Zoe Demery

University of Birmingham, School of Biosciences, Alumna

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I am investigating learning and exploration of motor actions in parrots. My supervisor is Dr. Jackie Chappell. My 4-year project started in 2008 and is funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). I capitalise on the strong exploratory and manipulatory tendencies of parrots to investigate their mechanisms of learning about objects and affordances. First, controlled laboratory experiments are used to test parrots' abstract knowledge about the physical properties of objects and physical laws. If parrots rely upon associative learning alone to overcome a problem then they would learn only task-specific solutions. If, however, parrots understand abstract physical and causal principles governing one task, they may be able to transfer these principles flexibly to novel tasks that require the use of similar principles. Furthermore, parrots are highly social birds, so it is possible that individuals could acquire a functional understanding of a task just through observation of a skilled demonstrator performing the same task. In order to test this, similar experiments will be performed in a social learning context to see if the parrots' functional understanding differs in quality or extent from individuals that have previously performed the task itself.

The second component of the project investigates the ontogeny of physical cognition by breeding parakeets (red-fronted kakariki (Cyanoramphus novaezelandiae) in captivity and studying the development of their cognitive abilities through a series of tests administered at regular intervals throughout the nestling and juvenile period. In addition, one group of juveniles are exposed to an 'enriched' physical environment to determine whether the developmental environment can modify either the timing of the stages of cognitive development, or the eventual sophistication of the individual's cognitive abilities. In addition, comparable experiments may be conducted in the field on feral populations of ring-necked parakeets Psittacula krameri found in south-east England to establish whether competence on physical cognition tasks varies between individuals hatched in the wild and in captivity.

I am also working with Prof. Graham Martin to investigate the sensory foundations of exploration in parrots, particularly how the cross-modal interaction of the parrot visual field and the tactile bill tip organ inform the individual about the surrounding environment. Additionally, I am collaborating with several people in the School of Computer Sciences, especially Veronica Arriola-Rios and Prof. Aaron Sloman, looking at the cognitive processes and internal representations involved in simple explorative tasks. I am also running comparative studies with human adults and children with Dr. Sarah Beck in the Developmental Group at the School of Psychology.

I graduated from the University of Bristol with a BSc. (Joint Hons) in Psychology and Zoology. Previous research projects that I have worked on have ranged from bat aerodynamics with Dr. Marc Holderied, Armando Castellanos, and, more recently, cognitive measures of animal emotion with Prof. Mike Mendl and Dr. Oliver Burman.
Supervisors: Jackie Chappell
Phone: +44 (0)121 414 4090
Address: Cognitive Adaptations Research Group
Centre for Ornithology
School of Biosciences
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
United Kingdom

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Papers by Zoe Demery

Comparative sensory & cognitive adaptations for exploratory learning in parrots & humans

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), Sep 1, 2012

Original Research Article

Is tool-making knowledge robust over time and across problems?

Learning through exploration: a bird's eye view

F1000Research, 2012

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How do robots and parrots learn about deformable objects

F1000Research, 2012

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Problem solving through exploration

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The Three-stage Theory of Exploration

Faced with a vast, dynamic environment, some animals and robots often need to acquire and segrega... more Faced with a vast, dynamic environment, some animals and robots often need to acquire and segregate information about objects. The form of their internal representation depends on how the information is utilised. Sometimes it should be compressed and abstracted from the original, often complex, sensory information, so it can be efficiently stored and manipulated, for deriving interpretations, causal relationships, functions or affordances. We discuss how salient features of objects can be used to generate compact representations, later allow-ing for relatively accurate reconstructions and reasoning. Particular moments in the course of an object-related process can be selected and stored as 'key frames'. Specifically, we consider the problem of representing and reasoning about a de-formable object from the viewpoint of both an artificial and a natural agent.

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How can children inform our understanding of exploratory learning in non-human animals?

F1000Research, 2012

Introduction Piaget's view – that children learn through play and exploration – is widely acc... more Introduction Piaget's view – that children learn through play and exploration – is widely accepted as being integral to cognitive development. Surprisingly few scientists have systematical ly investigated how exploration is structured to support learning mechanisms in different situations and even fewer have studied it in non-human animals. Traditional ly, the methodological approach for studying cognitive development in human and non-human animals has been very different, but a comparative approach can be very informative. We exploited the strong explorative tendencies of parrots and human children , and designed a series of comparative experiments to provide a window into the mechanisms and strategies used in causal learning.

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Comparative sensory and cognitive adaptations for exploratory learning in parrots and humans

How do different animals cope with the vast environmental complexity they face from birth or hatc... more How do different animals cope with the vast environmental complexity they face from birth or hatching? If animals’ genes have not provided the necessary information, then exploration is essential for gathering information and learning about the surrounding world. Much of cognition research to date has focussed on what the different abilities of different animal species are, rather than how they actually process information. This thesis has taken a distinctive interdisciplinary approach to tackle this problem from different angles: asking how the senses, environment and different behavioural strategies influence exploratory learning – specifically in the naturally exploratory parrot and human child. It investigated parrots’ visual fields and their tactile ‘bill tip organ’ to describe the limits of their sensorimotor exploration, both in approach to and during manipulation of an object. A series of increasingly complex behavioural tasks were also conducted with parrots and children, i...

