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- Patrice Marie Miller
- Harvard Medical School
&
- Michael Lamport Commons
- Harvard Medical School
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- One of the major problems in comparative psychology is there has bee=
n no
good way to compare “how smart” different animals are.=
li>
- Here we set forth a general and powerful means.
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- Animal Prey
defense Predator action
Communication Coh=
esion
- Spiders 2 2 1 0
- Mice 3 3 2 2
- Pigeons 4 4 4 3
- Crows 5 5 3 3
- Grey Parrots 4 5 5 4
- Spider monkeys 6 6 4 6
- Rhesus monkeys 5 7 5 7
- Chimpanzees 8 8 7 8
- Humans 7-14 7-14 9-14 9-14
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- This Model (MHC) posits:
- Tasks can be ordered as to their hierarchical complexity.
- Based on mathematical definitions of “ideal” actions
(Commons & Pekker, submitted; Commons & Richards, 2002).
- Allows for greater precision in categorizing tasks.
- This ordering underlies stages of development
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- Non-mentalistic
- A Neo-Piagetian model of stages of performance
- And thus:
- -Is Universal
- -Works in any domain
- -Works with any organism
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- Social perspective-taking (Commons & Rodriguez, 1990; 1993)
- Informed consent (Commons & Rodriguez, 1990, 1993).
- Attachment and Loss (Commons, 1991; Miller & Lee, 1998)
- Workplace organization (Bowman, 1996a; 1996b)
- Workplace culture (Commons, Krause, Fayer, & Meaney, 1993)
- Political development (Sonnert & Commons, 1994)
- Leadership before and after crises (Oliver, 2004)
- Honesty and Kindness (Lamborn, Fischer & Pipp, 1994)
- Relationships (Cheryl Armon, 1984a, 1984b)
- Good Work (Cheryl Armon, 1993)
- Good Education (Dawson, 1998)
- Good interpersonal (Armon, 1990)
- Views of the “good life” (Armon, 1984c; Danaher, 1993;
Dawson, 2000; Lam, 1994)
- Evaluative reasoning (Dawson, 1998)
- Epistemology (Kitchener & King, 1990; Kitchener & Fischer, 1=
990)
- Moral Judgment (Armon & Dawson, 1997; Dawson, 2000)
- Language stages (Commons, et. al., 2004)
- Writing (DeVos and Commons, unpublished manuscript)
- Algebra (Commons, in preparation)
- Music (Beethoven) (Funk, 1990)
- Physics tasks (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958)
- Balance beam and pendulum (Commons, Goodheart, & Bresette, 1995)=
- Spirituality (Miller & Cook-Greuter, 2000)
- Atheism (Nicholas Commons-Miller, in preparation)
- Animal stages (Commons and Miller, in press)
- Contingencies of reinforcement (Commons, in preparation)
- Hominid Empathy (Commons & Wolfsont, 2002)
- Hominid Tools Making (Commons, Miller 2004)
- Counselor stages (Lovell, 2004)
- Loevinger’s Sentence Completion task (Cook-Greuter, 1990)
- Informed consent (Commons, et. al.)
- Report patient’s prior crimes (Commons, Lee, Gutheil, et. al.,
1995)
- Orienteering (Commons, in preparation)
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- Such behavioral task actions have been described by fifteen hierarch=
ical
orders of complexity.
- Theoretically, higher orders are possible.
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- Task actions are hierarchically complex when
- They can be broken down into subtasks necessary for the successful
completion of the greater task
- 1. They are defined in
terms of the subtask actions
- 2. The new action org=
anizes
these subtask actions
- 3. The organization is
non-arbitrary
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The Model of
Hierarchical Complexity Allows for Interspecies Comparisons
- It does so by taking the actions and tasks that animals and humans
engage in
- Puts them into an order based upon how hierarchically complex they =
are.
- The order of hierarchical complexity is obtained by
- Counting the number of
coordinations that the action must perform on each lower order acti=
on
- Until one reaches a set of elementary order actions.
