Princeton Review Psychology Gre - Chapter 9 (Comparative Psychology)

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Comparative psychology

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- Closely related to ethology
- Through research studies, different species are compared in order to learn about their similarities and differences.

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Karl von Frisch

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- Discovered the dance of the honeybees, which was only one of several important discoveries about the behavior of honeybees.

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Communication and honeybees

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- honeybees communicate by "dancing"
- once a scouting bee has located a promising food source, it returns to the hive and conveys the location of food through a series of movements.
- the longer the dance, the farther the food, and the more vigorous the display, the better the food.
- Most important, the dance is performed on the vertical sheets of the hive. The angle between a perfectly vertical line and the direction the bee orients when dancing is the same angle as between the sun and the food source. The same type of dance is used to communicate potential nesting sites.

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Round dance

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- honeybee dancing in circular motion
- indicates food that is extremely nearby

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waggle dance

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- honeybee dancing with wiggle-type movements
- indicates that food is far away

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Navigation and bees

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- Scouting bees do nothing other than look for food and nesting sites and return with the information
- While it is known that bees use landmarks as simple location cues, they are also able to use the sun, polarized light, and magnetic fields as navigational aides.

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Hierarchy and honeybees

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- Honeybees form a hierarchy with the hive as only one bee emerges as the queen.
- Once queen, this bee produces a chemical that suppresses the ovaries in all of the other female bees, so that she is the one reproducer.
- The QUEEN BEE is constnatly tended to and fed by all the toher bees, and in the spring she lays thousands of eggs.
- As these eggs mature, scouts find a new hive site for the old queen and her workers.

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Mating and honeybees

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- Very few male bees (drones) are produced. They serve only one purpose: to mate with the queen.
- The same mating areas are used year after year even though no bee survives from on year to the next. No one knows how they know to gather in the nearest mating site.

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Flower selection

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- Bees can see ultraviolet light, so they see flower coloration in a more complex way than humans do.
- Von Frisch found that honeybees could see certain markers on flowers (honeyguides) that people could not.

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Navigation in general

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- Some animals use a sort of map-and-compass navigation, with the map being landmarks and the compass being sense of direction from elements like the sun or stars
- Other animals have true navigational abilities in which they can point toward their goal with no landmarks and from any position.

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Navigational guides

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1) Atmospheric pressure (pigeons)
2) Infrasound - extremely low frequency sounds
3) Magnetic sense (pigeons and bees)
4) Sun compass
5) Star compass
6) Polarized light

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Echolocation

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- the most sophisticated type of perception, which generally replaces sight

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Owls and hearing

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- Do NOT use echolocation
- Hearing is similar to humans. They judge direction and distance by comparing the differing intensities and arrival times at the two ears. Owls are better than humans at determining elevation of the source of sound; however, because their ears are asymmetrical (one higher than the other), sound from above or below iwll reach the different ears at different times and with different intensities

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Wolfgang Kohler (Gestalt)

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- Acquired fame by experimenting with chimpanzees and INSIGHT in problem solving.
- Asserted that by perceiving the whole of the situation, chimps were able to create novel soluations to problems (rather than trial and error).
- Kohler ran experiments in which chimps had to use tools to retrieve rewards. Only through insight could the chimp accomplish this. (A-HA! Experience)

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Harry Harlow

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- Researched development with RHESUS MONKEYS.
- Of particular significance were his results with SOCIAL ISOLATION and MATERNAL STIMULATION.

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Social Isolation

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- Harlow compared monkey raised in social isolation to monkey raised with a peer group. With the isolated monkeys, a lack of interaction and socialization with the normal, young monkeys hampered their social development. Once brought together with other monkeys, isolated male monkeys did not display normal sexual functioning and isolated female monkeys lacked maternal behaviors.

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Contact Comfort

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- Harlow studied the phenomenon of attachment with infant monkeys. Separated at birth from their mothers, infant monkeys were placed in cages with two "surrogate mothers." One surrogate mother was a plain wire dummy monkey equipped with a feeding bottle and the other surrogate mother was a terrycloth dummy mother with no feeding bottle. Surprisingly, the infant spent most of its time with the terrycloth mother and ran to this surrogate when afraid. The infant approached the wire mother only to feed.
- It seems then that infants attach to their mothers through comforting experience rather than through feeding.

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Learning to learn

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- Harlow demonstrated that monkeys became better at learning tasks as they acquired different learning experiences. Eventually, monkeys could learn after only one trial.

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R.C. Tyron

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- Selectively bread "maze bright" and "maze dull" rats to demonstrate the heritability of behavior.

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R.M. Cooper and John Zubeck

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- Demonstrated the interaction between heredity and environment.
- For instance, slectively bred bright rats performed better than the dull rats only when both sets of rats were raised in normal conditions. Both performed well when raised in an enriched environment (lots of food, etc); both performed poorly when raised in an impoverished environment.

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Edward Thorndike

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- Acquired fame in animal learning with his concept of INSTRUMENTAL LEARNING.
- In instrumental learning, learning happens through "trial, error and accidental success." The animal then acts on previous successes.
- This led to the LAW OF EFFECT

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Thordike's Law of Effect

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- Postulated that successful behaviors are more likely to be repeated.
- Thorndike demonstrated this with cats in puzzle boxes.

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Cross fostering experiments

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- Attempt to separate the effects of heredity and environment.
- e.g. sibling mice would be separated at birth, for an experiment on aggression in rats - differences would then be attributed to experience rather than genetics

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Eric Kandel

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- Studied the sea slug Aplysia, which he chose because of its few, large, and easily identifiable nerve cells.
- Posited that learning and memory are evidence by changes in synapes and neural pathways.