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COGNITIVE CONTROL OF
BEHAVIOR
Chapter 11
Animal Cognition
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Aristotle
•Scala Naturae
•God
•Angels and Demons
•Man
•Wild Beasts
•Domesticated Beasts
•Plants
•Minerals
Born 384 BC
Charles Darwin
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Evolution by Natural Selection
Mental continuity between humans
and animals.
Descent of Man
“Nevertheless the difference in mind
between man and the higher animals,
great as it is, certainly is one of degree
and not of kind.”
1809-1882
Georges Romanes
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Animal Intelligence (1888)
Relied heavily on anecdotes to build
an uncritical view of animal intelligence
Criteria for Mind:
1. Not a reflex
2. Individual Choice
3. Report by a Reputable Person
1848-1894
Some Examples
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Horses and inclined planes
 Earwig “Tim” comes to breakfast
 Cats and mechanical understanding
 Scorpions commit suicide
 Sympathetic ants

Excerpted from George Romanes' book Animal Intelligence (1888)
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One day, watching a small column of these
ants, I placed a little stone on one of them to secure
it. The next that approached, as soon as it
discovered its situation, ran backwards in an agitated
manner, and soon communicated the intelligence to
the others. They rushed to the rescue; some bit at
the stone and tried to move it, others seized the
prisoner by the legs and tugged with such force that I
thought the legs would be pulled off, but they
persevered until they got the captive free.
This observation seems unequivocal as proving
fellow-feeling and sympathy.
Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny
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Romanes Evolution of Intelligence
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15 Months
12 Months
8 Months
4 Months
7 Weeks
3 Weeks
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Morality
Tool Use
Understand Words
Recognize People
Similarity
Contiguity
Caveat Emptor
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
Anthropomorphism: unthinkingly giving human
qualities to animals, especially when the data are
anecdotal
Teaching Signs to Washoe
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Edward Thorndike
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Criticized Romanes’ views as
unscientific.
Problems with anecdotes:
1. Only a single case is studied. Does it
apply to whole species?
2. Observations are often not repeated or
repeatable
3. Conditions under which observations
are made are not well regulated
4. Do not know history of the animal
1874-1949
Lloyd Morgan and Tony
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“Tony”
1852-1936
Morgan’s Canon
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“In no case may we interpret an action as the
outcome of the exercise of a higher psychical
faculty, if it can be interpreted as the outcome
of one which stands lower in the psychological
scale.”
Caveat Emptor
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Anthropomorphism: unthinkingly giving human
qualities to animals
Equality of Condition: assumption that it is possible
to truly equate test conditions, and thus place
species on a scale
Speed of learning and intelligence
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Are infants dumber than bees? Are bees smarter than rats?
Caveat Emptor
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Anthropomorphism: unthinkingly giving human
qualities to animals
Equality of Condition: assumption that it is possible to
truly equate test conditions
Evolutionary Scale: assumption that living species are
close genetic relatives, with organisms of lesser
complexity having evolved into more complex ones.
Evolution of Intelligence
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Brain Size
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Dumb and dumber
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Tree of life
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Caveat Emptor
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Anthropomorphism: unthinkingly giving
human qualities to animals
Equality of Condition: assumption that it is
possible to truly equate test conditions
Evolutionary Scale: assumption that living
species are close genetic relatives with
organisms of lesser complexity having evolved
into more complex ones.
Homology or analogy: Common genes or
common environmental pressures?
Learned Helplessness Theory
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Seligman – depression is learned.
Depression occurs when people believe:
 Failures
are due to uncontrollable events.
 Failure will continue as long as events are beyond their
control.
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Depression arises from helplessness.
Animal Research
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
Step 1 -- three groups of dogs:
 Inescapable
shock – no control.
 Escapable shock -- terminated if the dog pressed a
panel.
 No shock
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Step 2 – 10 trials of signaled avoidance training in
shuttle box.
2/3 of inescapable shock dogs did not learn to
jump during step 2.
Characteristics of Helplessness
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
Motivational – unable to initiate voluntary behavior.
 Mice
in water maze.
 Nonspecific – carries over to a variety tasks and test
situations.
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Learning– incapable of benefiting from future
experience – even if they jump, don’t learn.
Emotional– negative affect, ahedonia (sad)
Helplessness in Humans
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
Hiroto – three groups of college students:
 Uncontrollable
group – wrongly told that pushing button
would end noise.
 Escapable group – pushing button ended noise.
 Control – no noise.
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Tested using finger shuttle box.
Uncontrollable group did not escape
Cognition and helplessness
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
It is important to appreciate that although cognition
is at the heart of Seligman's theory, learned
helplessness affects other psychological processes
A Cognitive View Of Depression
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Seligman believed that depression is learned
He proposed that depression occurs when people
believe that they are helpless to control their own
destinies
Studies of Depressives
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Show similar results to learned helplessness studies.
Depressed individuals do not escape noise,
responding like inescapable non-depressed
individuals.
Depressed individuals do not adjust likelihood of
succeeding upward when they experience success.
 They
credit chance not skill.
Parallels (Symptoms)
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Helplessness
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Response initiation deficit
Reinforcement ineffective in
changing behavior
Attentional shift (Turn
Outward)
Emotionally passive
Recall aversive
Reduced Aggression
Lose Weight
Norepinephrine depletion
Glutamate overactivity
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Depression
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Unresponsive, slow
Disrupted thinking, negative
expectations
Attentional shift (Turn
Inward)
Flat
Ruminations
Occasional Angry Outbursts
Anorexia
Norepinephrine depletion
Glutamate overactivity
Parallels (Treatments)
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Antidepressants
ECT
Forced escape
Time
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Antidepressant
ECT
Behavioral Efficacy Treat
Time
Criticisms of Seligman’s Theory
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May be due to attributions, not everyone who
experiences uncontrollable events becomes helpless.
Failure to replicate performance deficits in humans
– facilitation of performance instead (Get Mad).
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Depressed individuals attribute their success to
external factors of luck and task ease
Depressed individuals attribute their failures to
internal factors of lack of effort and ability
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Non-depressed individuals attribute successes to
internal factors and failures to external factors
Learned helplessness models cannot explain such
observations
Attribution Theory
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
Causal attributions of failure have three dimensions:
 Internal-external
– internal traits or characteristics vs
environmental forces
 Stable-unstable – past causes will persist vs new forces
will determine future outcomes
 Global-specific – outcome relates only to one task vs
outcome effects everything.
Attributional Model of Depression
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Internal
Dimension
Stable
External
Unstable
Stable
Unstable
Global
I’m unattractive to
all men
My conversation
sometimes bores
men
Men are overly
competitive with
intelligent women
Men get into
rejecting moods
Specific
I’m not his “type”
My conversation
bored him
He’s overly
competitive with
women
He was in a
rejecting mood
Severity of Depression
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Depression can be transient if attributed to global
but changing conditions.
Severe depression occurs when attributions are:
 Internal
 Global
 Stable
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Unlikely if external, specific, unstable.
Two Kinds of Helplessness
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Personal helplessness – an individual’s inability
causes failure.
Universal helplessness – the environment is
structured so that no one can control future events.
Abramson -- both kinds lead to depression.
 Vary
on external-internal dimension.
 Low self-esteem only with personal.
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
Both personal and universal helplessness produce
the expectation of an inability to control future
events and a lack of an ability to initiate voluntary
behavior, which are characteristic of depression