The Kakariki Model: Comparing exploratory learning strategies in parrots and children

PsycEXTRA Dataset

ABSTRACT Background / Purpose: The majority of comparative cognition has focused on establishing ... more ABSTRACT Background / Purpose: The majority of comparative cognition has focused on establishing what the cognitive capacities of different species are, rather than how animals acquire and structure information, specifically through exploration. We believe exploration is not random, but rather that it is structured, selective, and sensitive to categorical features of the environment. Here we exploited the neophilic tendencies and distinctive sensorimotor apparatus of parrots and human children by designing a series of comparative experiments. Main conclusion: We measured the interaction between parrot visual fields and their bill tip organ to understand a sensory basis for exploration. We then linked this to increasingly complex behavioural tasks involving different novel objects and physical problems, to examine in detail the exploration process in different contexts. Although from quite different ecological niches, we argue kakariki (Cyanoramphus novaezelandiae) and children (age 4-7) have common strategies. For instance, we found both explore more with functional changes in an object (e.g. weight), than with non-functional changes (e.g. colour). They also focus on certain object properties (e.g. corners or moveable parts) more than others (e.g. smooth surfaces or rigid features), which provide clues about objects&#39; affordances.

Tools for ill-structured problems: young children's tool innovation and manufacture

PsycEXTRA Dataset

Is tool-making knowledge robust over time and across problems?

Frontiers in psychology, 2014

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How to build an information gathering and processing system: Lessons from naturally and artificially intelligent systems

Behavioural Processes, 2012

Imagine a situation in which you had to design a physical agent that could collect information fr... more Imagine a situation in which you had to design a physical agent that could collect information from its environment, then store and process that information to help it respond appropriately to novel situations. What kinds of information should it attend to? How should the information be represented so as to allow efficient use and re-use? What kinds of constraints and trade-offs would there be? There are no unique answers. In this paper, we discuss some of the ways in which the need to be able to address problems of varying kinds and complexity can be met by different information processing systems. We also discuss different ways in which relevant information can be obtained, and how different kinds of information can be processed and used, by both biological organisms and artificial agents. We analyse several constraints and design features, and show how they relate both to biological organisms, and to lessons that can be learned from building artificial systems. Our standpoint overlaps with in that we assume that a collection of mechanisms geared to learning and developing in biological environments are available in forms that constrain, but do not determine, what can or will be learnt by individuals.

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Salient Features and Snapshots in Time: An Interdisciplinary Perspective on Object Representation

Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, 2013

Classical computing has well-established formalisms for specifying, refining, composing, proving,... more Classical computing has well-established formalisms for specifying, refining, composing, proving, and otherwise reasoning about computations. These formalisms have matured over the past 70 years or so. Unconventional Computing includes the use novel kinds of substrates -from black holes and quantum effects, through to chemicals, biomolecules, even slime moulds -to perform computations that do not conform to the classical model. Although many of these substrates can be "tortured" to perform classical computation, this is not how they "naturally" compute. Our ability to exploit unconventional computing is partly hampered by a lack of corresponding programming formalisms: we need models for building, composing, and reasoning about programs that execute in these substrates. What might, say, a slime mould programming language look like? Here I outline some of the issues and properties of these unconventional substrates that need to be addressed to find "natural" approaches to programming them. Important concepts include embodied real values, processes and dynamical systems, generative systems and their meta-dynamics, and embodied self-reference.

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Is tool-making knowledge robust over time and across problems?

by Leila Iliffe and Zoe Demery

In three studies, we explored the retention and transfer of tool-making knowledge, learnt from an... more In three studies, we explored the retention and transfer of tool-making knowledge, learnt from an adult demonstration, to other temporal and task contexts. All studies used a variation of a task in which children had to make a hook tool to retrieve a bucket from a tall transparent tube. Children who failed to innovate the hook tool independently saw a demonstration. In Study 1, we tested children aged 4-6 years (N = 53) who had seen the original demonstration 3 months earlier. Performance was excellent at the second time, indicating that children's knowledge was retained over the 3 month period. In Studies 2 and 3 we explored transfer of the new knowledge to other tasks. In Study 2, children were given two variants of the apparatus that differed in surface characteristics (e.g., shape and color). Participants generalized their knowledge to these new apparatuses even though the new pipecleaner also differed in size and color. Five- to 6-year-olds (N = 22) almost always transferred their knowledge to problems where the same tool had to be made. Younger, 3- to 5-year-olds' (N = 46), performance was more variable. In Study 3, 4- to 7-year-olds (N = 146) saw a demonstration of hook making with a pipecleaner, but then had to make a tool by combining pieces of wooden dowel (or vice versa: original training on dowel, transfer to pipecleaner). Children did not transfer their tool-making knowledge to the new material. Children retained tool-making knowledge over time and transferred their knowledge to new situations in which they needed to make a similar tool from similar materials, but not different materials. We concluded that children's ability to use tool-making knowledge in novel situations is likely to depend on memory and analogical reasoning, with the latter continuing to develop during middle childhood.

