Empirical Study Report PDF

Empirical Study Report This assignment is designed to introduce you to reading and critically evaluating empirical research papers that are typical of the behavioural sciences. The selection of research articles provided are all relevant to one or more topics addressed in this course...

Empirical Study Report This assignment is designed to introduce you to reading and critically evaluating empirical research papers that are typical of the behavioural sciences. The selection of research articles provided are all relevant to one or more topics addressed in this course. Look through the selection of papers below and decide which one is of most interest to you. Report should provide at minimum: – the theoretical framework within which the research goal is articulated; – the hypotheses that the researchers are testing, and why, given the current state of knowledge, these hypotheses are the ones being tested; – the predictions stemming from those hypotheses; – the methodological approaches the researchers use, including a brief description of experimental design and protocol (if applicable), data collection and sampling methods, study subjects, study site (if applicable), and statistical methodology; and – the interpretations and conclusions of the data presented by the authors and their relevance to the initial hypotheses and theoretical framework. – Any updates on the findings by subsequent studies (this will require additional research) – Ensure you submit as a word document (not PDF), with your last name, then first initial as the name of the document Paper due March 7, and should be 4 pgs maximum (dbl spaced).  Citing references When you have used (referred to) material from another source, it must be cited. For this course, use the author-date citations is the Chicago Manual of Style. – Grazer, Brian, and Charles Fishman. 2015. A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life. New York: Simon & Schuster. – Smith, Zadie. 2016. Swing Time. New York: Penguin Press. In-text citations – General (Grazer and Fishman 2015) – Direct quote (Smith 2016, pg 16) If you cite material mentioned in a secondary source (e.g. from a textbook), then use the following form: "...in an interesting paper (Watson, 1929, as cited in Barrett, 2002)..." At the end of the paper, cite only the secondary reference. If you quote material directly from a book, you should include page numbers ( e.g. "The third dimension of research..." (Barrett, 2002, p. 37)). Please avoid the over use of quotes because you are graded on your ability to integrate the material in your own words—we already know what authors of the papers know. Primate Social Knowledge Pt 1: Abstract Social Concepts in the Group Context  Social knowledge in primates 1) Group context (ethological/behavioural ecology tradition) – Group membership, dominance, affiliation, kinship, coalitions and alliances 2) Individual context (psychological tradition) - knowledge about the psychological states of others (mental state attribution); what they know about “group context” (above) and their place in it  Both models of the social intelligence hypothesis pre-suppose both types of knowledge… – that non-human primates have a perception of their place within a social network, and of their understanding of themselves as individuals with unique sets of social relationships. – that they recognize themselves as distinct individuals, each of whom occupies a unique place in society and has a specific set of relations with others.  But does a free-ranging vervet monkey, baboon, or macaque recognize other members of his group as individuals? Does it recognize matrilineal kin groups, linear dominance rank orders, and behave as if it recognizes its own unique place within them? Ie., does a group-living primate have a sense of “social self”?  A sense of social self requires “off-line cognition” – Ie. declarative knowledge “knowing that…” vs. procedural knowledge “knowing how…” – Eg. Planning ahead (time); mind reading; episodic memory; social concepts  Let’s start with some of the assumptions of the Standard Model for the SIH – Heavy emphasis on reciprocal altruism Idea that stable cooperation can emerge if the cooperative interactions occur repeatedly, the opening move is cooperative, and from that point on, each player copies the other’s moves. This winning strategy is a version of reciprocity called Tit-For-Tat (TFT) – But does this happen??  Reciprocity is ubiquitous in humans, but sporadic in other animals, and seems to occur in very specific contexts (eg. ‘blood-sharing’ in vampire bats; grooming in primates). RA assumed to be rare because it’s costly as an evolutionary stable strategy (ESS) Game theory…  SCENARIO 2 guys picked-up for a joint crime + held separately for questioning. Cops have limited evidence, so if perps stay silent they’ll each get only short sentence (for a lesser crime). Cops offer freedom to each in return for squealing … but if BOTH squeal, cops are likely to renege and use mutual incrimination to put both away for longer sentence. Perp A is questioned first. What should ‘A’ do? 1. Stay silent and HOPE partner does same? 2. Squeal (defect), for fear partner squeals and goes free while you languish in jail? Here’s the dilemma … Payoff options for ‘A’ BETTER WORST BEST NEXT WORST In one-time scenario, OPTIMAL strategy is ‘Defect’  But is it really this complicated? “Cheat detection” vs “partner choice” For low-cost altruism (eg. grooming, agonistic support, tolerance, and some food sharing), selection should favor the maximization of received return benefits more than the minimization of immediate costs. Thus, proximate mechanisms evolve based on partner choice (‘‘groom most of the individuals who groom you most’’) rather than mechanisms aimed at the immediate detection of cheating.  Under these conditions, long-term return benefits are more important than short-term costs (if any), and selection will favor partner choice (eg. the development of emotional bonds) rather than eventual reciprocation.  “Emotional mediation” (ie. “friendships”) The proximate mechanism by which animals reciprocate behaviours… – selection can be expected to favor loose accounting mechanisms that guarantee the maximization of received benefits without necessarily being able to identify single episodes of failed reciprocation. – Most parsimonious way for evolution to build these mechanisms is to recruit the social bonding that (presumably) originally evolved in the context of mother–infant attachment.  Coalitions Although coalitions are central to the Standard Model, all the evidence points to their rarity. In OWMs mostly females against males. Two NWM genera are the exceptions  Time To what extent do animals perceive themselves as situated in it? Ie., can it recall its past behaviour in relation to the time that has passed? An animal that could do this would have the ability to: - relate its interactions with others to specific contexts or to gauge whether reciprocation was or was not overdue. – conjure up an imagined future, which would allow for the contemplation of different scenarios. This kind of memory is known in humans as episodic or autobiographical memory (eg. I was in Calgary last Wednesday) - what you did, where you did it and when it was done.  In humans, episodic and semantic memory (the memory of meanings, understandings, and other concept-based knowledge that is unrelated to specific experiences) together constitute declarative, or explicit memory, which is about the storage and retrieval of facts (‘knowing that...’). Declarative memory stands in opposition to procedural or implicit memory, which is about the long-term storage of skills and procedures (‘knowing how...’). Mental time travel comprises the mental reconstruction of personal events from the past (episodic memory) and the mental construction of possible events in the future. Demonstrating ‘mental time travel’ in non-human animals is difficult because there can be no non-linguistic behavioural indicators of consciousness. - but… food-caching birds remember where and when food was cached…  What About “Time”? Temporal discounting is the devaluing of future rewards, which often results in a preference for smaller, immediate rewards over larger, delayed rewards. For example, imagine that a monkey encounters an unripe fruit—should it consume the fruit now (low reward) or wait for it to ripen (high reward), but risk someone else eating it? Do I groom you now in the hope you might support me in a fight next month? – The future is uncertain – strong selective pressure to discount the future….  Given two similar rewards, humans show a preference for one that arrives sooner rather than later. Humans are said to discount the value of the later reward, by a factor that increases with the length of the delay.* * if both rewards are later in time, they will choose the slightly larger, later one….  Inter-temporal choices are no different from other choices, except that some consequences are delayed and hence must be anticipated and discounted (i.e. reweighted to take into account the delay). Time Can animals defer an immediate response to a situation in order to gain an advantage later? RIGHT: How much a reward devalues in relation to its initial value the longer it must be waited for. Blue=Humans, Green=Rats, yellow=pigeons, purple=monkeys (estimated). Time vs distance…?  Discounting is not necessarily a static parameter that applies to any choice situation. Rather, it can change choice preferences in different contexts. – Eg., in experimental situations, blue jays have a strong preference for immediate rewards. In the wild during autumn, however, jays switch from consuming every acorn they encounter to caching them behind tree bark or under leaf litter. – Ability to discount depends on ecological context.  For the most part, however, experimental evidence shows animals heavily discount future rewards…. Which argues against the classical RA “tit-for- future-tat” model  Abstract social concepts These essentially refer to understanding the relations that pertain among other group members (e.g. ‘third-party relationships’) Eg. What is the relationships between Bob and Jim? Who is dominant to whom? Are they “kin”? Do Jim and Bob form a set that differs from two other individuals? As per the Standard Model, you would need to understand abstract social concepts in order to plan strategically for the future (cooperate and/or deceive).  Dominance hierarchies Linear dominance hierarchies predict competitive interactions and outcomes between 2 individuals. The ‘prior attributes hypothesis’: individual differences in traits such as body size, fighting ability, personality (e.g. boldness) or social attributes (e.g. size/proximity of kin network) directly predict dominance ranks – and that individual dominance relationships will be purely based on dyad-level differences in individual attributes. Question: Are hierarchies the emergent property of incidental outcomes of paired interactions (in mind of human observer), or ability to recognize transitive relations among other group members (in mind of monkeys themselves)?  Eg. Observational evidence: Grooming competition (fig 1) Re-directed aggression – Kin-biased: an animal attacked by another is more likely to retaliate against relatives of the attacker than against non-relatives. - also “family revenge” aggression  Fig. 1. Competition over access to a grooming partner in vervet monkeys. Seyfarth R M , and Cheney D L Amer. Zool. 2000;40:902- 909 The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology  What kind of abstract reasoning do the animals need to understand dominance hierarchies? – Their place in one and – those of 3rd parties? We know, for instance, that monkeys can recognize individuals from their calls Females know the calls of their own kids Other females match the calls of kids with their mothers Because dominance rank is tied to matrilines… Therefore, could test whether monkeys react to vocal exchanges in which rank of callers is reversed. If subjects react to rank reversal, does it show understanding of social structure via hierarchical schema?  Bergman et al. 2003 A matriline is defined as a female and all her living female descendants. Daughters generally acquire a rank below their mothers, so, in the figure below, the top-ranking female (1) has five living descendants and their rank follows her. Similarly with females 7 and 13 and their descendants.  