Cognition

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Cognition

• Psychology 3906

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Introduction

• Basically we are talking about thinking
• Problem solving
• Memory
• categorization

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Categorization

• We are VERY good at this
• Typicality is important
• A penguin is less birdlike than a robin
• A dolphin is less mammalish than a dog
• Boster and DAndrade (1989) had experts, non
  experts and local tribespeople classify birds,
  all agreed

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We think in categories

• That whole semantic network thing
• So natural categories are good
• Even man made ones are pretty good
• What about stereotypes
• Oh no of course not
• Err umm, they are ok actually (in fact we
  UNDERESTIMATE proclivities of groups!)
• Depends on how you use them

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Memory

• Boy do we run in to a heck of a lot of stuff on a
  moment by moment basis
• We dont remember it all
• An efficient memory, like ours or any other
  species forgets, or does not even process much
  of what it encounters

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Putting evolution and cognition together, an
example

• Anderson and Krebs, 1978
• Mathematical model of when food storing should
  evolve
• Food storing can only evolve if you recover your
  own caches
• Sherry, Avery and Stevens (1981)
• Birds seem to recover own seeds using memory

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More data

• Shettleworth and Krebs, 1982
• Marsh tits storing seeds in a lab
• Better at recovery of cached seeds than randomly
  placed seeds
• Half of seeds removed
• They are using memory
• In other general memory tests, there have been
  clear differences between storers and non storers
  in the corvid family

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• We have already discussed the hippocampal
  differences
• But what about the parids?
• Data are equivocal
• Maybe it is not how much they remember, but how
  they remember

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Qualitative vs. Quantitative differences

• Brodbeck and his colleagues. (ahem) pioneered
  this type of work
• Comparing storers and non storers on what they
  remember in different tasts
• Brodbeck, 1994 Brodbeck and Shettleworth, 1995

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Brodbeck, 1994

• Chickadees would find a seed in a feeder
• Usually return later and eat it
• Move them around to dissociate colour and spatial
  location
• The chickadees responded last to the correctly
  coloured feeder
• Non storing Dark Eyed Juncos responded to all
  three cue types equally

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And the comparisons continue

• Same thing on a smaller scale using a computer
  touch sensitive monitor
• Birds rewarded for going to one place and not
  another
• Different coloured patches
• Switch them around
• Chickadees rely on space, juncos do not
• Indeed, in another experiment it was determined
  that chickadees when directly tested to very
  poorly on coulor!

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Functionally

• Well functionally this makes a lot of sense
• Birds remember WHERE something is, not what
  colour it is
• Colours change
• That line of trees over there is still going to
  be over there
• However, the strange result really is that of the
  junco!
• Brodbeck, Boisvert, Vaughan and Grant (1997)

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Problem Solving

• Wason Selection task

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Social context

• Cheater detection is easy
• Not familiarity with the content
• Even with toddlers!
• The Big Bird problem

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Probability information

• We are not good at probability
• Seems odd though
• Gamblers fallacy
• We are better at doing intuitive statistics when
  given frequency data

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Sex Differences

• They exist, no matter what you have been told.
• This, for reasons that escape me, scares some
  people
• Hormonal effects on spatial ability
• Not really surprising

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Conclusions

• Cognition has been affected by selection
• Memory is efficient
• Logic is easy if it involves cheater detection
• There are sex differences
• We are pretty good intuitive statisticians