Cognition: Human vs Non-human Animal

Jordan,

My data could beat up your data, so you had better run scared.

:-)

Ed

Post 101

Thursday, October 16, 2008 - 9:25am

Ha! Take care, Ed.

Jordan

Post 102

Saturday, October 18, 2008 - 9:58am

Data showing that the apparent concept-formation of non-human animals is likely an artifact:
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J Comp Psychol. 2007 Feb;121(1):22-33.

Discrimination of artificial categories structured by family resemblances: a comparative study in people (Homo sapiens) and pigeons (Columba livia).

Makino H, Jitsumori M.

Graduate School of Science and Technology, Chiba University, Chiba, Japan.

Adult humans (Homo sapiens) and pigeons (Columba livia) were trained to discriminate artificial categories that the authors created by mimicking 2 properties of natural categories. One was a family resemblance relationship: The highly variable exemplars, including those that did not have features in common, were structured by a similarity network with the features correlating to one another in each category. The other was a polymorphous rule: No single feature was essential for distinguishing the categories, and all the features overlapped between the categories.

Pigeons learned the categories with ease and then showed a prototype effect in accord with the degrees of family resemblance for novel stimuli. Some evidence was also observed for interactive effects of learning of individual exemplars and feature frequencies. Humans had difficulty in learning the categories. The participants who learned the categories generally responded to novel stimuli in an all-or-none fashion on the basis of their acquired classification decision rules. The processes that underlie the classification performances of the 2 species are discussed.

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Recap:

Pigeons learned the categories with ease, humans had difficulty in learning the categories. Two possible explanations?

1) Pigeons are smarter than humans (so it would be in our interests if we didn't act without consulting them first)

2) An artifact of controlled investigation, itself -- such as the unintended reliance on perceptual power for discrimination tasks -- makes it seem like pigeons are smarter than humans (i.e., makes it seem that pigeons have greater conceptual power)

Take your pick, but make a choice, either way.

Post 103

Saturday, October 18, 2008 - 10:21am

Which line is longer (from arrow-tip to arrow-tip)?

<--->
>------<

This is the Muller-Lyer (visual) Illusion. The distance between the arrow-tips is the same, even though folks will say it's not.

In the above post, I make an appeal to a fundamental difference in perceptual power between pigeons and humans. Below, I prove that case to be true:

====================================
J Comp Psychol. 2006 Aug;120(3):252-61.

Perception of the standard and the reversed M�ller-Lyer figures in pigeons (Columba livia) and humans (Homo sapiens).

Nakamura N, Fujita K, Ushitani T, Miyata H.

Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University, Yoshida-honmachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan. NNakamura@LPs.mbox.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp

The authors compared perception of the standard and reversed M�ller-Lyer figures between pigeons (Columbia livia) and humans (Homo sapiens). In Experiment 1, pigeons learned to classify 6 lengths of target lines into "long" and "short" categories by pecking 2 keys on the monitor, ignoring the 2 brackets so placed that they would not induce an illusion. In the test that followed, all 3 birds chose the "long" key more frequently for the standard M�ller-Lyer figures with inward-pointing brackets (><) than for the figures with outward-pointing brackets (<>). The subjects' responses were accountable by neither overall lengths of the figures nor horizontal gaps between the 2 brackets. For the reversed figures, effects of the brackets were absent. These results suggested that the pigeons perceived the standard M�ller-Lyer illusion but not the reversed one. Experiment 2 confirmed that humans perceived both types of the illusion. Pigeons and humans may perceive the same illusory figures in different ways.

====================================

Recap:

Pigeons and humans perceive in different ways. Investigations into the potential concept-formation of pigeons will need to -- someday -- be able to account for that difference (before conclusions could be reached).

Post 104

Saturday, October 18, 2008 - 10:39am

Hi Ed,

Ignoring the fact that these are just a couple of grad student in Japan with no obvious expertise in the subject...

