Author Archives: Dalton Cain Petrillo

Moral Questions for Operant Conditioning in Animals

Have you ever wondered why we, as humans, measure the intelligence of other organisms by their ability to mimic the characteristics or behaviors that we exhibit? For example, consider a dog. If a dog listens well, does tricks, and obeys orders given by their owners then that dog is considered to be intelligent when compared to a dog that does not obey their owners. Now, if these two dogs are the same breed and the same age it is safe to assume that one has received training, most likely in the form of operant conditioning during their raising while the other dog did not. Does the fact that one dog was taught how to do tricks through positive reinforcement, most likely, make it more intelligent than the dog that was not given the same opportunity? I would venture to say that tricks and obeying orders does not explicitly illustrate the intelligence level of animals. I would argue that tricks and obeying orders is simply a medium which trainers and psychologists use to project the intelligence of animals into a tangible scale that most people are able to understand.

Now, the question arises: is it morally right and psychologically safe to use classical and operant conditioning methods to make animals perform tricks and obey orders that they would inherently never do in nature. Granted, domesticated animals such as service dogs serve a greater purpose than ‘rolling-over’, but take this idea and extrapolate it out from domesticated animals to organisms that truly have no place in captivity.

Consider the orca whale. For over 30 years these animals have been used as show animals for organizations like SeaWorld performing tricks for crowds of people of all ages. I would recommend watching the documentary ‘Blackfish’ in regards to the details of the orcas of SeaWorld, and for those of you who have seen it you might understand my stance a bit more clearly (Blackfish, Cowperthwaite). By nature, the orca is an extremely emotional driven animal. They live in families that live and die closer than most humans do to their families. Naturally, they are extremely intelligent and highly skilled in teamwork. A short video (hyperlink: http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/orca-juvenile-training-lex) shows how a family of orcas not only using teamwork to capture a seal, but using observational learning techniques with the children to try and show them how hunting works (Killer Whales). As we saw in class, the use of observational learning requires the use of mirror neurons which seem to only be found in organisms with high cognitive development such as primates and humans.

The heightened ability to learn through observation may have been a reason leading to making orcas show animals, but this has proven to have negative influences on the animals. In the film ‘Blackfish’, SeaWorld trainers explain how they used positive reinforcement to promote behavior and negative punishment to demote behaviors. On the surface this worked to train the animals to do tricks for their performances. However, just as Pavlov’s dog would do after conditioning if the trainers would make the orca do a trick and deny it a reward they would get frustrated. This frustration has led to violence and, in cases, the death of trainers.

Unfortunately, the moral questions continue. As stated before, orcas are very family based creatures. When taken from their homes and dumped into a cage with strange whales they can quickly begin to show signs of anxiety. There are cases where this anxiety has led to violence against other whales and to trainers. Over time, this anxiety has led to what seems to be similar to antisocial personality disorders and even depression. Once again I would highly recommend watching the documentary ‘Blackfish’ to get a sense of what I have talked about.

I hope this has sparked some thought into why we as humans find it necessary to psychologically shape other creatures when given the chance. In the case of orcas this forced conditioning has led to possible psychological disorders and in the case of domesticated animals it has led to the near complete dependence on humans for survival.

I encourage comments, thoughts, and criticisms.

 

Works Cited:

Blackfish. Dir. Gabriela Cowperthwaite. Dogwoof, 2013. Film.

“Killer Whales “Gang Up” to Capture Seal.” Killer Whales “Gang Up” to Capture Seal. N.p., n.d. Web. 08 Apr. 2014.

Paiget’s Cog. Dev. Theory in Dogs?

My parents have recently gotten a new puppy to fill the void of all their sons going off to college. With a fortunate amount of coincidence, we began to cover Piaget’s stages of cognitive development in human children. Just as a reiteration, or review rather, Piaget’s theory of cognitive development occurs in four distinct stages. These stages occur over the duration of a human’s early childhood. Now, I say that this is a fortunate coincidence because after visiting my parents for spring break and having to baby sit the new puppy while they were at work, I began to wonder if these cognitive stages were present in other animals, such as canines.

Dogs, along with many other animals, grow very quickly into their adult forms. This is true both physically and mentally (Although some dogs seem like big babies for their entire lives!). Therefore, it may be safe to assume that if Piaget’s theory of cognitive development is correct, the duration of those phases for dogs should be much quicker than those for humans. Taking this into account, I began to observe my puppy’s behavior and compare it to what my parents have told me about her from her earlier days.

