication study: Activate memory for event by presenting cues present at time of event. - 38Episodic-like memory in birds • Western Scrub Jayo Caches food (hides and stores food for later)
o Do they remember what they put where and when?
• Tray 1: wax worms
• Tray 2: peanuts
o 4 hour delay: which tray choose to recover food from?
o 124 hour delay: which tray choose to recover food from?
• Scrub jays seem to know:
o WHAT they hid (peanuts/ waxworms)
o WHERE they hid it (Tray 1 or tray 2)
o WHEN they hid it (4 hours ago / 124 hours ago)
o Perishability of food - 39Episodic-like memory in other species• Which do they choose?
• After 5 minute delay choose lolly, after 1 hour delay choose grapes
• Episodic-like memory in other species
• Eacott & Norman (2004) argue ‘when’ serves to specify which past occasion an event occurred in and that context can also act to specify occasion.
• Propose: What, Where, Occasion-specifier (time – when; or context – which)
• Rats – examined episodic-like memory with What, Where, Which (context). - 40What, Where, Which in rats• What – 2 different types of objects
• Where – 2 locations in arena objects were placed
• Which – 2 contexts:
o Circular arena black floor and white sides
o Circular arena black floor with white plastic wire grid and wooden sides
• Takes advantage of rats’ tendency to explore novel things: to know something is novel you must remember what you have explored before! - 41Results• Rats explored the novel object (showing they remembered WHAT object they had seen WHERE (L or R) in WHICH context (1 or 2) previously
• Strong preference to explore novel object with delays up to 15 minutes
• Weak preference for novel object with delays of up to 1 hour
• No training: naturally occurring memory - 42Comparing animal memories• Ecological view: Species that depend on memory for survival will have evolved special abilities
o Kamil et al. (1994)
• Comparing animal memories
o 4 species of corvid: 5 tests
• General process view
• Similar mechanisms in all species
• Adapt to deal with demands of ecology
• Which is right?
• Insufficient evidence
• VERY difficult task:
o Differences in perception, motivation and physical negotiation of apparatus all affect performance - 43Cooperation - Definition• Cooperation is “a behaviour which provides a benefit to another individual”
o (West et al., 2007)
• In cooperation, two or more individuals coordinate their behaviour for common or mutual benefits. - 44Do other organisms cooperate? • Simple cooperationo Amoeba group together to pass through soil barriers they couldn’t pass alone
o Social insects cooperate to gather food. Might be explained by relatedness. - 45Mutual Cooperation• Cooperative behaviour that provides immediate gains for all participants
o Coordinated behaviour for the benefit of all
(Could be selfish motivations – for the biggest gain, but goals are alligned) - 46Testing Mutual Cooperation • Hirata cooperation task (Hirata & Fuwa, 2007)o Both individuals must works together to pull the ropes and retrieve the reward
Chimpanzee Hirata Task
• Chimpanzees…
o …can cooperate to complete the rope pulling task
o …can determine who is a good or bad cooperator, and will choose to work with the good cooperator
o …will recruit help if needed, but if they don’t need it they’ll do the task alone
o … are more likely to cooperate with tolerant partners
• “Hir-Otter” Task
o Otters successfully coordinate in the rope pulling task to get the reward when simultaneously handed the rope - 47• Any other explanations?o Operant conditioning – (stimulus-rope, response-pull, reinforced by gaining on previous trials) – may not understand necessity of having a partner and the cooperative nature of this task
• Both acting in self interest and actions happen to coincide
o The otters were able to complete the cooperation task when simultaneously handed the rope, but not when there was a delay. - 48• Hirata Task – Summaryo Both chimpanzees and otters were tested on the Hirata task, and both appeared to succeed to some degree. Chimpanzees and otters were both able to coordinate actions in a trial where they pull the rope immediately. However, when there was a delay in the trial the two species acted differently – chimpanzees waited for a partner to come and pull the rope with them, and they can also recruit partners to come and cooperate with them. The otters, on the other hand, did not wait and did not recruit partners – they tried to pull the rope alone and were unsuccessful.