I don't understand their use of the term "artifact." But I remember seeing a documentary where chickens out-perform humans in a similar experiment. The task was to discriminate tall and short shapes of all different kinds. The humans got all muddled up with what pattern they were supposed to be discriminating and weren't as exact as the chickens. The chickens, on the other hand, were *attuned* to tall and short and could easily "strain out" the shapes' other features, so they performed with much greater ease.

It's not a matter of which species is smarter. The chicken study just showed that some species are relatively adept at discriminating certain categories. That's all. I suspect the pigeon/human comparison leads to the same conclusion.

Jordan

Post 105

Saturday, October 18, 2008 - 11:01am

Per the Muller-Lyer illusion, apparently the illusion doesn't hold across cultures either. Some researchers attribute the difference to the shapes in our respective environment, particularly in housing. Cultures with round houses are less susceptible to the illusion. Is there a "fundamental difference" between humans and Zulus? ;)
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muller-Lyer_illusion)

Anyway, I don't understand what its means to have the Muller-Lyer illusion "in reverse." Nonetheless, perhaps environmental differences can also explain the differing results of the (boxy-housed) humans and pigeons.

Jordan

Post 106

Saturday, October 18, 2008 - 11:55am

Jordan,

I don't understand their use of the term "artifact."

I used the term "artifact" -- not them. I was using it in the sense of a spurious finding that was actually predetermined by the way in which it was looked for. It reduces to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Let's say you start with the hypothesis that ants are smarter than humans and, to test it, you decide to look for the ability to work together for a common purpose. So, you study a group of humans and a group of ants -- and you find that the ants can come together to work for a common purpose better than the humans can. In fact, you discover that literally a whole million ants can work together for the same purpose AT THE SAME TIME -- which is more than a million humans can do.

You conclude that ants are smarter than humans, because you were looking for the wrong thing. It's a matter of asking the right questions.

It's not a matter of which species is smarter. The chicken study just showed that some species are relatively adept at discriminating certain categories. That's all.

Perceptually discriminating categories (as when discriminating natural predator from natural prey, or water from land, or day from night), or conceptually discriminating categories?

Cultures with round houses are less susceptible to the illusion. Is there a "fundamental difference" between humans and Zulus? ;)

No. It's learned. But, physically, the brains of Zulus would, upon examination, be different. Here's evidence that your brain physically changes when you learn a new task:

==================================
PLoS ONE. 2008 Jul 23;3(7):e2669.

Changes in gray matter induced by learning--revisited.

Driemeyer J, Boyke J, Gaser C, B�chel C, May A.

Department of Systems Neuroscience, University of Hamburg (UKE), Hamburg, Germany.

BACKGROUND: Recently, activation-dependant structural brain plasticity in humans has been demonstrated in adults after three months of training a visio-motor skill. Learning three-ball cascade juggling was associated with a transient and highly selective increase in brain gray matter in the occipito-temporal cortex comprising the motion sensitive area hMT/V5 bilaterally. However, the exact time-scale of usage-dependant structural changes occur is still unknown. A better understanding of the temporal parameters may help to elucidate to what extent this type of cortical plasticity contributes to fast adapting cortical processes that may be relevant to learning.

PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Using a 3 Tesla scanner and monitoring whole brain structure we repeated and extended our original study in 20 healthy adult volunteers, focussing on the temporal aspects of the structural changes and investigated whether these changes are performance or exercise dependant. The data confirmed our earlier observation using a mean effects analysis and in addition showed that learning to juggle can alter gray matter in the occipito-temporal cortex as early as after 7 days of training. Neither performance nor exercise alone could explain these changes.

CONCLUSION: We suggest that the qualitative change (i.e. learning of a new task) is more critical for the brain to change its structure than continued training of an already-learned task.
==================================

Anyway, I don't understand what its means to have the Muller-Lyer illusion "in reverse."

"When the shaft is shortened and reaches neither of the vertices of the two pairs of wings, a reversed M�ller-Lyer illusion is observed: a shaft between inward-pointing wings appears to be longer than a shaft between the outward-pointing wings." -- Perception. 1992;21(5):611-26.

