Cognition, Evolution, and Behavior

by Shettleworth, Sara J.

• ISBN13: 9780195319842
• ISBN10: 0195319842
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-12-30
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

How do animals perceive the world, learn, remember, search for food or mates, communicate, and find their way around? Do any nonhuman animals count, imitate one another, use a language, or have a culture? What are the uses of cognition in nature and how might it have evolved? What is the current status of Darwin's claim that other species share the same "mental powers" as humans, but to different degrees? In this completely revised second edition of Cognition, Evolution, and Behavior, Sara Shettleworth addresses these questions, among others, by integrating findings from psychology, behavioral ecology, and ethology in a unique and wide-ranging synthesis of theory and research on animal cognition, in the broadest sense--from species-specific adaptations of vision in fish and associative learning in rats to discussions of theory of mind in chimpanzees, dogs, and ravens. She reviews the latest research on topics such as episodic memory, metacognition, and cooperation and other-regarding behavior in animals, as well as recent theories about what makes human cognition unique. In every part of this new edition, Shettleworth incorporates findings and theoretical approaches that have emerged since the first edition was published in 1998. The chapters are now organized into three sections: Fundamental Mechanisms (perception, learning, categorization, memory), Physical Cognition (space, time, number, physical causation), and Social Cognition (social knowledge, social learning, communication). Shettleworth has also added new chapters on evolution and the brain and on numerical cognition, and a new chapter on physical causation that integrates theories of instrumental behavior with discussions of foraging, planning, and tool using.

Author Biography

Sara Shettleworth is Professor Emerita in the Departments of Psychology and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at the University of Toronto, where she obtained her Ph.D. in 1970. Her research on learning and memory in a variety of species of birds and mammals has been published in over 100 articles and book chapters. Her contributions have been recognized by numerous awards, including the International Comparative Cognition Society's 2008 Research Award. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and Animal Behavior Society, and a member of the Society of Experimental Psychologists.

Table of Contents

Cognition and the Study of Behavior	p. 3
What is comparative cognition about?	p. 4
Kinds of explanation for behavior	p. 10
Approaches to comparative cognition	p. 15
Summary	p. 23
Evolution, Behavior, and Cognition: A Primer	p. 26
Testing adaptation	p. 26
Mapping phylogeny	p. 31
Evolution, cognition, and the structure of behavior	p. 34
Evolution and the brain	p. 42
What does all this have to do with comparative psychology?	p. 49
Summarizing and looking ahead	p. 53
Fundamental Mechanisms	p. 55
Perception and Attention	p. 57
Specialized sensory systems	p. 57
How can we find out what animals perceive?	p. 62
Some psychophysical principles	p. 65
Signal detection theory	p. 66
Perception and evolution: Sensory ecology	p. 73
Search and attention	p. 77
Attention and foraging: The behavioral ecology of attention	p. 84
Summary	p. 94
Learning: Introduction and Pavlovian Conditioning	p. 96
General processes and ôconstraints on learningö	p. 96
A framework for thinking about learning	p. 98
When and how will learning evolve?	p. 102
Pavlovian conditioning: Conditions for learning	p. 105
What is learned?	p. 119
Conditional control of behavior: Occasion setting and modulation	p. 126
Effects of learning on behavior	p. 127
Concluding remarks	p. 134
Recognition Learning	p. 136
Habituation	p. 136
Perceptual learning	p. 146
Imprinting	p. 150
The behavioral ecology of social recognition: Recognizing kin	p. 161
Forms of recognition learning compared	p. 165
Discrimination, Classification, and Concepts	p. 167
Three examples	p. 167
Untrained responses to natural stimuli	p. 168
Classifying complex natural stimuli	p. 172
Discrimination learning	p. 179
Category discrimination and concepts	p. 190
Summary and conclusions	p. 208
Memory	p. 210
Functions and properties of memory	p. 211
Methods for studying memory in animals	p. 215
Conditions for memory	p. 222
Species differences in memory?	p. 230
Mechanisms: What is remembered and why is it forgotten?	p. 237
Memory and consciousness	p. 241
Summary and conclusions	p. 256
Physical Cognition	p. 259
Getting Around: Spatial Cognition	p. 261
Mechanisms for spatial orientation	p. 264
Modularity and integration	p. 283
Acquiring spatial knowledge: The conditions for learning	p. 288
Do animals have cognitive maps?	p. 296
Summary	p. 310
Timing	p. 313
Circadian rhythms	p. 313
Interval timing: Data	p. 323
Interval timing: Theories	p. 331
Summary: Two timing systems?	p. 338
Numerical Competence	p. 340
Numerosity discrimination and the analog magnitude system	p. 344
The object tracking system	p. 350
Ordinal comparison: Numerosity, serial position, and transitive inference	p. 355
Labels and language	p. 365
Numerical cognition and comparative psychology	p. 370
Cognition and the Consequences of Behavior: Foraging, Planning, Instrumental Learning, and Using Tools	p. 371
Foraging	p. 372
Long-term or short-term maximizing: Do animals plan ahead?	p. 389
Causal learning and instrumental behavior	p. 394
Using and understanding tools	p. 399
On causal learning and killjoy explanations	p. 413
Social Cognition	p. 415
Social Intelligence	p. 417
The social intelligence hypothesis	p. 418
The nature of social knowledge	p. 421
Intentionality and social understanding	p. 432
Theory of mind	p. 441
Cooperation	p. 455
Summary	p. 464
Social Learning	p. 466
Social learning in context	p. 468
Mechanisms: Social learning without imitation	p. 475
Mechanisms: Imitation	p. 482
Do nonhuman animals teach?	p. 497
Animal cultures?	p. 503
Summary and conclusions	p. 506
Communication and Language	p. 508
Some basic issues	p. 511
Natural communication systems	p. 516
Trying to teach human language to other species	p. 532
Language evolution and animal communication: New directions	p. 543
Summary and conclusions	p. 546
Summing Up and Looking Ahead	p. 548
Modularity and the animal mind	p. 549
Theory and method in comparative cognition	p. 551
Humans versus other species: Different in degree or kind?	p. 554
The future: Tinbergen's four questions, and a fifth one	p. 559
References	p. 563
Credits	p. 651
Author Index	p. 667
Subject Index	p. 685
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