Animal Cognition
Animal cognition refers to the mental processes and abilities of non-human animals, including perception, learning, memory, problem-solving, and communication. It encompasses the study of how animals acquire, process, store, and act on information from their environment. Researchers in this field seek to understand the cognitive capacities of different species and how they compare to human cognition.
6 Key excerpts on "Animal Cognition"
eBook - ePub- Nicky Hayes(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Psychology Press(Publisher)
...Animal Cognition 6 A s we saw in Chapter 1, one of the oldest ideas in comparative psychology is that animals act in a machine-like fashion, with nothing other than the most basic kinds of associative memory—without thinking or other forms of cognitive processing. But the more we find out about what animals do, and what they are capable of doing, the more this idea is gradually disappearing. In Chapter 2 we found that the idea that animals act in a purely mechanistic fashion has even been seriously challenged by those researching into classical and operant conditioning: the areas once thought to represent the essence of mechanistic learning. Over the past few decades, the evidence has been building up that animals have far more cognitive abilities than has traditionally been believed. This evidence comes from all branches of comparative psychology. We have seen in the preceding chapters how cognitive appraisals may be involved in parent-infant relationships, social organisation, and various aspects of communication. Some of the other evidence has come from explicit research into animal cognitive abilities, including the cognitive types of learning, like imitation or the formation of cognitive maps, and also including research into other cognitive abilities of animals. Some evidence, too, has come from attempts to teach animals language. In this chapter we will look at some of the evidence for animal cognitive abilities, before going on to consider how these findings may make sense, in terms of our knowledge of evolutionary processes. Imitation Imitation is a form of learning which, of necessity, involves some degree of cognitive input...
- Wilhelm Wundt(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Lecture XXIII § I. P ROBLEMS OF A NIMAL P SYCHOLOGY ; D EFICIENCIES OF THE S CIENCE. § II. M ETHODOLOGICAL R ULES. § III. A CTS OF C OGNITION AND R ECOGNITION A MONG A NIMALS. § IV. A SSOCIATION A MONG THE L OWER A NIMALS. § I I N the preceding lectures we have considered the associative and intellectual processes of consciousness, first in their general and normal features and then under the various aspects which they present in mental disturbance, dreaming, and certain conditions related to that of sleep and dreaming. There now remains one last question, the answer to which is important if we are to understand the nature of these processes and their relation to the other functions of the mind, the question of animal intelligence, or, to express it more exactly, of the nature and significance of those animal actions the conditions of whose origin lead us to refer them to mental processes similar to our own associations, and possibly even to our own processes of judgment and inference. The study of animal psychology may be approached from two different points of view. We may set out from the notion of a kind of comparative physiology of mind, a universal history of the development of mental life in the organic world. Then the observation of animals is the more important matter; man is only considered as one, though, of course, the highest, of the developmental stages to be examined. Or we may make human psychology the principal object of investigation. Then the expressions of mental life in animals will be taken into account only so far as they throw light upon the evolution of consciousness in man. You will remember that we decided at the outset of these lectures to deal with animal psychology in this second sense, and for the more limited purpose. If we compare these two ways of treating psychology with comparative and human physiology, we cannot fail to see that the two spheres of investigation are very different as regards methods and appliances...
eBook - ePubLearning and Memory
The Behavioral and Biological Substrates
- Isidore Gormezano, Edward A. Wasserman, Isidore Gormezano, Edward A. Wasserman(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Psychology Press(Publisher)
...3 Testing the Cognitive Capacities of Animals Anthony A. Wright University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences Comparative Animal Cognition often involves the inability as well as the ability of animals to perform cognitive tasks. The question and the theme of this chapter is, are these inabilities a limitation of the capacity of the animal or are they a limitation of the experimenter’s ability to design the tests such that the animals can express their ability (e.g., to learn abstract concepts)? There are many things that each animal species (including humans) cannot do; each species has its limitations. But when cognitive capacities are considered, we should be asking whether or not animals can perform such cognitive tasks under conditions best suited for them to reveal these capacities. We as experimenters spend a great deal of time constructing elaborate explanatory mechanisms (e.g., encoding, storage, retrieval, and rehearsal) without questioning the basic task itself. We stick our animals in a Skinner Box that is basically of a half-century old design. The stimuli we use are, more often than not, ones chosen by engineers for stimulus projector units to be sold with the Skinner Boxes. And not all too infrequently we go into the laboratory and maybe ask, “Let’s see, what experiment can I do with this apparatus?” The apparatus is driving our research. What we need to do is to continuously question the procedures we use with regards to this question of suitability and continuously refine our procedures. Sometimes refinements will be simply an optimization of a parameter (e.g., stimulus exposure duration or retention interval). Other times the apparatus may require a complete redesign and an entirely different procedure. This question of suitability only becomes an issue when the requirements of the experiment taxes the subjects’ abilities; and such is the nature of many Animal Cognition experiments...