- Stage of performance has the same name and number as the correspondi=
ng
order of hierarchical complexity of the task it correctly completes.=
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- There are difficulties in comparing the highest stages that various
animals attain
- Traditional tasks used to test human behaviors cannot be directly
applied to animals
- Tasks for one animal cannot always be applied to another.
- The Model of Hierarchical Complexity (MHC) can help determine the st=
ages
of
- Animal behavior
- Human behavior
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- An animal species is characterized by the highest stage of performan=
ce
- Observed of any member of that species
- With any amount of training on a particular task series.
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- There are different animals that successfully complete different tas=
ks
at each of the first 8 orders of hierarchical complexity.
- These orders of hierarchical complexity characterize the tasks of the
first 8 stages in humans
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- Skills:
- Exact- no generalization. In
a computer, all programs are provided initially by humans.
- Examples:
- For computers, only written programmed learning possible.
- There are no animals that function at this stage.
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- Skills:
- Rote, generalized
- Examples:
- When water moves, mollusks open shell.
- Reflexively, if something touches membrane, shell closes.
- Mobile animals (e.g. Aplysia) habituate, sensitize, and classically =
and
operantly condition.
- Conditioning produces =
generalizations
about which stimuli will elicit the responses of interest.
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- Skills:
- Open-ended classes
- Examples:
- Animals coordinate perception with action, or two or more actions.=
li>
- Animals whose hunting behavior is controlled by consequences (e.g. m=
ost
predatory fish, insects)
- Corrette (1990) observed prey capture in the praying mantis, which
coordinated capture and strike movements.
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- Skills:
- Concepts
- Examples:
- Concepts such as oddity learning in rats (e.g. Bailey & Thomas 1=
998).
- Rats discriminated the “odd” one when given two ping pong
balls with food odors and one different order.
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- Skills:
- Relations among concepts, named concepts
- Sequences of behavior
- Examples:
- Vaughan (1988) trained pigeons to associate two arbitrary subclasses=
of
slides of trees with different response rates.
- High response rate was associated with slides in one subclass and low
response rate with slides of the other subclass.
- When slides in the subclass previously associated with high response
rate became associated with low response rate (and vice versa), the
pigeons changed their associations and correctly responded to each s=
lide
after a short reacquisition trial, showing they could attach a virtu=
al
label to a subclass.
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- Skills:
- Imitates & acquires sequences. Follows short sequential acts
- Examples:
- Pepperberg’s (1992) African Grey parrot Alex, uttered multi-wo=
rd
sentences organizing nominal labels and words.
- Alex counted two objects, “one, two”.
- To the new question, “What matter [is this ] four corner blue
[object made of] ?” Alex correctly responded, “wood̶=
1;.
- Weir, Chappell & Kacelnik (2002) observed that New Caledonian cr=
ows
make tools by bending a straight piece of wire and then use the wire=
to
pull food out of a tube.
- Hunt (1996, 2000) observed similar crow behavior in the wild.
- Dogs and cats run through long arbitrary sequences of actions.
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- To illustrate how these sequences are constructed
- Sequences such as this are analyzed from the top down.
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- Coordinates two Nominal Order 4 representations:
- Nominal Action 1: Represent that sticking a wire in tube will push =
food
out.
- Nominal Action 2: Represent that a bent wire could move around the =
bend
in tube and reach the food.
- They are coordinated or ordered in a non-arbitrary fashion:
- Bend wire {followed by} stick wire in tube - - > push food out.<=
/li>
- Coordinating them results in the food being obtained successfully.<=
/li>
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- Creates a “name” by representing an action
- A name can be a verbal or an action name
- The naming is an action upon the set and so organizes the members of
the set.
- May be applied to all members of a set of Sensory-Motor Order 3
conceptual actions.
- In Action 1, the representation is that sticking a wire stem, or
something, into tube like structure gets food or other objects out of
the tube.
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- Action 2 forms a representation or template for the bend in the tube=
.
- The general representation collects most instances of “bent ve=
rsus
straight” Sensory-Motor Order 3 concepts.