- 49• Chimpanzees…o …can cooperate to complete the rope pulling task – both immediate and with a delay (Hirata & Fuwa, 2007)
o …will recruit help if needed, but if they don’t need it they’ll do the task alone (Melis et al., 2006)
o …can determine who is a good or bad cooperator, and will choose to work with the good cooperator (Melis et al., 2006)
o … are more likely to cooperate with tolerant partners (Melis & Semmann, 2010) - 50Observing Mutual Cooperation• Coordinated displays to defend resources
o e.g. Siamang duets
• Support in fights
o e.g. Chimpanzee males, bonobo females
• Cooperative hunting
• Coalitions and alliances
o e.g. Chimpanzee males, bonobo females - 51Cooperative hunting Chimpanzee cooperative hunting• The Driver
o Follows the monkeys but doesn’t try to catch them
• The Blocker
o Gets into a position that blocks the prey’s movement
• The Chaser
o Moves quickly to try catch the prey
• The Ambusher
o Anticipates the escape route and waits to catch prey
• Chimpanzees hunt in a group where each has a different role to play (Boesch, 2002)
• OR
• Chimpanzees hunt in a group and appear to be playing different roles, but these are due to the sum of their individual decisions based on perceived likelihood of success
o Either way – chimpanzee success in hunting is better when they hunt in a group: “stag hunt game” - 52Stag Hunt Game• The Stag Hunt Game was a dilemma thought up by Jean Jacques-Rousseau. The idea is that there are two people and we each decide to go out hunting for either a hare or a stag. Let’s say I’m the red person and you’re the blue person. If I go out hunting for a hare, I can always catch one. If you go out hunting for a hare, you can always catch one. If I go out hunting for a stag, the reward is bigger, but I can’t catch it on my own – to catch the stag and get the bigger reward we need to go hunting together. If I go hunting for a hare and you go hunting for a stag, I get my hare but you get nothing. If you go hunting for a hare and I go hunting for a stag, I get nothing but you get a hare.
• For chimpanzees hunting, their choice is also like a stag hunt game. Each chimpanzee could go on their own to get fruit for a lower reward. A chimpanzee is unlikely to catch a colobus on their own – they need to hunt in a group to have a higher chance of success. - 53Testing chimpanzees in a stag hunt game• In this scenario there are two chimpanzees in separate rooms, and they can see each other. Each one has access to a low value food item that they can get on their own – equivalent to the hare in the Stag hunt game. They also have the option of working together by both pulling on end of a rope to raise this platform in the middle and get a higher value food reward.
• Testing chimpanzees in a stag hunt game
(Bullinger et al., 2011)
• “Subjects chose the stag option in 91% of the trials”
• “Once both partners had arrived at the stag, they pulled successfully together on 94.7% of the trials”
• When they first go to the stag, leaders do not summon the follower with intentional communication – followers usually join the leader because of auditory cues
• After that, if the follower does not come quickly enough then the leader uses intentional communication - 54Stag hunt - Summary• Chimpanzees need to cooperate to be successful at hunting colobus monkeys = “Stag hunt game”
• Might have different hunting roles, but might be a simpler explanation
• Chimpanzees cooperate in an experimental version of the stag hunt game
• The follower joins the leader after hearing auditory cues, if the follower doesn’t join then the leader uses intentional communication - 55Reciprocal behaviour• Trivers first proposed “Reciprocal Altruism” (also called reciprocal investment) as a cooperative strategy where individuals alternate roles as actor and recipient (Melis & Semmann, 2010)
• Reciprocity is difficult because you have to keep track of interactions over long time spans. Some species of impalas and primates will engage in reciprocity on short time scales, called “parceling” where they exchange grooming over one grooming session but don’t keep track in the long term. Humans on the other hand can keep exchanging favours back and forth throughout our entire lives. Reciprocity is something that is probably only relevant for long-lived species that stay with a stable social group over long periods of time. - 56Reciprocity in long lived species• Reciprocity is cognitively demanding because it requires keeping track over long time periods (memory!)