I began with the first stage of Piaget’s cognitive development theory: the sensorimotor stage. Now, I was not there to personally observe her as a new born, but my parents were. From their reports, the puppy was extremely dependent. This is natural as most infants are dependent. Interestingly, however, according to my parents the puppy would exhibit hints of object permanence a few weeks after adopting her. At first, my parents could take a toy from her and hide it. She would completely forget about it ever being there, or at least that is how it appeared. Later, she gained what appeared to be object permanence and that same trick did not work. She would follow the toy behind your back and go find it. Additionally, she does show signs of learning through her senses. More specifically, she would learn through her mouth. As a young puppy she would put anything in reach in her mouth, no matter what it was whether it is a leaf or broken glass she would put it in her mouth. Now, this could just be a trait that she has inherently due to the fact that she is a Labrador so the strength of its correlation to Piaget’s theory isn’t as strong as the first observation.

The next stage of Piaget’s theory is the preoperational stage.  In humans this stage implies the infant, or child rather, begins to learn language but lacks logic and the concept of conservation as well as an egocentric state of being and the formation of a theory of mind. Some of these developments do not necessarily apply to dogs directly, but there are a few similarities to behavior that I personally have observed. At 3 months old, my puppy has begun to ‘understand’ a few key words that we say to her. The typical, “sit, stay, roll-over” language package. Whether or not she actually understands these words or she has simply made assimilation between them, the maneuver, and the treat she receives is unclear, but there is clear evidence that between the time she was brought home to now (a 1.5 month duration) she has obtained the ability to communicate in her own way. As far as testing her on being egocentric (which many dogs are naturally) or having a concept of conservation is beyond my abilities as a babysitter, but it has peaked my interest to see if my observations due coincide with Piaget’s theory to a degree, or am I simply making assimilation between my knowledge of cognitive development and my puppy’s upbringing.

The last two stages, the concrete operational stage and the formal operational stage are beyond my dogs age or possibly any dogs cognitive abilities, but either way I have not seen any similarities between those stages of development and my dog’s behavior yet.

Thoughts?

Works Cited:

 

“Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development.” About.com Psychology. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Mar. 2014.

 

Data Skewing in Psychological Studies

Over the past few weeks I have managed to obtain five of the required six research study credits for the course (with the sixth coming later this week). My experiences have covered a broad spectrum ranging from interpersonal connections, to team building studies, to how male and females differ with their thought processes. I promise not to go into much detail as I promised to keep some of this information regarding the studies confidential, but I have noticed a peculiar facet with the studies. The quality of data collection and the possible resulting skew of data.

Approximately half of the studies I have participated in limited the subject input to a simple range of agreement or disagreement. Now, this type of input would obviously make data collection and post-processing much more manageable. However, limiting the subject’s ability to respond how they truly feel or truly react not only lowers the resolution of the study but it has the ability to force a certain response or reaction. For example, let us say the subject was exposed to a picture and the person had an initial reaction of disgust. However, the question asked was, ‘did this picture make you happy’ and required a range of agreement. Now, that subject could say ‘disagree’ and move on, but the examiner would most likely not extract the subject’s true feelings. I do believe that cognitive based experiments set with laboratory observation should either be recorded visually or with audio, or at the very least, include truly open ended response. The reasoning behind this is if the examiner is following the scientific method and they extract faulty data that could lead to improper conclusions. This inadvertent skewing of data was actually explored by Malgady. This citation for his article ‘How skewed are psychological data?’ can be found at the end of this post.

Granted, I do not the full intent behind some of these studies. It is possible that the investigators are only interested in reactions dealing with specific emotions or are interested in binary type responses. The point of this post, overall, is if the researchers are taking a random sample of students and limiting their responses in the studies could result in a truncation of psychological responses and thus skewing the data.

Does anyone have an opposing opinion to my observation? Since my major does not deal with studies related to psychology for the most part it can be difficult to alter the way my mind perceives data collection.

Works Cited:

Malgady, Robert G. “How Skewed Are Psychological Data? A Standardized Index of Effect Size.” General Psychology. N.p.: n.p., n.d. 355-59. EBSCO. Web. 4 Feb. 2014. <openurl.ebscohost.com>.