Cornell notes template
Animal cognition: issues
- Cognition - “… the mechanisms by which animals acquire, process, store, and act
- Explain why we study animals
definition on information from the environment.” (Shettleworth, 2010)
- Explain difficulties in studying animal cognition
- Identify and discuss alternative explanations for behaviour
- Explain
Why studyfactors that- researchers
Psychology should be aware
is the science of when
of mental working
life (James, with animals
1890)
animals? - Helps us to understand humans
- Animal welfare
- Humans and - Anthropomorphism – attributing human characteristics to animals
animals - Anthropocentrism – viewing animals from our own, human, perspective
- Charles - Darwin’s mechanism for evolution
Darwin - The outcome is adaptation (animal’s suitability to environment)
- Behaviour and psychology also subject to evolution
- Darwin observed commonalities
- between species’ mental characteristics
- Comparative psychology
- George - Animal intelligence, 1882
Romanes - Collection of anecdotes about intelligent behaviour
- Mr. Stephen Harding sends me the following as an observation of his
own :
- On the 15th ult. (Nov. 1879) I saw an intelligent sow pig about twelve
months old, running in an orchard, going to a young apple tree and
shaking it, pricking up her ears at the same time, as if to listen to hear
the apples fall. She then picked the apples up and ate them. After they
were all down she shook the tree again and listened, but as there were
no more to fall she went away.
- p. 340
- Conwy Lloyd - Tony
Morgan - Could open a gate
- “In this case the lifting of the latch was unquestionably hit on by
accident, and the trick was only rendered habitual by repeated
association in the same situation of the chance act and the happy
escape.”
- Performance improved over time = trial and error learning
, Cornell notes template
- Lloyd - 1894
Morgan’s - “In no case may we interpret an action as the outcome of the exercise
Canon 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.”
- Use the simplest explanation
- Further Thorndike 1898, 1911
developments - Experimental methods used in studies of animals
Tinbergen 1963 4 questions
- Function
- Phylogeny (evolution)
- Ontology (development)
- Mechanism
- How can we
compare?
- What can be
measured?
Animal cognition: issues
- Cognition - “… the mechanisms by which animals acquire, process, store, and act
- Explain why we study animals
definition on information from the environment.” (Shettleworth, 2010)
- Explain difficulties in studying animal cognition
- Identify and discuss alternative explanations for behaviour
- Explain
Why studyfactors that- researchers
Psychology should be aware
is the science of when
of mental working
life (James, with animals
1890)
animals? - Helps us to understand humans
- Animal welfare
- Humans and - Anthropomorphism – attributing human characteristics to animals
animals - Anthropocentrism – viewing animals from our own, human, perspective
- Charles - Darwin’s mechanism for evolution
Darwin - The outcome is adaptation (animal’s suitability to environment)
- Behaviour and psychology also subject to evolution
- Darwin observed commonalities
- between species’ mental characteristics
- Comparative psychology
- George - Animal intelligence, 1882
Romanes - Collection of anecdotes about intelligent behaviour
- Mr. Stephen Harding sends me the following as an observation of his
own :
- On the 15th ult. (Nov. 1879) I saw an intelligent sow pig about twelve
months old, running in an orchard, going to a young apple tree and
shaking it, pricking up her ears at the same time, as if to listen to hear
the apples fall. She then picked the apples up and ate them. After they
were all down she shook the tree again and listened, but as there were
no more to fall she went away.
- p. 340
- Conwy Lloyd - Tony
Morgan - Could open a gate
- “In this case the lifting of the latch was unquestionably hit on by
accident, and the trick was only rendered habitual by repeated
association in the same situation of the chance act and the happy
escape.”
- Performance improved over time = trial and error learning
, Cornell notes template
- Lloyd - 1894
Morgan’s - “In no case may we interpret an action as the outcome of the exercise
Canon 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.”
- Use the simplest explanation
- Further Thorndike 1898, 1911
developments - Experimental methods used in studies of animals
Tinbergen 1963 4 questions
- Function
- Phylogeny (evolution)
- Ontology (development)
- Mechanism
- How can we
compare?
- What can be
measured?