• Evidence that great apes can keep track of grooming, support in fights, meat sharing over time = Exchange of services. - 57Chimpanzee Meat Sharing• Chimpanzees may exchange food for other resources/services
o Sex (Gomes & Boesch, 2009)
o Support in fighting (Samuni et al., 2018)
• Lower Level Explanation:
o “Sharing under pressure” – chimpanzees share to avoid the cost of defending a food source (Gilby, 2006)
Because its’ really difficult to gather enough data on these long term exchanges, different results come out of different fieldsites and there’s a lack of consensus about how robust these types of exchanges are, so one lower level for meat sharing is that chimpanzees share to avoid the cost of defending a food source - 58“The Marketplace”• Chimpanzee exchange of meat, grooming, etc. can be thought of like a marketplace, where you can exchange several goods and services but you have to keep track of what you’ve got from whom, and who you owe something to.
- 59Reciprocity in Ravens• (Müller et al., 2017).
o Ravens remember the nature of a single reciprocal interaction sequence over 2 days and even after a month.
• Training period
o 1 “fair” experimenter, exchanges tokens for food
o 1 “unfair” experimenter, takes token but doesn’t give food
• Summary – Raven reciprocity
o Ravens remember the nature of a single reciprocal interaction sequence over 2 days and even after a month (Müller et al., 2017)
o Ravens seem to have the ability to keep track of long term exchange of services that would be required for reciprocity
o Corvids exhibit many ape-like cognitive abilities! - 60Pseudo-reciprocityo Individuals take part in reciprocity for a direct, immediate benefit. e.g. ant-butterfly mutualisms
Butterfly larvae produce nectar for ants to eat
Ants eat nectar from butterfly larvae and then protect their food source from predators - 61Helping• Cooperation - Definition
o Cooperation is “a behaviour which provides a benefit to another individual”
(West et al., 2007)
• Helping - Definition
o Helping “involve[s] immediate costs for the actor and yield[s] benefits exclusively for the recipient”
(Melis et al., 2011)
• Helping Behaviour
o Assisting an unrelated individual even when you receive no reward (physical, social etc.) - 62Chimpanzees can help others• Chimpanzees help familiar individuals to get food and non-food items. (Melis et a., 2011)
• Low level explanation: Are they just trying to get the other chimpanzee to shut up? Chimpanzees are more likely to help if the recipient is active, i.e. makes a lot of noise. - 63Bonobos Help Strangers• Bonobos will help unfamiliar individuals by releasing food to them, without receiving any reward themselves (Tan, Ariely, & Hare, 2017)
• Tested with 16 individuals, each individual had 8 opportunities to release, so they released 0-1 time when no one to benefit and 2-4 times when there was. - 64Key Differences in Human & Non-human Cooperation• Other species are very good at coordinating their behaviour, but we are still figuring out how they do it cognitively! Sometimes a simple rule can lead to something that looks very complicated…
o Proactive - has an intrinsic motivation to do this, don’t need external prompts and cues, seen in children as young as two. Ability to do it is there in nonhumans, but need external cues or prompts. Difference in motivation. - 65How do animals know where they are?• SHORT DISTANCES
o ‘Follow your nose’
Chemical trail
Pheromone trail
Urine trail
• Route learning
o Memory of chain of motor responses that are needed to go from A to B. - 66Dead reckoning / Path integration• Egocentric
• Internal sense of direction and distance to goal from current position
• Keep track of location in relation to goal
Displacement experiment
• Wehner and Srinivason 1991
o Moved ant to a new position, but ant still took old pre-calculated route - 67How is distance calculated by ants?• Measure distance in steps
o Experimentally tested by changing the length of the ants legs
• Direction relative to the sun
o Uses internal body clock and knowledge of movement of sun/stars - 68Is path integration possible without self-generated movement?• Yes in geese
