(Wednesday, July 4, 11am)
Many animals engage in food-caching behavior, collecting and storing food during times of plenty to secure resources during times of scarcity. For this behavior to be advantageous to the storing individual, it needs to remember where it has hidden the food stores, and ensure these stores are secured from potential thieves. My presentation will examine avian cognitive abilities focusing on these two themes.
Clary, D., & Kelly, D. M. (2016). Graded mirror self-recognition by Clark’s nutcrackers. Scientific Reports, 6, 36459.
Wright, A. A., Magnotti, J. F., Katz, J. S., Leonard, K., Vernouillet, A., & Kelly, D. M. (2017).Corvids outperform pigeons and primates in learning a basic concept. Psychological Science, 28(4), 437-444.
Qadri, M. A., Leonard, K., Cook, R. G., & Kelly, D. M. (2018). Examination of long-term visual memorization capacity in the Clark’s nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana). Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 1-7.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the presentation!
I failed to understand how you go from the same-different task result to say that it’s an abstract concept learning. Is it because they can transfer = they have made some sort of generalization or otherwise transfer would be impossible?
Thank you!
Regarding the female cowbirds, do you think that evolution has brought them to develop a stronger spatial cognition? In fact, because evolution has brought them to be the only ones to search for parasites, then it may be possible that they developed spatial cognition for survival reasons. And if so, does the latter include sentience?
ReplyDeleteLes oiseaux ont différents comportements de «caching» dépendant de l’espèce qui les regardent. Certains oiseaux vont cacher moins de nourriture lorsqu’ils se sentent regarder par un membre d’une espèce sans avoir eu d’expérience précédente avec ce membre particulier, alors que d’autres oiseaux vont adapter leur comportement après s’être fait prendre ou non de la nourriture.
ReplyDeleteAussi, la conférencière a mentionné que les oiseaux de l’expérience étaient capables d’«abstract concept learning» suite à leur participation à une tâche «same-different». Cette méthodologie est aussi utilisée chez les singes pour évaluer leur doute. Dans certains essais, les primates peuvent éviter de répondre au stimulus difficile, ce qui est une mesure de leur incertitude. Pour certains chercheurs, ce comportement est une application de la métacognition (penser à ce que l’on pense). Cependant, cette tâche n’est pas réussie chez tous les primates. Je me demande si les oiseaux seraient eux-aussi capables d’évaluer leur incertitude. Ils semblent être capables d’évaluer l’état mental des espèces qui peuvent potentiellement leur voler de la nourriture. Il serait intéressant de voir s’ils peuvent aussi évaluer leur propre état mental.
La conférencière Debbie Kelly s’est intéressée à la cognition spatiale chez les oiseaux qui stockent de la nourriture. On peut se demander comment les animaux perçoivent et interprètent leur environnement, comment ils “raisonnent” à propos de leur environnement. En regardant cela, il est possible d’avoir des indices nous aidant à voir comment la cognition a évolué. On a vu que certaines espèces d’oiseaux, pendant les temps d’abondance, vont “stocker” de la nourriture dans des points spécifiques de l’environnement. Ce qui est important ici, c’est qu’ils doivent être en mesure de retrouver ces emplacements et doivent être capables de bien la cacher de voleurs potentiels. Dans une de ces études, Kelly a remarqué qu’une espèce de “nutcrakers” entreposait moins de nourriture s’ils étaient observés et en récupérait plus. Cette étude a été faite en laboratoire dans des cages. Je me demande si l’on retrouverait les mêmes résultats dans leur habitat naturel.
ReplyDeleteWhich mean percentage of their caches your birds usually retrieved in nature? Does it vary a lot between individuals? Do you think that mainly frequency-dependent selection is responsible for the proportion of producer and scrounger in nutcracker? If it's the case, would you say that depending on their main foraging strategy these birds express different behavioral syndromes and cognitive abilities?
ReplyDeleteAs we learned on the last presentations, environment influence animals’ cognition. So I was wondering if the birds in your experiments lived in the wild or were raised in the laboratory, and if so do you think it might impact the results?
ReplyDeleteHave other bird species developed the potential to memorize food caches in order to steal food when they need it?
ReplyDeleteThank you.
Dre Kelly a abordé ses travaux avec une autre espèce, soit les pies. Voici un lien vers au moins l'une de ces intéressantes études: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27503195
ReplyDeleteThanks for this very interesting presentation! It may be too late to ask questions at this point, but here goes anyway! :)
ReplyDeleteDuring the questions session, Prof Mather asked whether Prof Kelly agreed that it may amount to “asking the wrong question” if we take data from some very specific individuals that are able to accomplish a particular task (while many other members of that same group can't). She then went on to say that it may be a mistake if we then use this to claim that: since within that species, at least some members were CAPABLE of it, therefore, the whole species can be considered to be “carrying this latent ability.” This is my own rewording (so hopefully I'm not falsifying anyone's statement!), but this is how I interpreted the question anyway: Prof Mather fears that such statements can lead to committing a generalization error.
Prof Kelly replied that it’s not necessarily a “wrong” question, but rather “another” question that also deserves answer. To support this, she argued that human cognition studies do look at both intergroup and intragroup differences. On the other hand, she agreed that it can bias interpretations, citing the well-known biases in those well-known between-sex human comparative studies proclaiming girls to be “worse” at spatial and math than boys.
From what I recall, the main problem with that particular range of studies had to do with the fact that if we look closer, at the variations WITHIN each sex, we find that those vary much more than the variation BETWEEN both of the sexes.
Of course, if there is considerably more variation within each groups being compared than between the groups, then averaging each group and measuring statistically significant differences between them can lead to bogus interpretations and even some rather damaging pop-psychology myths (as in the case I just mentioned). Is this kind of problem inherent to all statistical methods we currently have at our disposal in cognitive science? When we are dealing with small animal samples, how are we supposed to be able to tell apart relevant vs. irrelevant “statistically significant” differences?
In her paper “through animal eyes : what behavior tells us”, Dawkins (2006) suggests that experiments on animal cognition are very important to find out what they are capable of from an intellectual perspective and how to better treat them, but that they don't guarantee of sentience. In regards to your talk, do you think that the spatial memory that birds display for food storing could have evolved because of the hunger that they feel? Could we infer from there that their spatial cognition is an indicator of sentience?
ReplyDelete