Animal Cognition

Tactical multimodal signalling in birds: facultative variation in signal modality reveals sensitivity to social costs

by K-lynn Smith

Sind nur sprachfähige Wesen rational? - Über die Grenzen des "Raums der Gründe"

by Martin Lenz

Forthcoming in: Crossing Borders: Proceedings of the 9th Congress of the Austrian Society of Philosophy 2012

Recensione a Marin Cureau de La Chambre, "Quale sia la conoscenza degli animali e fin dove possa estendersi", a cura di Emanuela Scribano, Felici Editore 2010

by Simone Guidi

Published in LoSguardo.net, n. 6, 2011 (II)

Understanding the Lion For Real

by Constantine Sandis

Final version forthcoming in (eds.) A. Marques & N. Venturinha, Knowledge, Language and Mind: Wittgenstein's Thought in Progress (Berlin: de Gruyter), 2012.

A longer book-length treatment will subsequently be published as Wittgenstein's Lion.


Comments welcome

Against the flow: A Braitenberg controller for a fish robot

by Maarja Kruusmaa

T. Salumäe, I. Rano, O. Akanyeti, M. Kruusmaa, "Against the flow: A Braitenberg controller for a fish robot", IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, St. Paul, USA, May 14-18, 2012, to appear

Underwater vehicles do not localise or navigate with respect to the flow, an ability needed for many underwater tasks.... more Underwater vehicles do not localise or navigate with respect to the flow, an ability needed for many underwater tasks. In this paper we implement rheotaxis behaviour in a fish robot, a behaviour common to many aquatic species. We use two pressure sensors on the head of the robot to identify the pressure differences on the left and right side and control the heading of the fish robot by turning a servo-motor actuated tail. The controller is inspired by the Braitenberg vehicle 2b, a simple biological model of tropotaxis, that has been used in many robotic applications. The experiments, conducted in a flow pipe with a uniform flow, show that the robot is able to orient itself, and keep the orientation, to the incoming current. Our results demonstrate that guidance of a fish robot relative to a flow can be implemented as a simple rheotaxis behaviour using two sensors and a Braitenberg 2b controller.

Review of "Do Fish Feel Pain?" by Victoria Braithwaite

by Sascha Benjamin Fink

Fink, Sascha Benjamin (2010) Review of Do Fish Feel Pain? by Victoria Braithwaite, Metapsychology 14 (34).

The role of contextual associations in producing the partial reinforcement acquisition deficit

by Gonzalo Miguez

Miguez, G., Witnauer, J., & Miller, R. R. (2012). The role of contextual associations in producing the partial reinforcement acquisition deficit. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes,38, 40-51.

Three conditioned suppression experiments with rats as subjects assessed the contributions of the conditioned stimulus... more Three conditioned suppression experiments with rats as subjects assessed the contributions of the conditioned stimulus (CS)– context and context– unconditioned stimulus (US) associations to the degraded stimulus control by the CS that is observed following partial reinforcement relative to continuous reinforcement training. In Experiment 1, posttraining associative deflation (i.e., extinction) of the training context after partial reinforcement restored responding to a level comparable to the one produced by continuous reinforcement. In Experiment 2, posttraining associative inflation of the context (achieved by administering unsignaled outcome presentations in the context) enhanced the detrimental effect of partial reinforcement. Experiment 3 found that the training context must be an effective competitor to produce the partial reinforcement acquisition deficit. When the context was down-modulated, the target regained behavioral control thereby demonstrating higher-order retrospective revaluation. The results are discussed in terms of retrospective revaluation, and are used to contrast the predictions of a performancefocused model with those of an acquisition-focused model.