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Salient Features and Snapshots in Time: an interdisciplinary perspective on object representation

Faced with a vast, dynamic environment, animals and robots often need to acquire and segregate in... more Faced with a vast, dynamic environment, animals and robots often need to acquire and segregate information about ob- jects. The form of their internal representation depends on how the information is utilised. Sometimes it should be compressed and ab- stracted from the original, often complex, sensory information, so it can be efficiently stored and manipulated, for deriving interpreta- tions, causal relationships, functions or affordances. We discuss how salient features of objects can be used to generate compact represen- tations, later allowing for relatively accurate reconstructions and rea- soning. Particular moments in the course of an object-related process can be selected and stored as ‘key frames’. Specifically, we consider the problem of representing and reasoning about a deformable object from the viewpoint of both an artificial and a natural agent.

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How to build an information gathering and processing system: lessons from naturally and artificially intelligent systems

Imagine a situation in which you had to design a physical agent that could collect information fr... more Imagine a situation in which you had to design a physical agent that could collect information from its environment, then store and process that information to help it respond appropriately to novel situations. What kinds of information should it attend to? How should the information be represented so as to allow efficient use and re-use? What kinds of constraints and trade-offs would there be? There are no unique answers. In this paper, we discuss some of the ways in which the need to be able to address problems of varying kinds and complexity can be met by different information processing systems. We also discuss different ways in which relevant information can be obtained, and how different kinds of information can be processed and used, by both biological organisms and artificial agents. We analyse several constraints and design features, and show how they relate both to biological organisms, and to lessons that can be learned from building artificial systems. Our standpoint overlaps with Karmiloff-Smith (1992) in that we assume that a collection of mechanisms geared to learning and developing in biological environments are available in forms that constrain, but do not determine, what can or will be learnt by individuals.

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Construct to Understand: Learning Through Exploration

cs.bham.ac.uk

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Animal Cognition(AC) share a common goal: to study learning and ... more Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Animal Cognition(AC) share a common goal: to study learning and causal understanding. However, the perspectives are completely different: while AC studies intelligent systems present in nature, AI tries to to build them almost from scratch. It is proposed here that both visions are complementary and should interact more to better achieve their ends. Nonetheless, before efficient collaboration can take place, a greater mutual understanding ofeach field is required, beginning with clarifications of their respective terminologies and considering the constraints of the research in each field.

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Vision, touch and object manipulation in Senegal parrots Poicephalus senegalus

… of the Royal …, Jan 1, 2011

Parrots are exceptional among birds for their high levels of exploratory behaviour and manipulato... more Parrots are exceptional among birds for their high levels of exploratory behaviour and manipulatory abilities. It has been argued that foraging method is the prime determinant of a bird's visual field configuration. However, here we argue that the topography of visual fields in parrots is related to their playful dexterity, unique anatomy and particularly the tactile information that is gained through their bill tip organ during object manipulation. We measured the visual fields of Senegal parrots Poicephalus senegalus using the ophthalmoscopic reflex technique and also report some preliminary observations on the bill tip organ in this species. We found that the visual fields of Senegal parrots are unlike those described hitherto in any other bird species, with both a relatively broad frontal binocular field and a near comprehensive field of view around the head. The behavioural implications are discussed and we consider how extractive foraging and object exploration, mediated in part by tactile cues from the bill, has led to the absence of visual coverage of the region below the bill in favour of more comprehensive visual coverage above the head.

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Talks by Zoe Demery

Salient features and snapshots in time: an interdisciplinary perspective on object representation

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How do robots and parrots learn about deformable objects?

Faced with a vast, dynamic environment, animals and robots need to acquire and segregate informat... more Faced with a vast, dynamic environment, animals and robots need to acquire and segregate information about objects. Individuals have finite brain sizes, so the information must be compressed and abstracted from the original, often complex, sensory signals. It can then be stored and manipulated efficiently for later reconstruction and reasoning about different causal relationships, functions or properties. How can we model this compact, yet flexible, object representation? We discuss how salient features of objects, particularly when supported by exploratory interactions, can be used to generate compact representations. Particular snapshots in the process of an object interaction can be selected and stored as 'key frames'. We also consider how exploration behaviour might be structured to support an individual's learning about the environment around them. In order to begin to answer these questions, we take a top-down, interdisciplinary approach, specifically by considering the problem of representing and reasoning about a deformable object from the viewpoint of a robot and a parrot. Is our artificial model reflected in some way in the exploratory behaviour of parrots?

NB: Can also view on Faculty 1000:
https://f1000.com/posters/browse/summary/1090895

Zoe Demery

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