PS261 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Cognitive Psychology, Ecological Validity, Anthropomorphism
Document Summary
Indirect method: create an operational definition of the question, teach the animal something, test the animal in ways that its behavior reports on the relevant mental state, ex. George romanes: sought to support darwin"s mental continuity hypothesis with anecdotes about animal"s mental skills. Accepted some anecdotes from questionable sources (thus his research had now become questionable: ex. Dog sees desired item beyond latched gated, dog lifts latch with muzzle to get at the item, dog had reasoned hot to open the gate. Lloyd-morgan"s canon: challenged darwin and romanes approach, he said we should always choose the easier explanation, the one with the less animal. Every time the rat goes to the dark side we shock it until he goes to the bright side of the cage. Scared of the dark side. : do animals feel fear, anthropomorphism examples, 1960s: us navy tried to communicate with dolphins, dolphins gave responses that were based on (unconscious?) cues from the experimenter.
