25 Jan
2011
25 Jan
'11
12:22 p.m.
The next talk in the Cognitive Development Center at CEU seminar
series will be given by:
Thomas Bugnyar, University of Vienna
Date: Wednesday, January 26, 5 PM
Cognitive Development Center, Hattyú u. 14, 3rd floor
Social cognition in ravens: (When) Does smart behaviour-reading become
mind-reading?
Abstract: Differentiating between individuals with different knowledge
states is an important step in child development and has been
considered as a hallmark in human evolution. Recently, primates and
corvids have been reported to pass knower-guesser tasks, raising the
possibility of mental attribution skills in non-human animals. Yet, it
has been difficult to distinguish ‘mind-reading’ from
behaviour-reading alternatives, specifically the use of behavioural
cues and/or the application of associatively learned rules. Here I
show that ravens observing an experimenter hiding food are capable of
predicting the behaviour of bystanders that had been visible at both,
none, or just one of two caching events. Manipulating the competitors’
visual field independently of the view of the test-subject resulted in
an instant drop in performance, whereas controls for behavioural cues
had no such effect. These findings indicate that ravens not only
remember whom they have seen at caching but take into account that the
other’s view was blocked. Notably, it does not suffice for the birds
to associate specific competitors with specific caches. These results
support the idea that certain socio-ecological conditions may select
for similar cognitive abilities in distantly related species and that
some birds have evolved analogous precursors to a human
Theory-of-Mind.
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