Causal Reasoning in Rats

Blaisdell, Aaron P.; Sawa, Kosuke; Stahlman, W. David; Leising, Kenneth J.; Gant, Dana J.; Waldmann, Michael S.

doi:10.1037/e603992013-103

Cited by 93 publications

(247 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

221

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…The differential development of general search behavior among intervening and observing rats appears to emerge with very little experience. This fits earlier suggestions that learning a connection between lever contact and a resultant stimulus is very rapid, effective even from the first instance (e.g., assumed in Blaisdell et al, 2006). However, note that the circumstance changes after the first scheduled presentation, since this marks the experiment's first food delivery.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 61%

“…It is a frequent assumption (e.g., Blaisdell et al, 2006;Dwyer et al, 2009;Fernbach & Sloman, 2009) that learners will take covariation information alone as evidence of direct causation. Seeing that a stimulus is often followed by food might lead one to interpret that stimulus as a cause of food.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…If this is the case, INT subjects should more quickly and more strongly acquire conditional responding to the CS. This was not observed, calling into doubt explanations of related experiments that rely heavily on the assumption that rats engage in such discounting (e.g., Blaisdell et al, 2006).…”

Section: Predictions Of Substantive Views Of Causal Cognitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By substantive views of causal reasoning (e.g., Waldmann, Hagmayer, & Blaisdell, 2006), if subjects in Experiments 1 and 3 viewed the intervened-upon stimulus as only indirectly related to food, then lever-produced CS presentations should not have led to expectation of food (cf. Blaisdell et al, 2006). Having discounted specifically these non-reinforced presentations, the INT subject receives a strong correlation (effectively 1:1 in Experiment 3) between the CS and food.…”

Section: Predictions Of Substantive Views Of Causal Cognitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, granting their assumption circumvents the questions about intervention the present study attempts to address. Blaisdell, Sawa, Leising, and Waldmann (2006) similarly spoke of lever press as intervention, but that study conceptualized lever press no differently than other hypothetical causes. Leising, Wong, Waldmann, and Blaisdell (2008) stressed that they were showing a role for intervention, but based that claim on the dubious assumption that rats would perceive a novel event as a cause of a following stimulus even without prior training, and presented this in contrast to a replication of Blaisdell et al's (2006) demonstration (also readily attributable to differences in stimulus salience; see Burgess, Dwyer, & Honey, 2012, for a critical reply).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

Intervening to learn about effects of one’s actions

Bowers¹,

Timberlake²

2018

AB&C

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

-Intervention provides a reliable cue to veridical causality. Just as an experimenter manipulates variables to distinguish cause and effect from mere correlation, so might a rat learn differently about the effects of its own actions. However, theory remains vague on specific predictions. The present study asks whether and how producing a conditional stimulus by lever contact alters what a rat learns about that stimulus. Despite the theoretical pressure among theories of causal reasoning for an effect of intervention to hold, the effect we found was not in standard goal-oriented response variables, but in a general activity measure, and so not readily interpretable by typical theories of causal reasoning. We propose a viable explanation for this pattern in terms of multiple foraging strategies. The primary contribution of the present results is that they pose three challenges to theories that concern how animals deal with cause and effect: 1) to resolve present ambiguities regarding predictions; 2) to situate causal cognition research in specific ecological contexts, such as predation; and 3) to look beyond goal acquisition, to the rest of the animal's behavior, including general activity. We present one potential solution in alignment with behavior systems approaches. Keywords -Intervention, Causal reasoning, Graphical models, Behavior systems, General activity, Rattus norvegicusExperimenters manipulate variables to discern cause and effect from mere correlation. They understand that producing a potential cause by one's own action to observe its effects (intervention) is crucial to their ability to attribute causation, and how observing covariation in this context provides much stronger evidence of causation than observing the same pattern occurring without control over relevant variables. However, it is not only experimenters who experiment. Cooks experiment with recipes; electricians experiment with circuits; and the rest of us experiment with recipes, circuits, plumbing, automotive repair, and whenever we attempt to decipher hidden causal factors. When we do, we are not always very principled scientists about it (even the principled scientists), but whatever experimental control we may overlook while adjusting the amount of sugar in a cake, reliably, when we test causal factors, here or in any domain, we intervene on variables.Likewise, rats are not merely passive observers, but engage in reliable patterns of appetitive behavior in which they interact with objects in their environments in system-specific ways. A feedingready rat will root, gnaw, and manipulate protrusions, thereby producing effects that may provide meaningful cues to causality. Such information is often available to be exploited by an active learner. Do they use this information appropriately? Are rats naïve experimenters? To be clear, the question is not whether rats are doing what a trained experimenter does. Rather, one can imagine a rat testing hypotheses with no more foresight than shown by human naïve experimenters. For instanc...

show abstract

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 61%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Predictions Of Substantive Views Of Causal Cognitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Predictions Of Substantive Views Of Causal Cognitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Intervening to learn about effects of one’s actions

Bowers¹,

Timberlake²

2018

AB&C

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

Great apes use weight as a cue to find hidden food

Schrauf

Call

2010

American J Primatol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Bonobos (Pan paniscus; n=5), orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus abelii; n=6), and a gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla; n=1) were presented with two opaque cups, one empty and one baited (containing two bananas). Subjects had to independently gain weight information about the contents of the cups to find the hidden food. Six apes attained above chance level within a total of 16 trials. Successful subjects spontaneously adopted the method of successively lifting the cups and thus comparing their weight before making a choice. Prior to testing, these apes had participated in a weight discrimination task. To rule out that a subject's good performance was influenced by previous experience in weight experiments, we ran a second test in which the same task was presented to a group of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes; n=9) who were naïve to weight experiments. These subjects also participated in an additional test condition in which the same problem was presented based on learning to associate arbitrary visual stimuli. The results show that experience did not affect performance because the nine naïve subjects were equally able to find the food when the task stimuli held a causal relation (i.e. weight indicates the hidden food). Interestingly, only one of the naïve subjects solved the task when the task elements held an arbitrary relation (i.e. certain visual pattern indicates food). Our results confirm previous findings that apes perform better in problems grounded on causal compared to arbitrary relations.

show abstract

Animal cognition

Vallortígara

Chiandetti

Rugani

et al. 2010

WIRES Cognitive Science

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The main topics in the study of animal cognition are reviewed with special reference to direct links to human, and in particular developmental, cognitive sciences. The material is organized with regard to the general idea that biological organisms would be endowed with a small set of separable systems of core knowledge, a prominent hypothesis in the current developmental cognitive sciences. Core knowledge systems would serve to represent inanimate physical objects and their mechanical interactions (natural physics); numbers with their relationships of ordering, addition, and subtraction (natural mathematics); places in the spatial layout with their geometric relationships (natural geometry); and animate psychological objects (agents) with their goal-directed actions (natural psychology). Some advanced forms of animal cognition, such as episodic-like representations and planning for the future, are also discussed. WIREs Cogn Sci 2010 1 882-893 For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.

show abstract

Causal Reasoning in Rats

Cited by 93 publications

References 0 publications

Intervening to learn about effects of one’s actions

Intervening to learn about effects of one’s actions

Great apes use weight as a cue to find hidden food

Animal cognition

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About