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Operant Procedures for Assessing Behavioral Flexibility in Rats
Published on: February 15, 2015
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Is behavioural flexibility evidence of cognitive complexity? How evolution can inform comparative cognition
Irina Mikhalevich1, Russell Powell2, Corina Logan3
1School of Mind and Brain, Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
Interface Focus
|May 9, 2017
Summary
Behavioural flexibility is often considered evidence for complex animal cognition. This paper argues that by considering evolutionary and ecological data, we can better support this link, even when simpler explanations exist.
Area of Science:
- Cognitive Ethology
- Animal Behaviour
- Evolutionary Psychology
Background:
- Behavioural flexibility is widely accepted as a key indicator of advanced animal cognition, including planning and metacognition.
- The evidential basis linking behavioural flexibility to complex cognition lacks systematic defense.
- Flexible behaviors are often explained by simpler cognitive mechanisms, leading to 'deflationary' challenges against complex cognition hypotheses.
Purpose of the Study:
- To challenge the overreliance on simpler explanations for behavioural flexibility.
- To systematically defend the evidential link between behavioural flexibility and complex cognition.
- To propose a framework for inferring cognitive complexity from behavioural flexibility using broader evidence.
Main Methods:
- Critically evaluating the evidential weight given to simpler explanations.
- Integrating evolutionary, ecological, and phylogenetic data into the assessment of behavioural flexibility.
- Proposing an adaptive model of cognitive-behavioural evolution.
Main Results:
- Demonstrates that dispensing with the blanket preference for simpler explanations strengthens the case for behavioural flexibility as evidence of complex cognition.
- An adaptive model suggests convergent trait-environment clusters across lineages can inform cognitive inferences.
- This approach allows for inferences of cognitive complexity in cases of experimental underdetermination.
Conclusions:
- Behavioural flexibility can serve as robust evidence for complex cognitive mechanisms.
- Integrating diverse data types (evolutionary, ecological, phylogenetic) provides firmer grounds for this assumption.
- The proposed model supports a more nuanced understanding of cognitive evolution and its behavioral correlates.
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