Animal Cognition

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Animal Cognition

• The relationship between cognitive science and
  developmental psychobiology

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Initial disclaimers

• Some of the pictures are modified
• Some of the examples are inexact
• All of the work is ongoing
• The last bit is speculative

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Using cognitive science to inform developmental
studies

• 1. Walking
• 2. Learning
• 3. Infant Looking Behavior

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Learning as Enrichment

• Infants experience a buzzing and whirling
• Piaget - Infants construct their world
• Mental development is a process of adding to what
  is experienced
• Prior experience
• Innate knowledge
• Assumption
• Leading always towards the adult state

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Walking

• Stereotyped maturational development
• Universal, logically progressive, based on
  obvious increases in mental ability to coordinate
  of the body
• Is an integral example of motor-development under
  the influences of cognitive control

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Progress to walking
Picture P. 346
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Piaget and Searching

• Object permanence
• Develops in stages
• Leads to Adult conception of permanence, i.e. the
  finished state informs developmental study
• Is judged via behaviors initiated by the child
• Infants initially do not reach for even partially
  covered objects
• Later infants successfully retrieve partially
  covered objects, but not fully covered ones
• Next they search for and recover fully covered
  objects
• Finally, they successfully track hidden objects
  through multiple displacements

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Some cognitive challenges

• Reaching Control, not a problem for older infants
• Infants can retrieve objects covered by clear
  material
• Can retrieve objects in the dark
• Looking results, a problem
• Will be discussed in a sec

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Looking

• Originally signaled discrimination
• Next indicated preference
• Then incongruity
• Now violation-of-expectation

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Simple inference
Baillargeon, Spelke, and Wasserman (1985)
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Arithmetic Ability
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Outcome
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Results
Looking time
1 Mickey
2 Mickeys
Result
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Interpretation of Anomalies

• Not to get into too much detail, but sometimes
  infant looking preferences seem to disappear for
  short periods of time
• I.e. carrot experiments (next slide)
• The explanation can be made via interactions
  between adult cognitive constructs coming online
  at different times

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First, infants know they should see the top of
the carrot. Next, they realize the there is a
connected path from one side to the
other Finally, they realize the carrot is too
large to remain concealed
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Break time!

• Everyone back in five
• Or
• Stay for discussion

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Using Dev. Psychobiology to Redefine Cognition

• 1. Learning
• 2. Walking
• 3. Infant Looking Behavior

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Learning as differentiation

• Learning is a modification of how behavioral
  systems react to the environment
• Things which we responded to the same, come to be
  responded to differently
• Meaningful discrimination, not enrichment
• Gibson - Infants recognition of the world

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Redefining Object Permanence

• Is ubiquitous and essential
• Everyday experience is full of it
• It is unbelievable that any respectable animal,
  nevertheless primitive humans would be without
  it
• It is a type of constancy
• It is not only present in infants, but it is
  projective in them as well

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One of my favorite experiments

• Bower (1966) tested 50-60 day old infants
• Demonstrated size and shape constancy
• Demonstrated Gestalt Grouping
• Used operant conditioning techniques

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Walking

• Development does Not proceed in a straight line,
  sometimes behaviors are lost
• Rhythmic walking motions are seen in infants
  still in the womb
• I have 5 month olds every week who are almost
  standing by themselves
• At 9 months most kids are struggling to crawl
• What are children forgetting?

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Perhaps nothing?

• Introducing, a dynamic systems perspective
• Behavior is an emergent property of a complex,
  whole organism in a complex, whole environment
• Loss of the ability to perform a behavior can
  occur due to perturbations at any point
• Examine more closely what is happening to
  infants, and their walking abilities

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Infants get fat

• Much more than other primates, infants have a
  prolonged period of weight gain in the first year
• Weight gain outstrips muscle growth
• Infants do not know how to walk because they
  are too heavy??

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Some experiments

• Infants can walk on a treadmill, if you help
  support their weight
• Infants produce walking motions when in water,
  where the fat helps make their legs lighter, not
  heavier
• Lighter children can walk earlier
• But what about infants who skip crawling?

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Redefining the leap

• It is relatively common for infants to skip
  crawling
• The ability to walk earlier must correspond with
  a lack of weight gain
• Instead of a advanced development of ability,
  early walking could indicate poor development, or
  malnutrition
• Are early walkers behind?

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Hypothetical time line for walking
Abundant Nutrition
Lower Nutrition
Proportion of infants
7 months
20 months
Age at walking
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Hypothetical time line for walking
Abundant Nutrition
Less Nutrition
Proportion of infants
Malnutrition
7 months
20 months
Age at walking
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Hypothetical time line for walking
Normal Nutrition
Less Nutrition
Proportion of infants
Big overlap
7 months
20 months
Age at walking
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Imagine Your Own Rough Transition Here

• (Back to Looking)

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Looking

• Originally demonstrated ability to discriminate
• But does not correlate well with other measures
  of knowledge
• Does not reflect later knowledge
• But it cannot be just discrimination, infants can
  show the same looking times for things we know
  they can discriminate!

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Pulling it together

• Looking does indicate discrimination
• But sometimes infants look for the same amount of
  time at things we know they can discriminate
• And looking does not reflect other measures of
  knowledge at the time, or later knowledge

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Older Children
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Looking cannot simply reflect discrimination, it
must be reflect discrimination in a way that is
relevant for the behavior of looking!

• Conclusion

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Treating looking as a behavior

• Looking is a behavior that infants perform
• Looking should be effected by all the things that
  we know effect other behaviors
• If you think things other people dont, what do
  you do.
• Propose experiments

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First principles

• Infants behaviors can be conditioned by social
  feedback and more classic rewards
• Looking has consequences for what is seen
• Parents respond to infant looking behavior
• Physiological maturation should not limit looking
  behavior after head support develops

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How would you investigate this?

• No really, how?

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Suggested Division

• First - can looking behavior be effected by
  experience
• Second - what are the normal experiences that
  infants have
• Third - how do changes in what infants experience
  relate to changes in looking behavior

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Parting thought

• The biggest value of studying development is to
  redefine what we think is occuring in the
  finished state.