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Individuals who are personally depressed make
internal attributions for failure (MANY PEOPLE)
Individuals who are universally depressed make
external attributions for failure (LIKE DOGS & RATS)
Severity of Depression
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Severe depression typically appears when a person
attributes their failure to internal, global, and
stable factors
The depression is intense because they perceive
themselves as incompetent (internal) in many
situations (global) and believe the incompetence is
unlikely to change (stable)
Hopelessness Theory of Depression
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
The hopelessness theory suggests that attributional
style AND/OR environmental circumstances together
contribute to hopelessness
Hopelessness Depression
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
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Hopelessness – the expectation that desired outcomes
will not occur.
 Learned helplessness -- no control over undesired
outcomes.
Accounts for anxiety without depression.
 Anxiety – possibility that a person may have no
control over negative events.
 Depression occurs when certain.
Negative Life Events and Hopelessness
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Hopelessness:
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The belief that negative events are inevitable
Occurs when a negative life event is attributed to stable
and global factors
Hopelessness Theory of Depression:

The view that whether a person becomes hopeless and
depressed depends upon a person making a stable and
global attribution for negative life events and the severity
of those negative life events
A Negative Attributional Style and
Vulnerability to Depression
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Negative attributional style:
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A belief system that assumes that negative life events
are due to stable and global factors, which makes the
person vulnerable to depression
A Positive Attributional Style and
Hopelessness Depression
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Positive attributional style:
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A belief system that negative life events are
controllable, which leads to hopefulness and a
resilience to depression
Hopefulness:
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The belief that negative life events can be controlled
and are not inevitable