Perspective taking and 'Knowledge attribution'?
Donderdag 24 juni 2010 10:30
- 0 mensen gaan
Starting with studies on social learning in primates, I have soon shifted my attention to the birds of the family corvidae, notably ravens Corvus corax, that are renown for their large brains. In the course of my PhD, I explored the foraging behaviour of wild ravens in the Austrian Alps, confirming the recruitment system through food calls described by Heinrich and emphasizing the cognitively interesting pattern of flexibly using others as a source of knowledge and as means to gain access to food. Specifically, competition over food caches provokes sophisticated manoeuvres that qualify as tactical deception, both on side of the food storers (that protect their caches from being pilfered) and on side of potential pilferers (that outwit others for gaining access to caches). In the following years, I have been working with captive ravens at the University of Vermont (Erwin Schrödinger fellow) and at the University of Vienna (Erwin Schrödinger follow-up program fellow) to investigate the cognitive mechanism underlying these manoeuvres. Through systematic experimental manipulation of the view of birds at caching, I have tested for the possibility of understanding mental states, i.e. taking the other’s perspective at caching and attributing knowledge to competitors that have and have not seen the caches being made. In addition, I have addressed the ravens’ responsiveness to others’ visual behaviour outside the caching context, expanding on the paradigms of gaze following and joint visual attention. Results show that ravens are indeed capable of judging others’ visual perception, and thus show a level of understanding roughly comparable to that of 2-years-old children.My current research focuses on avian social knowledge and its application in dynamic societies (i.e. using others as social tools for cooperation, competition and learning). Utilizing ravens as main model system, I am involved in the START program of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) and the international projects COCOR (ESF-EUROCORES framework TECT) and INCORE (FP6-NEST).
- Wie:
- Thomas Bugnyar
- Wat:
- Helmholtz Lecture
- Waar:
- Went n022
- Wanneer:
- 24-06-2010 om 10:30
- Kosten:
- nada