Cross-modal individual recognition in domestic horses (Equus caballus)

by Leanne Proops

Attributing attention: the use of human-given cues by domestic horses (Equus caballus)

by Leanne Proops

Mule cognition: a case of hybrid vigour?

by Leanne Proops

The use of human-given cues by domestic horses, Equus caballus, during an object choice task

by Leanne Proops

PAPER: Carryover effect of joint attention to repeated events in chimpanzees and young children

by Francys Subiaul

The imitation faculty in monkeys: evaluating its features, distribution and evolution

by Francys Subiaul

Do chimpanzees learn reputation by observation? Evidence from direct and indirect experience with generous and selfish strangers

by Francys Subiaul

Cognitive imitation in rhesus macaques

by Francys Subiaul

Does Intentional Ascent "Require" Semantic Ascent? A Reply to Bermudez

by Michael J. Braund

That some non-linguistic creatures are capable of some varieties of thought has become progressively hard to deny.... more That some non-linguistic creatures are capable of some varieties of thought has become progressively hard to deny. Evidence extends from the manufacture and use of tools in the case of many animals, to the ways infants respond when shown atypical perceptual events. (2003a, p. 81) In Thinking Without Words (TWW for short), Jose Luis Bermudez’s project is to explain how this thinking is possible. Therein, he presents a highly economical statement of the nature of non-linguistic thought, by developing a conceptual framework for treating infants and nonhuman animals as “genuine thinkers.” (2006, p. 320) While the idea of non-linguistic thought has garnered a great deal of attention in cognitive ethology and the neurosciences, this is not true of analytic philosophy. There, the discussions about non-linguistic behavior have focused on how such thoughts might be physically realized. In contrast, Bermudez approaches the problem by considering what is required to explain behavior in psychological terms. How can we know what non-linguistic creatures think? What fixes the contents of their thoughts? Are they thinkers like us, or do humans grow up to become fundamentally different types of thinkers with unique cognitive abilities? TWW offers answers to these questions, setting out criteria for identifying when psychological explanations are required for non-linguistic creatures, as well as determining the limits of such explanations. In what follows, I will briefly outline (what I take to be) Bermudez’s position in TWW, paying special attention to the claim that metarepresentational thought refers only to linguistically informed, inferential thinking. I will then argue that while the case he builds for a positive theory of non-linguistic thought is rich and cogent, holding up to the battery of criticisms I consider, it is doubtful whether his case for the negative aspects of the theory gets as far as it should. After posing a few general problems for the argument that intentional ascent requires semantic ascent, I will show that its basic strategy rests upon a dubious understanding of the role played by representational vehicles in thinking about thoughts.

Delay maintenance in Tonkean macaques (Macaca tonkeana) and brown capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella)

by Jerome Micheletta

International Journal of Primatology, Volume 32, Number 1, 149-166, DOI: 10.1007/s10764-010-9446-y

Animals commonly face choices requiring them to wait and postpone action. The ability to delay gratification is a... more Animals commonly face choices requiring them to wait and postpone action. The ability to delay gratification is a prerequisite for making future-oriented decisions. We investigated the ability of brown capuchins (Cebus apella) and Tonkean macaques (Macaca tonkeana) to delay benefits in several experiments. In exchange tasks, subjects had to return a piece of cookie after a given time lag to obtain a larger one from an experimenter. Capuchins could wait 10–40 s and macaques 20–80 s depending on subjects and the size of rewards. Both groups were able to anticipate delay durations, but unlike macaques, capuchins discounted all sizes of reward at the same speed, meaning that their delay-maintenance was not affected by the reward size. When the subjects could give the initial piece of cookie back immediately and then wait for the return, performances increased to 10–21 min for capuchins and 21–42 min for macaques, demonstrating the role of consumption inhibition in postponing gratification. In a further task, we presented subjects with an accumulation of food pieces added at short intervals until they seized them. On average, brown capuchins could wait 33–42 s and macaques 38–72 s before seizing the rewards. Our results confirmed that brown capuchins were more impulsive than Tonkean macaques in several tasks. We did not find significant differences between the waiting performances of the Tonkean macaques and those previously reported in long-tailed macaques. The contrasting performances of macaques and capuchins
might be related to their different skills in the physical and social domains.