• Visual information key for keeping track of distance and direction from starting point
• Its remarkable that in all these experiments with humans interfering with normal navigation, the animals rarely just give up, they quickly reevaluate or continue with the information they have gained so far, even if its incomplete or imperfect.. - 69Using landmarks• Single landmarks
• Beacons: proximal visual cues to goal
• Bees and gerbils can be trained to find food a certain direction and distance from landmark. - 70• Template matching • Multiple landmarks• ‘Retinal snapshot’ of landmark at goal
• Using landmarks
o Small beacon at test phase = search for food at shorter distance
o Big beacon = search for food at long distance
• Multiple landmarks
o Continual search using multiple landmarks after target has been moved
• Using compass bearings
o If have multiple landmarks retinal matching not used
o Bees use compass bearings to multiple landmarks (Cartwright and Collett 1983)
If relative position of landmarks stays same but degrees from North varied randomly in training they don’t find goal on test
Uses landmarks in relation to knowledge of where true north is - 71Sun/star navigation• Sun ≠ landmark
• Many animals use ‘Sun compass’ or ‘celestial compass’
• Requires:
o Knowledge of path of sun or stars (need experience)
o Internal clock
How test sun compass use?
• Alter internal clock of animal
- Keep inside and expose to 'day' and 'night' with lights on a shifted schedule (e.g. light shifts on 3 hours earlier than real sunrise) - 72Cognitive maps What is a cognitive map? Topographic / network map Euclidean map / vector mapWhat is a cognitive map?
• Internal representation of a plan of space, where spatial relationships between objects in the environment are represented
Topographic / network map
• Representation of familiar routes between landmarks
Euclidean map / vector map
• Representation of space that allows computation of direction and distance from any one place to any other known place
• Euclidean representations emerge from topographic representations at 6-7 years old in humans (Piaget & Inhelder, 1956)
o Do non-humans possess Euclidean maps?
2 lines of evidence:
• Observational evidence from animals navigating in the wild
• Controlled experiments in the lab - 73How do primates navigate their territory in the wild? • Baboons: Noser & Byrne (2007)• Wild group tracked with GPS for 16 months
• Dry season (food scarce)
• Travelled rapidly on linear paths over large distances to water holes and fruiting trees
• Resources could not be seen from departure point
o Baboons are not travelling randomly
o Behaviour is guided by some kind of spatial knowledge – what type? - 74How do primates navigate their territory in the wild?• Walk in straight line rule
o Generates ‘linear paths’ and in a resource-rich environment this might be effective!
• Topographic map
o Variation in speed of travel – faster as nearer goal but when still out of sight/smell
o Approach known resources from same direction/via same landmarks
o Direction of travel may be adjusted as reach landmarks
o Most efficient in core of territory where landmarks very well known
• Euclidean map
• Variation in speed of travel – faster as nearer goal but when still out of sight/smell
• Approach known resources from different directions
• Initial direction of travel towards resource is not adjusted – set off on most efficient path from the start
• Efficiency of travel should be similar in core and periphery areas of territory
• Novel detours, short cuts and path innovations (but novelty very difficult to prove in the wild) - 75How do chimpanzees navigate their territory in the wild?• Normand & Boesch (2009)
• Argue for Euclidean rather than topographical map
o Don’t use same path to revisit food sources
o Travel as efficient and linear in core and periphery of territory (in periphery only 25% of time).
o When path linear travel was faster (know where they are going )
o Initial direction of travel towards resource is not different from final direction - 76Euclidean vs Topographical maps?• Chimps: Euclidean?
