PSYC 720 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Animal Cognition, Design Of Experiments, Anthropocentrism
Document Summary
Lecture 1: cognition and the study of behavior. Interpreting animal behavior can lead to many problems: cannot say that crows understand hard vs. soft ground. They may not explicitly understand hard vs. soft, but they have seen success with dropping on hard surface: cannot say that crows understand that cars break the nuts because they"re heavy/moving. Trial and error has taught them which surface, etc. to use to crack nuts. Biases and expectations can unintentionally influence our understanding of animal cognition and behavior. Humans tend to anthropomorphize, which can be detrimental in discussing and evaluating animal cognition: anthropocentrism can also (negatively) impact studies and results. Animal cognition must be demonstrated through carefully designed experiments measuring behavior: we cannot prove anything with animals, we can only suggest or show that data supports, etc. Proximate questions (short-term how questions: mechanistic questions a. i. How is a particular behavior generated or what does it look like? a. i. 1.
