Reading � Curious machines

Greg Detre

Monday, February 17, 2003

 

Hare, Brown, Williamson and Tomasello, � The domestication of social cognition in dogs� in Science, November 2002, vol 298

www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/298/5598/1634/dc1

 

�Chimpanzees even follow the gaze direction of humans past distracting stimuli and behind barriers to a specific target, and they also understand that another individual cannot see something if its persepctive is occluded by a barrier, thus demonstating a fairly sophisticated understanding of how the visual perception of others works�

�Curiously, however, there is one task involving gaze-following at which chimpanzees and other primates perform poorly. In the so-called object choice task, an experimenter hides a piece of food in one of two opaque containers, and the subject, who did not see where the food was hidden, is allowed to choose only one. Before presenting the subject with the choice, the experimenter gives a communicative cue indicating the food�s location, for example, by looking at, pointing to, tapping on, or placing a marker on the correct container. The majority of primates, as individuals, do not spontaneously perform above chance levels on this task, no matter what the cue [although for possible exceptions, see (7, 8)], and those who eventually perform well typically take dozens of trials or more to learn (9�17). In addition, when primates have been tested in more difficult tests that require them to show flexible use of social cues (such as with novel or arbitrary social cues), without exception they do not use the cues provided (10, 11, 15).�

 

 

Slabbert & Rasa, �Observational learning of an acquired maternal behaviour pattern by working dog pups; an alternative training method?�

in Applied Animal Behaviour Science 53 (1997) 309-316

Notes

observational learning = if an animal that has viewed an experienced �demonstrator� learns the response in question more rapidly than one that has either viewed a �na�� demonstrator (one that is not skilled executing the appropriate response) or has had no previous observational experience (Davey 1981)

true observational learning (rather than �imitation�) requires that the effect of the observation persists in the test animal for an extended time interval after its removal from the scene of the observational experience

observational learning has been demonstrated in a wide variety of animals: cats, rats, birds, primates, dolphins

 

Pongracz, Miklosi, Kubinyi, Gurobi, Topal & Csanyi, �Social learning in dogs: the effect of a human demonstrator on the performance of dogs in a detour task�

in Animal Behaviour, 2001, 62, 1109�1117

 

figure out the business about two different experiments

figure out whether experimenter demonstrators were significantly better than owner demonstrations

look at definitions

 

Presentation

Could you present these 2 papers for next wednesday: sociallearningdogs.pdf and DrugDogSocialLearning.pdf.

 

Questions

Hare et al.

try looking at huskies etc. that spend a lot of time with humans

no, they�re comparing wolves that have been raised by humans

try domestic dogs that haven�t had much contact with humans � they tried puppies

Slabbert & Rasa

parturition - parturition /pA:tjU<schwa>"rI<longs>(<schwa>)n/ n.M17. [Late L parturitio(n-), f. L parturit- pa. ppl stem of parturire: see prec., -ITION.] The action of giving birth to young; childbirth.

might it not be that the Group I-III pups weren�t so used to collecting objects in general???

I think that�s why they have the Group II control though �???

would it work even better if they were exposed further to their mothers� training, or if they were directly rewarded themselves???

were the mothers who did the narcotics task specially chosen for aptitude??? I think so

when can puppies recognise their mother from other conspecifics???

do they discuss whether it�s just their attention being directed towards the task