o Scale of memory for landmarks required to for topographical map to mimic flexibility of Euclidean map is enormous: This community of chimpanzees 21.4km2 home range with 12,500 feeding trees + ? Non-feeding trees (Normand & Boesch, 2009)
• Topographical: Follow routes via landmarks
o Hamadryas baboons – semi-desert (Sigg & Stolba 1981)
• Arboreal primates – specific routes through the canopy
o Orangutuans (MacKinnon 1974), spider and woolly monkeys (Di Fiore & Suarez, 2007) - 77Controlled experiments • Aim: test if animals can calculate a detour if familiar route blocked o Tolman et al., 1946
- 78Aim: test if animals can calculate a detour if familiar route blockedo Chapuis & Scardigil (1993)
In training maze rotated and different starting chamber used: no possibility of using landmarks
Hamsters took correct detour at above chance levels - 79• Finding a goal from a novel release site o Morris (1981)• Rats learn to find a submerged platform in milky water
• When platform is moved they swim randomly until they find it by chance (not detectable incidentally)
• When released from new location to same platform they find it quickly
• Cognitive map?
• All except 1 rat initially goes in wrong direction (search swim)?
• Finds familiar landmark / route to platform, then swims directly there - 80Evidence?Cognitive maps?
• Convergent evidence from wild and water mazes that animals have topographical maps and travel in goal-directed ways
Euclidean maps?
• Claims in chimpanzees in wild
• Gold standard (detours) can’t be tested in wild
• In lab hard to rule out use of landmarks or dead reckoning - 81What is the brain doing?• Neural correlates of different types of spatial information found in:
o Place cells in HIPPOCAMPUS (O’Keefe and Speakman, 1987)
o Cells have been found to respond to:
1. Specific places in a maze
2. Places relative to single and multiple landmarks
3. Place in room regardless of landmarks
o Do not respond to compass bearings - 82What is our understanding of spatial navigation in animals mainly based on?• Nocturnal rodents
• Insects
• Pigeons
o VERY different sensory systems
Long distance navigation
• Cues to DIRECTION
o Magnetic fields
• Sun compass (knowledge of sun path + internal clock)
o Polarized/ Ultra violet light on cloudy day*
• Cue to ALTITUDE
• Air Pressure*
* Pigeons can be conditioned to subtle changes in these cues - 83Homing• Return to ‘home’ base regularly
o Sun compass
o Magnetic fields
o Olfaction: conflicting evidence (see Wallraff 2004)
• Landmarks: useful but NOT necessary
o Schlicte & Schmidt-Koenig, 1971: - 84Migration• Long distance seasonal travel (usually 2 journeys/year)
o Green Turtle:
o Ascension Island (88km2)
o 2200km to Brazil
o And back!
• Innate mechanisms: Preparation (lay down fat)
Go towards light (turtles)
• Learning – follow others on 1st migration
• Olfaction (turtles)
• Celestial compass (birds) - 85Migration • Celestial compass• Celestial compass very important in migrating birds
o Emlen (1970): Tested reliance on celestial compass by altering knowledge of star movements
• Indigo buntings migrate SOUTH in autumn
1. No experience of star movements – go in random direction
2. Experience of planetarium of correctly moving stars - go SOUTH
3. Experience of planetarium with stars moving round different axis – don’t go south! - 86Evolutionary Cues• Put cues in conflict. Birds use:
• Global spatial position
• Local position
• Colour/ pattern of container
• (Brodbeck, 1994) - 87When animals move which spatial cues do they use?• Different kinds of spatial information are processed or learnt in different circumstances
• On basis of information available decision as to direction and distance of travel taken
• How are cues integrated?
• Used one at a time?
• Averaged?
• Dominant cue depends on:
• Conditions (light, storms etc)
• What has been most reliable in evolutionary time?
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- Flashcards on Perception and Cognition TB10, created by Emily Hargreaves on 29/05/2019.
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- Emily Hargreaves
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