Study Guide for Exam 3: Animal Cognition
Anticipation and Expectancies
● What is cognition, what distinguishes cognition from instrumental conditioning?
○ Cognition is about how they process information about their environment to guide
behavior — not just reacting automatically, but thinking, planning, or inferring
■ Instrumental conditioning = learning through consequences — behavior is
strengthened or weakened by rewards or punishments —> helps form rules but
doesn't tell you how to use them
○ So, instrumental conditioning explains behavior through associations, while cognition
explains behavior through mental processing and understanding relationships and rules
● How does instrumental condition help form cognitive rules?
○ Through reinforcement, animals learn regularities in their environment
■ they can extract general rules (e.g., “if I do X, Y happens”) and apply those rules
flexibly in new situations
● What is animal consciousness, how is it similar and different from animal cognition?
Concept Description Example
Cognition Processing information, problem solving, A crow using a tool to get
decision making food
Consciousne Having subjective experiences or awareness A chimp recognizing itself
ss in a mirror
👉 Difference: Cognition can occur without consciousness (e.g., reflexive problem solving).
Consciousness implies a subjective, inner experience
● What is a mental representation?
○ Mental representation: internal model or symbol of something in the external world
○ A bird remembering where it stored seeds → spatial representation
○ A monkey recognizing that “A > B > C” means “A > C” → relational representation
○ A dolphin recognizing a sound pattern → auditory representation
● Know in detail the experiments covering representational-mediated learning and
differential outcome experiments that we discussed in class
○ Representation-mediated learning → pair a light with cheese and the rat will drool (trial
1) → same light, but with injection that causes sickness (trial 2) → give the rat cheese
and it wont eat it because it made it sick
○ Differential outcome experiment → A rat learns: Press Lever A →Grape-flavored pellet,
Press Lever B → Banana-flavored pellet
○ vs. a non-differential outcome condition:
■ Press Lever A or B → same generic pellet
○ Animals learn faster and more accurately under differential outcomes
■ Shows animals can solve problems by thinking about them
, ● What do both the representational-mediated learning and differential outcome experiments
tell us about mental/internal representations?
Experiment Type Key Finding What It Reveals
Representational-Med Animals can learn about They use internal representations
iated Learning relationships between of absent cues to infer
stimuli even when one is outcomes.
absent.
Differential Outcome Animals perform better when They form specific expectancies
Effect each stimulus-response (mental models) about which
pair leads to a distinct outcome follows which cue.
reward.
✅ Together, these experiments demonstrate that: Animal learning involves more than associative
strength: Animals maintain internal cognitive models that let them anticipate and imagine outcomes, even
in the absence of direct sensory input
● What is anticipation and expectancies?
○ Anticipation: an animal’s ability to predict what is about to happen based on prior
experience
■ It’s behavioral and physiological — e.g., salivation before food
○ Expectancies: the mental components behind anticipation — the beliefs or internal
predictions animals form about upcoming events — “When I hear this sound, food will
appear.”
■ Expectancies reflect internal cognitive processing — not just reflexive behavior
● What do expectancies tell us about underlying cognitive processes?
○ Expectancies show that animals:
■ Represent outcomes mentally (they can “think ahead”)
■ Compare expectations to reality (expectancy violation triggers surprise or
learning)
■ Engage in predictive coding — updating mental models when outcomes differ
from predictions
✅
■ Show flexibility: if the expected outcome changes, they can adapt quickly.
○ In summary:
Expectancies demonstrate that animal behavior is guided by internal cognitive states —
animals are not just reacting; they are thinking, predicting, and adjusting based on mental
representations of the world
Episodic Memory
● What is episodic memory, how does it differ from expectancies/anticipation?
○ Episodic memory is the ability to remember specific past experiences — the “what,”
“where,” and “when” of an event
Anticipation and Expectancies
● What is cognition, what distinguishes cognition from instrumental conditioning?
○ Cognition is about how they process information about their environment to guide
behavior — not just reacting automatically, but thinking, planning, or inferring
■ Instrumental conditioning = learning through consequences — behavior is
strengthened or weakened by rewards or punishments —> helps form rules but
doesn't tell you how to use them
○ So, instrumental conditioning explains behavior through associations, while cognition
explains behavior through mental processing and understanding relationships and rules
● How does instrumental condition help form cognitive rules?
○ Through reinforcement, animals learn regularities in their environment
■ they can extract general rules (e.g., “if I do X, Y happens”) and apply those rules
flexibly in new situations
● What is animal consciousness, how is it similar and different from animal cognition?
Concept Description Example
Cognition Processing information, problem solving, A crow using a tool to get
decision making food
Consciousne Having subjective experiences or awareness A chimp recognizing itself
ss in a mirror
👉 Difference: Cognition can occur without consciousness (e.g., reflexive problem solving).
Consciousness implies a subjective, inner experience
● What is a mental representation?
○ Mental representation: internal model or symbol of something in the external world
○ A bird remembering where it stored seeds → spatial representation
○ A monkey recognizing that “A > B > C” means “A > C” → relational representation
○ A dolphin recognizing a sound pattern → auditory representation
● Know in detail the experiments covering representational-mediated learning and
differential outcome experiments that we discussed in class
○ Representation-mediated learning → pair a light with cheese and the rat will drool (trial
1) → same light, but with injection that causes sickness (trial 2) → give the rat cheese
and it wont eat it because it made it sick
○ Differential outcome experiment → A rat learns: Press Lever A →Grape-flavored pellet,
Press Lever B → Banana-flavored pellet
○ vs. a non-differential outcome condition:
■ Press Lever A or B → same generic pellet
○ Animals learn faster and more accurately under differential outcomes
■ Shows animals can solve problems by thinking about them
, ● What do both the representational-mediated learning and differential outcome experiments
tell us about mental/internal representations?
Experiment Type Key Finding What It Reveals
Representational-Med Animals can learn about They use internal representations
iated Learning relationships between of absent cues to infer
stimuli even when one is outcomes.
absent.
Differential Outcome Animals perform better when They form specific expectancies
Effect each stimulus-response (mental models) about which
pair leads to a distinct outcome follows which cue.
reward.
✅ Together, these experiments demonstrate that: Animal learning involves more than associative
strength: Animals maintain internal cognitive models that let them anticipate and imagine outcomes, even
in the absence of direct sensory input
● What is anticipation and expectancies?
○ Anticipation: an animal’s ability to predict what is about to happen based on prior
experience
■ It’s behavioral and physiological — e.g., salivation before food
○ Expectancies: the mental components behind anticipation — the beliefs or internal
predictions animals form about upcoming events — “When I hear this sound, food will
appear.”
■ Expectancies reflect internal cognitive processing — not just reflexive behavior
● What do expectancies tell us about underlying cognitive processes?
○ Expectancies show that animals:
■ Represent outcomes mentally (they can “think ahead”)
■ Compare expectations to reality (expectancy violation triggers surprise or
learning)
■ Engage in predictive coding — updating mental models when outcomes differ
from predictions
✅
■ Show flexibility: if the expected outcome changes, they can adapt quickly.
○ In summary:
Expectancies demonstrate that animal behavior is guided by internal cognitive states —
animals are not just reacting; they are thinking, predicting, and adjusting based on mental
representations of the world
Episodic Memory
● What is episodic memory, how does it differ from expectancies/anticipation?
○ Episodic memory is the ability to remember specific past experiences — the “what,”
“where,” and “when” of an event