Ed

Post 107

Saturday, October 18, 2008 - 5:07pm

Good finds, Ed. I sorta suspected that evolution has selected for variations on perception more so than not. The fact it's very fine grained too is quite illuminating. :)

Post 108

Saturday, October 18, 2008 - 7:00pm

Hi Ed,

Under Objectivism, "perceptual category" is untenable, as was discussed earlier this thread.

The tests here are just checking out a subject's ability to mentally discriminate, and the researchers are asking the right questions for that. The tests don't have much to do with smarts, and by extension, neither do the comparative studies between humans and animals. If this were a question of smarts, it would indeed be a mistake to base the answer on some basic cognitive discrimination tests.

Jordan

Post 109

Saturday, October 18, 2008 - 10:53pm

Jordan,

Under Objectivism, "perceptual category" is untenable, as was discussed earlier this thread.

Well, it wasn't discussed enough, then. We humans, in retrospect, talk about results of investigations into animal cognition by saying that animals formed and filed mental categorizations (i.e., formed concepts) -- but that's anthropomorphysticism. It's not mystics of spirit or mystics of muscle, it's mystics of beasthood.

The issue at hand is similarity-detection (or difference-detection), and similarity is grasped perceptually. It's only when we explain the results of animal cognition studies to each other that we infer with boldness -- like you and Ted do -- that concept-formation was going on inside the heads of the animals. In essence, folks like you and Ted say that animals were behaving similar enough to how humans would have behaved after forming appropriate concepts -- therefore, animals must've formed concepts (because humans, in their shoes, would have or would have had to).

It's the fallacy of the weak analogy because it leaves out differences in perceptual powers of awareness of surroundings.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 10/18, 10:54pm)

Post 110

Sunday, October 19, 2008 - 6:24am

Ed Thompson wrote (post 103):

Which line is longer (from arrow-tip to arrow-tip)?
<--->
>------<
This is the Muller-Lyer (visual) Illusion. The distance between the arrow-tips is the same, even though folks will say it's not.

Is that the Thompson Delusion test? :-) The Muller-Lyer illusion has the horizontal lines the same length. (If the top one had 4 dashes, or the bottom one 5, the lengths between arrow tips would have appeared more equal to me.)

Post 111

Sunday, October 19, 2008 - 6:41am

Leave it to a guy named Merlin to correct me about an illusion!

:-)

Okay, when I was typing the damned thing up I noticed that when I kept the lines the same, I couldn't get the arrow-tips to line up like they are supposed to. Sheesh. I'm doing the best I can, working with 20th Century technology. Perhaps, in the future, PowerPoint will be integrated with Microsoft Word and I will be able to draw and type at the same time.

Anyhoo, here's how the stupid illusion would look if you ran my life:

<--->
>---<

or

<---->
>------<

or

<--->
>-----<

wah, wah, waaaaaaaaaaaah ;-)

... and here is the reverse Muller-Lyer Illusion, for interested onlookers:

< --- >
> --- <

With break-points between arrow-tips and line, the top line is supposed to look longer in the reverse M-L illusion even though it looks shorter in the original M-L. That's why they call it "reversed."

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 10/19, 6:47am)

Post 112

Sunday, October 19, 2008 - 9:44am

Ed,

Dude, I'm flashing back to like 50+ posts ago. :-) I'll rehash my bit. Under Objectivism, a concept is formed if the subject mentally separates out a set of items based on a common characteristic. To figure out whether a subject has done this, we can use carefully crafted sorting tests. After all, concepts are basically a matter of sorting. Some animal subjects pass these test. It's thus reasonable (not anthropomorphystiwhosamawhatsits) to conclude that these animal subjects can form some concepts.

There's no analogy going on here. It's just a matter of empirics. I submit that we use the same basic test to conclude whether humans have formed concepts. Sorting tests are basic elementary school fare when figuring out whether children have grasped this or that concept.

And I don't know whether similarity is grasped perceptually. Not sure that matters here. What matters here is that groups are not grasped perceptually. Perception provides awareness of individual objects. It doesn't provide awareness of any sets to which those objects belong. Sets are not individual objects of which we are automatically and immediately aware, i.e., not percepts. Sets are permanent residents of concept-ville.