- In this Nominal Order 4 action 2, the crow bends a wire using the
representation of the bend in the tube.
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- Sensory-Motor Order 3 Actions coordinate 2 or more
Circular-Sensory-Motor Order 2 actions.
- Sensory-Motor Action 1 coordinates:
- Circular Sensory Motor Action 1:&n=
bsp;
Sticking beak into the tube.
- Circular Sensory Motor Action 2: Picking up twig or wire in their b=
eak.
- Using this Sensory-Motor Order 3, they pick up a twig in their beak =
and
stick it into a tube (or other places).
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- Circular-Sensory-Motor Action 1: Picking up twig or wire in their be=
ak.
- Circular-Sensory-Motor Action 2: Bending twig or wire.
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- Coordinates perception with action, or two or more actions
- Circular Sensory Motor Action 1
- Sees hole/tube, stick beak into it
- Circular Sensory Motor Action 2
- Sees twig, pick up with beak
- Circular Sensory Motor Action 3
- Holds, bends, squeezes, wires, twigs, other things
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- Sensory or Motor Actions 1 – Sees
- Food
- Twigs
- Wires
- Clear plastic tube
- Sensory or Motor Action 2 -- Pecks at many stimuli
- Food
- Twigs
- Wires
- Clear Plastic tubes
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- Skills:
- Simple deduction without contradiction excluded.
- Follows lists of sequential acts
- Examples:
- Brannon & Terrace (1999) trained Rhesus Monkeys to indicate the
larger of two sets of 1 to 4 squares and circles in two rows.
- Chimpanzees put nuts onto selected flat anvil stones, and cracked th=
em
with selected hammer stones (Inoue-Nakamura & Matsuzawa (1997).<=
/li>
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- Skills:
- Logical deduction and empirical rules. True counting. Simple arith=
metic
- Examples:
- Washburn and Rumbaugh (1991) trained Rhesus monkeys to select Arabic
numerals associated with a number of food pellets.
- They reliably choose the numeral associated with the larger number of
food pellets in a random array of up to 5 numerals.
- Rumbaugh, Hopkins, et al (1989) showed an adult female chimpanzee
removing from a TV display the number of boxes appropriate to the va=
lue
of a randomly selected Arabic numeral, 1, 2 or 3).
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- Skills: Social perspective-taking.&=
nbsp;
Coordinating the view of another with oneself.
- Examples:
- de Waal and Lanting (1997) describe Kanzi, a captive Bonobo chimpanz=
ee,
used sharp stone flakes and tested the sharpness of each flake with =
his
lips, rejecting non-sharp ones.
- He then made flakes by throwing a rock against a hard surface, produ=
cing
many flakes at once.
- Making simple flake tools is a primary order action
- Testing the tools is another primary order action.
- Coordinating one primary stage action with the another is a concrete
stage action.
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- De Waal (1996) describes how a beta male chimpanzee broke up conflic=
ts
in an impartial manner
- In order to act impartially, the beta male had to consider
- the perspectives of the other chimps
- along with his own perspective.
- His considering each of these perspectives is a primary action
- Integrating these perspectives is concrete.
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- The barrier against animals developing abstract stage actions, which=
is
the next stage beyond concrete, is great.
- At the concrete stage, action involves a small number of specific
instances.
- At the abstract stage, actions involve large to indefinite
sized-sets. There are =
no
concrete instances for many of these indefinitely large sets and, for
this reason, many of the sets are represented by variables.
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- The value of variables can refer to hypothetical things that do not
exist.
- Once one starts using variables it becomes essential to have abstract
symbols, such as words, to label those variables.
- Only humans, thus far, have shown the capacity for using such arbitr=
ary
symbols.
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- In the future
- Detailed analyses of tests of particular animal species task comple=
tion
will be carried out.
- We hope people will provide a distribution of stage of performance =
on
tasks for particular animal species
- For humans, this is at least 6 stages
- For chimps, it is at least 2 stages
- It is unknown for other animals
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