- Kristin Andrews, Jacob Beck, Kristin Andrews, Jacob Beck(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...If we’re interested in what makes humans special or unique, we can compare ourselves to other creatures that have minds and attend to the differences. Thinking about animal minds can thus enhance our understanding of our own natures. Finally, animals are our neighbors. We share our planet – and sometimes even our homes – with animals. Many of us form relationships with animals. Even those of us who prefer human companions tend to find animals fascinating to observe. We all face ethical questions about whether to consume animals and how to treat them. We thus have strong reasons to try to understand animal minds on their own terms, independently of whether they shed light on the nature of minds in general or human minds in particular. The essays in this volume have been separated into eight sections. While the essays within each section tend to have much in common, there are interesting points of contact across sections as well. In the remainder of this introduction, we’ll provide a brief summary of each contribution and highlight some of the larger themes that emerge. Mental representation The ability to represent the world is often considered a mark of the mental. But when does mental representation arise? Do sunflower buds represent the sun since they follow it throughout the day? What about simple animals, such as insects? Andrew Knoll and Georges Rey shed light on these foundational questions by investigating the navigational abilities of ants and bees, and draw lessons about the minimal requirements for mental representation. In part because analytic philosophy was dominated by the study of language throughout most of the twentieth century, philosophers have tended to view mental representation through a linguistic lens. But when we focus on Animal Cognition, the linguistic lens often seems to distort its target. Many philosophers have wanted to attribute nonlinguistic representations to animals...
eBook - ePubAnimal Minds
Beyond Cognition to Consciousness
- Donald R. Griffin(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- University of Chicago Press(Publisher)
.... .. We are not the only conscious beings on earth. I am confident that with patience and critical investigation we can begin to discern what life is like, subjectively, to particular animals under specific conditions, beginning with the sorts of evidence reviewed in previous chapters. Cognitive ethologists can certainly improve greatly on these preliminary inferences, once the creative ingenuity of scientists is directed constructively toward the important goal of answering Nagel’s basic question: What is it like to be a bat, or any other animal? Contrary to the widespread pessimistic opinion that the content of animal thinking is hopelessly inaccessible to scientific inquiry, the communicative signals used by many animals provide empirical data on the basis of which much can reasonably be inferred about their subjective mental experiences. Because mentality is one of the most important capabilities that distinguishes living animals from the rest of the known universe, seeking to understand animal minds is even more exciting and significant than elaborating our picture of inclusive fitness or molecular mechanisms. Cognitive ethology presents us with one of the supreme scientific challenges of our time, for it constitutes a final chapter of the Darwinian revolution, and it therefore calls for our best efforts of imaginative and critical investigation....
eBook - ePub- Frank George(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Psychology Press(Publisher)
...Chapter 1 THE NATURE OF COGNITION This book is intended to describe the subject of cognition; but since “cognition” is the name given to the whole of the foundations of normal human behaviour, it will be necessary to limit the breadth of the investigation. In the first place, it is not intended to discuss Animal Cognition as such, although so much of the theory of cognition is based upon animal experiments, that examples drawn from work on animals will often be used, and some aspects of ethology will be discussed (Chapter 11). Secondly, we shall not be concerned with clinical or abnormal psychology, except in so far that discoveries in these fields have a suggestive value for those interested in normal cognition. Paranormal cognition, which is the technical name for work on telepathic and other obscure, but possible, forms of communication, is also quite outside the scope of the present book. It would be nice to be able to add that the philosophy and physiology of cognition are also irrelevant, but they are not. A chapter (Chapter 7) is devoted to cognition and philosophy, and other references will certainly be made to the approach of philosophers and physiologists to our common interest, for their work is in some ways very close to that of the psychologist; but to enlarge on the detail of philosophical and physiological matters alone would involve far more space than the present volume affords. By cognition, we shall mean the way human beings perceive and learn, how they reason and think, even how they remember and imagine; and how their “minds” work in the ordinary day-to-day activities of life...
