Animal Learning:

Associative or Cognitive?

Environment Behavior

Environment Behavior

The Mind

mental representations

Learning/Behavioral Psychology

Cognitive Psychology

Arguments against cognitive approach

• Philosophical:– Positing internal processes doesn’t add information

– Infinite # of cognitive models for any one phenomenon

– Purpose is to predict and control; what good do cognitive models do?

• Empirical (testable):– All behavior can be explained in terms of stimulus-

response learning

Skinner on Language

• Book: Verbal Behavior (1965)

• Language Learned through response chaining

• E.g.: Mary had a little lamb. MaryHadALittleLambREWARD!

SD SD SDSD

Chomsky’s Critique

• Impossible: At one sentence per sec it would take 2887 years to learn all grammatical 3-word sentences.

• Transitional probabilities meaningless:“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously” vs.“Goes down here is not large feet are the

days.”• Ambiguity: “They are shooting hunters.”

Representational Systems Require:

An orderly mapping between the Represented and Representing worlds

A mental representation is a system of symbols, conscious or unconscious, that are isomorphic to some aspect of the environment, used to make behavior-generating decisions that anticipate events and relations in that environment

C.R. Gallistel

HUNTER ON “REPRESENTATIONS”

...If comparative psychology is to postulate a representative fact, ...it is necessary that the stimulus represented be absent at the moment of the response. If it is not absent, the reaction may be stated in sensory-motor term (Hunter, 1913, p. 21).

A Classic Hunter Experiment

I shall run around the circle 5 times in order to procure a morsel of food.

Food

Another Attack on S-R Theory

Edward Tolman

Radial-Arm Maze (Olton & Samuelson)

How to solve it:

Random choice

Odor Trail

Response Chaining

*Memory

Control Procedures

Rotate and unblock

Forced Choice Phase Free-Choice Phase

1

2

3

4

5

67

8

4

5

6

7

8

12

3

Let rat visit N arms

4

5

6

8

12

3 7

WAIT

4

5

6

8

12

3 7

Return rat to maze

Results

# choices before break

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Performance after break

lo

hi

Memory Rehearsal?

On probe trials give the recognition test here

The Pole Maze

Pole Box: Performance

Hmm…Where shall I go next?

Tool Use

“This occurred on the fifth trial of an experiment in which the crows had to choose between a hooked and a straight wire and only after the hooked wire had been removed by the other subject (a male). The animals had prior experience with the apparatus, but their only previous experience with pliant material was 1 hour of free manipulation with flexible pipe-cleaners a year before this experiment, and they were not familiar with wire.”

Numerosity

Basic paradigm: Touching stimuli in numerical order produces a reward.

Numerosity (Brannon & Terrace, 1998)

Test with novel stimuli

Conclusions

• S-R accounts are not sufficient

• Animals can represent abstract properties of stimuli and the relations among stimuli

• The cognitive differences between humans and other species are unclear.