Jordan

Post 113

Monday, October 20, 2008 - 5:19am

Jordan,

But you infer that animals are sorting conceptually rather than memorizing a perceptual similarity and responding to repeated instances of it. To repeat myself for effect:

Just because a human would have had to have formed a concept in order to do a sorting or discrimination task, nothing under the sun -- besides unsupported appeal to an animal's vague similarity to humans -- means that tested animals do.

Remember the Clark's Nutcracker -- I still wince when I say: nutcracker -- remember that damned bird who remembers 5000 different spots? Well, if you show that bird 2000 different instances of pictures with humans in them, then it will tell you "human present" each time. It will even have some false positives -- as it "sees" a pattern in a humanless picture that is like one of the 2000 "human" patterns it has memorized, and responds to the memorization.

That's (had a wild excess of false positives) what the pigeons did. It's not the forming of anything like a mental category, it's just treating likes like remembered-likes alike.

Ed

Post 114

Monday, October 20, 2008 - 8:16am

Here is an example of the process:

You show a couple hundred or a thousand coins to a bird, training it to sort heads from tails. You didn't know it, but the bird was memorizing the coins -- including the dates on them. All of the coins that you showed the bird in training were from the 1990s, let's say.

You decide to prove it to yourself whether the bird has formed concepts of heads and tails in its bird brain. You say to yourself, "If this animal barely more evolved than a dinosaur can sort heads from tails, then gosh darn it, that means that he's forming concepts!"

You grab a bunch of coins and check to see if the bird can sort them heads from tails. The coins you grab this time have various dates on them, but spanned from the 1980s to the 1990s. You notice that when its heads from the 1990s, the bird almost always gets it right. You conclude that concepts were formed, even though only perceptual powers (sense-perception and memory) are needed to explain the results.

See what I mean?

Ed

Post 115

Monday, October 20, 2008 - 10:58am

Ed,

The Clark's Nutcracker remembers a bunch of stashes. We cannot infer concept formation from that. But the pigeons sorted images based based on kind, particularly evinced when presented with novel images. It was more than mere memorization of percepts.

Per your example, if the bird was merely memorizing what coins go in which category, then the bird wouldn't know what to do with novel coins.

Now, I agree that just because a human forms concepts to complete a task doesn't mean an animal necessarily forms concepts when completing the same task. But I say if a subject passes all the criteria for concept formation, then the subject forms concepts, and such is the case with the pigeons. Let's break it down again. To form a concept, a subject needs to:

1. Mentally differentiate some items from others.
2. Mentally lump the items together based on a characteristic they have in common.
3. Ignore the variance in the items' measurements.

The sorting tests really capture this, particularly with the Sesame Street test, i.e., differentiation -- which of these items doesn't share the trait that the others hold in common? And it's opposite, i.e., integration -- which of these items has the trait that is held in common with the items over here?

I want to ask what I asked back in post 81: Are you saying that all animal behavior is merely reflexive? Do you see it all just as you would a leg-jerk after the mallet hits the knee?

Jordan

Post 116

Monday, October 20, 2008 - 1:12pm

Jordan,

Are you saying that all animal behavior is merely reflexive? Do you see it all just as you would a leg-jerk after the mallet hits the knee?

No. As I said, you can teach a pigeon to sort heads from tails. That's not "merely reflexive" ... not unless you break it down to the operant conditioning involved -- and then (in light of the special training that investigators put these animals through in order to get them to act like they know things) it's essentially reflexive.

Ed

Post 117

Saturday, August 8, 2009 - 4:59am

A paper this summer in Springer�s Biology and Philosophy
concerns a testable level of memory use as evidence of
consciousness in non-human animals.

Metamemory as Evidence of Animal Consciousness
Nicholas Shea and Cecilia Heyes

Post 118

Saturday, August 8, 2009 - 5:48am

Now, what is being referred to as 'consciousness'? remember, Rand postulated other animals have consciousness, but they do not have volitional consciousness...

Post 119

Saturday, August 8, 2009 - 9:16pm