Why Experiments, Part 3

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From the course by Duke University

Dog Emotion and Cognition

2126 ratings

Duke University

Dog Emotion and Cognition

2126 ratings

Dog Emotion and Cognition will introduce you to the exciting new study of dog psychology, what the latest discoveries tell us about how dogs think and feel about us, and how we can use this new knowledge to further strengthen our relationship with our best friends.

From the lesson

How Biology Studies Cognitive Evolution

In this module, Dr. Hare describes how the internal processes of the mind are studied through experiments. He explains how animal problem solving is best explained as scientists work toward better understanding the topic. Next, he describes the ecological approach to cognition through an evolutionary lens, which involves Tinbergen's four levels of analysis.

Why Experiments, Part 16:20

Why Experiments, Part 28:25

Why Experiments, Part 33:37

Meet the Instructors

Brian Hare
Associate Professor
Evolutionary Anthropology

Okay, so Morgan was a bit taken aback.

And about seven years later, after he wrote the first version

of the Introduction to Comparative Psychology, he was taken

aback because people were attributing to him that animals had no intelligence.

That because you should always favor the more parsimonious explanation, and

because we should always be careful about attributing human traits to

animals when we're explaining their behavior.

That they were saying animals were never intelligent, and that animals and

humans were totally different.

And there was the gulf between the two that could never be covered.

So what he wrote in his second version of his book, seven years later,

he added to his Canon by saying, to this however, it should be added,

lest the range of the principle be misunderstood.

That the canon by no means excludes the interpretation of a particular activity

in terms of the higher processes, if we already have independent evidence of

the occurrence of these higher processes in the animal under observation.

And so what he's trying to say here is that if we did an experiment and

actually rule out the parsimonious or

simple explanation, we can then accept the more complex explanation.

Or the more sophisticated flexible cognitive solution

as the internal process that the animal's using to solve the problem.

And he would be happy to know, having written this revision, that we now know.

There's been some brilliant work by Thomas Zentall's research

group in Kentucky University showing that dogs

can actually learn very rapidly to open doors and to open gates.

Remember the example of Morgan's dog learning to open the gate where he had to

use trial and error, and

he concluded that it clearly wasn't very sophisticated cognition.

But the key thing about that was, Morgan's dog was on his own.

He learned it completely independently, without watching anyone else.

But when you show a dog the solution to opening a new door that they've never

opened before, it ends up.

What Thomas Zentall found in Kentucky, is that dogs in one or

even two trials learn to open a new door and

copy the method that they see someone else demonstrate to them.

So, a dog on its own, Morgan was right, very simple explanation.

A dog with someone else to watch, it's a different story.

So that's the exciting thing about experiments.

You can find that simple explanations explain behavior in

places that you didn't think that it was a simple explanation.

Or, it can actually be a complicated cognitive explanation that's allowing for

an animal to solve interesting problems.

Okay, so to summarize and to wrap up, why experiments?

Why do we need these experiments?

Why can't we just watch animals do what they do and

become experts in how their minds work?

And the reason is, cognition involves internal processes.

Only experiments can reveal the inner working of the animal mind and help us

understand which different mechanism is helping them solve a different problem.

The same or similar appearing behavior can be the result of very different cognition.

And simple explanations often can explain animal problem solving and

are given priority until they are ruled out with experiments.

Careful experiments also often rule out parsimonious explanations though and

favor the existence of sophisticated cognition in animals.

And so that's the fun is, how is it that animals are actually

solving the problems that we think are interesting to explain?

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