Friendship affects gaze following in a tolerant species of macaque, Macaca nigra

by Jerome Micheletta

Animal Behaviour, Volume 83, Issue 2, February 2012, Pages 459–467, DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2011.11.018

Gaze following, the ability to follow the direction in which others are looking, is thought to allow individuals to... more Gaze following, the ability to follow the direction in which others are looking, is thought to allow individuals to acquire valuable information from their physical and social environment. Recent studies, using artificial stimuli, showed that gaze following can be modulated by social factors such as dominance or social context, suggesting the importance of integrating these factors in future cognitive studies to understand better the evolution and function of gaze following. Whether this finding still holds true when animals are tested with conspecifics is unknown. Moreover, additional social factors remain to be tested. Testing live conspecifics, we show that friendship (i.e. strong positive bonds between individuals) improved gaze-following responses in a tolerant primate: the crested macaque. Subjects did not follow the gaze of friends more often, but in dyads characterized by a high friendship index, subjects were quicker to react to gaze cues. The increased social tolerance characteristic of crested macaques’ social relationships may lessen the constraints imposed by dominance and kinship, thus allowing sociocognitive abilities to be better used among friends. Together with previous findings, our results suggest the importance of relationship quality and species’ social style in shaping primate cognition.

A la mesure du Dasein. La genèse des existentiaux dans la vie animale chez Heidegger 1919-1927.

by Christiane Bailey

My MA Thesis in Philosophy submitted at Université de Montréal on 13-01-2011 where I show that the young Heidegger used to acknowledge to animals Dasein's way of being.

Mot clés : Philosophie, Heidegger, Aristote, animal, vie facticielle, mouvement, désir, perception, souci, interprétation privative, inauthenticité, Dasein primitif.

Keywords: Philosophy, Heidegger, Aristotle, animal, factical life, movement, desire, perception, care, privative interpretation, plain life, inauthenticity, primitive Dasein.

RÉSUMÉ : Nous nous pencherons sur les travaux du jeune Heidegger afin de montrer que, s’il affirme dans Être et temps... more RÉSUMÉ : Nous nous pencherons sur les travaux du jeune Heidegger afin de montrer que, s’il affirme dans Être et temps que les animaux ne sont ni chose, ni Dasein, mais participent d’un énigmatique mode d’être propre – le « simplement vivant », ce qui ne fait « rien de plus que vivre » – cela constitue un revirement dans la pensée heideggérienne. Dans les travaux qui préparent la rédaction de Sein und Zeit, l'animal avait toujours été considéré comme un être qui a un monde, comme un être auquel nous devons reconnaître le mode d'être du Dasein. En s’appuyant sur l’interprétation phénoménologique d’Aristote qu’il présente dans ses cours de 1919 à 1926, nous montrerons que les structures fondamentales de l'être-au-monde ont été élaborées sur le fond des capacités propres à la vie animale que sont l’affection (pathos), la perception (aisthēsis), la discrimination (krinein), la mobilité (kinesis kata topon) et le désir (orexis).

ABSTRACT : Our investigation of young Heidegger’s work aims at showing that, if Being and Time states that animals are neither mere things, neither Dasein, but have their own puzzling mode of being – “mere life”, which does not exist, but simply lives – this constitutes a reversal in Heidegger’s way of thinking. In the works that prepared the way towards Sein und Zeit, animal life was always presented as being-in-a-world, as a being to which we must ascribe Dasein’s way of being. With the help of Heidegger’s phenomenological interpretations of Aristotle presented between 1919 and 1926, we will show that the basic features of being-in-the-world that will become Being and Time's existential structures were developed on the basis of capacities belonging to animal life : affection (pathos), perception (aisthēsis), discrimination (krinein), mobility (kinesis kata topon) and desire (orexis).

Do singing rock hyraxes exploit conspecific calls to gain attention?

by Amiyaal Ilany

Signal detection theory predicts that signals directed at distant or busy receivers in noisy backgrounds will begin... more Signal detection theory predicts that signals directed at distant or busy receivers in noisy backgrounds will begin with an alert component, in order to draw attention. Instead of an alert component, however, animals could get the same effect by using an external stimulus. Here we combined observations of free-living rock hyraxes (Procavia capensis) with playback experiments to elucidate the circumstances under which males begin singing. We show that males sing following hyrax pup screams, which elicit a strong response from hyraxes within hearing distance, which are potential receivers. We hypothesize that singers enhance their singing display by exploiting the rarely emitted pup screams. To our knowledge, our findings are the first indication that animals may enhance signal reception by exploiting conspecifics' signals and the differential attention to these signals. We suggest that the utilization of external stimuli by signalers may be widespread, as an adaptive strategy for communication in complex environments.