March 3rd, 2009
 Introduction
to Tool Use and Causal
Understanding
 What is learned - associative learning of
causal understanding? 3 Case Studies:
• Tool Selection
• Gravity
• Tool Manufacture
 How
are causal relations learned?
 Insight & Creativity
• Using the environment in novel ways to achieve
goals
 Planning & Forethought
• Thinking ahead
• Responding to stimuli that aren’t in sight
 Causal Understanding
• “Folk Physics”
• Understanding something about how the world
works
• Mediating forces
 What
Event
is learned? Associative vs. Causal
Outcome
Associative learning: Predict the outcome – what is going to happen
next?
Causal understanding: WHY and HOW does the outcome occur?
 What
is learned? Associative vs. Causal
Associative: Yellow ball moves after contact with blue ball
Causal: Mediating forces – “force” imparted by blue ball is blocked by
the barrier
 Mediating
forces:
• Different levels of complexity
 Visible factors
 Invisible factors
 Psychological factors
 Explanatory
Attitude
 Can
non-human animals recognize the
functional properties of tools?
• Hauser and colleagues – cottontop tamarins
 Hauser
and colleagues – cottontop
tamarins
 Varied
colour, texture, shape and size
• Colour & texture are not ‘functional’
changes
• Shape & size could be ‘functional’ changes
 All
canes set in the correct spatial
arrangement
 Monkeys
preferred the non-functional
changes
 Sensitive to changes in potential
functionality
 Similar
results found with capuchins
• Fujita, Kuroshima & Asai, 2003
 Included
transfer tests in which an
obstacle or a trap was on ‘drag path’
• Capuchins failed on these transfers
 Understand
spatial relationship between
tool and food, but not tool, food and
environment
 New
Caledonian crows
 Select tools of appropriate length in sight
and out of sight
In sight:
Out of sight (Abel only)
-Two strategies:
-Match distance or
-Choose longest
-What if length was un-usable?
-Abstract representation (keep
representation of tool and intended
goal in mind)
 Trap
in the middle of the tube
 Learned the task:
• 1 out of 4 capuchins
• 2 out of 5 chimps
 Transfer
tests showed that capuchins
used a distance based rule
 Chimps
didn’t use distance based rule
 Associative rule still possible
• Insert stick on side of trap
 Failure
to adjust behaviour on inverted
tests
• But there’s no penalty for not adjusting!
• Human adults don’t adjust either
• Instructional problem?
 Too
many factors?
• Tool, food and environment
• Adjusted task to remove tool use
 Allows
subjects to pull or push
• Prefer to pull
 Distance
and trap rules are not available
 New
Caledonian crows
 Similar transfer tests: 3/6 solved the
transfers plus a trap-table task
 In
the wild, elephants commonly use
branches to repel flies
 Too long or too bushy branches
presented to captive elephants
 In
the wild, tear pandanus leaves
 Barbed edges of leaf can be used to
“fish” for insects in dead wood
 “cultural variation” in tool manufacture
 Naive birds can create pandanus tools
without teaching
 In
the lab:
• http://users.ox.ac.uk/~kgroup/tools/movies.sht
ml
 Always
inserted straight wire first
 Insightful?
 Blaisdell, Sawa, Leising
& Waldmann,
2006
Common Cause
Causal Chain
Light
Light
Tone
Light
Tone
Food
Light
Food
 Test: Intervene-Tone
or Observe-Tone

Causal explanation:
• If Tone just occurs, maybe
Light came on first and
was ‘missed’  Check for
food!
• If I caused the Tone to
occur, Light didn’t
happen  don’t check for
food

Associative
explanation:
• If there is an association
between the tone & food,
shouldn’t matter whether
you caused it or not 
check for food at same
rate.

Chain  always check
 Rats
respond in accordance with
causal reasoning, not associative
processes
 Causal
Markov condition
• During common-cause condition, tone and light
should be causally independent
• But, rats receive only tone or food following the
light – they are NOT independent of each other
 Thus, does
net
not strictly follow causal Bayes
 Criticism:
• Lack of evidence could be based on inability to
properly instruct animals
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZmx0jml1jk
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIAoJsS9Ix8&
feature=related