Bergman et al. 2003 Researchers artificially created anomalous social situations by mimicking 10 reversals in rank. Took a low-ranking female’s aggressive grunt (given to an even lower-ranking female) and tied it to the submissive scream of a high- ranking female (given to an even higher- ranking animal).  In the illustration here, Female 1 is presented with sound to suggest that F11 beats F8 (a reversal from within a matriline) and F13 beats F12 (reversal between matrilines). The control condition is a recording that is not of a reversal (F7 beats F11).  Bergman et al. 2003 Results showed that subjects looked longer at the speaker when the reversal was between matrilines, regardless of the rank distance between the females They argued that this was evidence that baboons had a hierarchical understanding of relationships (where matriline membership constitutes an additional level).  Eg. Observational evidence: Grooming competition Re-directed aggression (fig 2) – Kin-biased: an animal attacked by another is more likely to retaliate against lower-ranking relatives of the attacker than against non-relatives. - also “family revenge” aggression: nonkin were significantly more likely to act aggressively toward an opponent after a fight between their own relatives and their opponent's relatives than during matched control periods  Fig. 2. Redirected aggression in vervet monkeys. Seyfarth R M , and Cheney D L Amer. Zool. 2000;40:902- 909 The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology  Does the initial victim of attack “know” that the third animal is a relative of the attacker? Is there some kind of genetic biasing going on (attacking the “inclusive fitness” of the attacker, when fitness of individual cannot be directly challenged)?  Since it is possible that this may simply be a consequence of particular learned associations, rather than evidence of abstract understanding of relationships, experimental evidence is necessary. Classic study: Verena Dasser 1988: can rhesus macaques form abstract “mother-daughter” concepts in the social domain?  Dasser 1988 Trained monkeys to associate photos of female group members with their offspring Once subjects reached criterion (ie., when presented with one picture, chose the correct match at least 80% of the time), Dasser began test phase , using new photos of same mother-offspring pairs. Dasser 1988: Test conditions Subjects presented with one of 2 alternatives: 1. Picture of a female and 2 juveniles (offspring and not) 2. Pairs of photographs, each of which was either a mother/offspring or a mother/non-offspring. Subjects rewarded if they chose photographs of kin.  Results showed that one monkey could discriminate the 1st test condition and another one in the 2nd. Because photographs were novel (from training photos), Vasser concludes that these rhesus had the ability to form an abstract social concept – “mother-offspring”. What else could be going on here? Same? Different? Perceptual matching: choosing items that are perceived as “similar” (even photo background can affect this) How else could you show analogical reasoning? Subject Mother A/Offspring A Mother B/Offspring B Mother A/Offspring A Mother X/non-offspring If subject chooses the 2 mother/offspring pairs consistently (top red), then not perceptual matching. Would show that top pair forms set different from lower (blue) pair. Would show understanding of relations between relations – analogical reasoning.  Is a sense of “social self” in monkeys, however, markedly different from self-awareness in humans? Although monkeys may behave in ways that accurately place themselves within a social network, are they aware of the knowledge that allows them to do so: do they know what they know? Can they reflect on what they know? Can they become the object of their own attention? Attention and Perceptual strategies Cooperation requires the ability to monitor another’s performance – to stay “focused” over sustained periods To have a less “egocentric” perspective on the world How to process complex perceptual worlds where there’s a lot going on, and lots of distractions?  Processing can show either local or global precedence. i.e., when assessing the similarity between one complex stimulus and another, do animals first compare the overall structures (global) or do they begin by assessing local features. – In other words, do they see the forest before they see the trees? A B C D In the figure above, B, C and D all differ from A. When presented with A, human subjects are slowest to recognize that B is different because it has the same global structure as A. Humans tend to show global precedence in processing, so they need to ‘get over’ their initial judgment in order to examine the local features. This interference between the two modes of processing is known as the Stroop Effect  Local precedence: advantageous for fine discrimination based on internal changes (the detection of ripe fruit or individual identity) but inefficient when it comes to the detection and rejection of irrelevant distractors (the perceiver tends to be stuck on detail - seeing the trees makes it difficult to stand back and see the forest). Global precedence: good for generalization across objects or situations that differ in local details. Makes it easier to form broader, superordinate categories (two sets of trees constitute two ‘forests’ despite the fact that the tree species differ in each case). This ability must underpin the emergence of the analogical reasoning that is a distinctive feature of human cognition,  Social structure matters! Low vs high fission fusion dynamics – Primate social groups vary in cohesion: some very cohesive, others more fluid – Individuals in cohesive groups can continually monitor each other visually (e.g. 3rd party relationships) – Less cohesive groups perhaps need to monitor each other conceptually (ie. Represent other animals and their relationships “cognitively”)  Are Physical Space, “Social Space” and Time all mediated by the same parts of the brain? Time, space and social relationships all share one concept – distance – Near vs far as opposed to abstractions like “time” and “social relationship”