Comparative Cognition Experimental Explorations of Animal Intelligence

by Wasserman, Edward A; Zentall, Thomas R

• ISBN13: 9780195377804
• ISBN10: 019537780X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-04-08
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

In 1978, Hulse, Fowler, and Honig published Cognitive Processes in Animal Behavior, an edited volume that was a landmark in the scientific study of animal intelligence. It liberated interest in complex learning and cognition from the grasp of the rigid theoretical structures of behaviorism that had prevailed during the previous four decades, and as a result, the field of comparative cognition was born. At long last, the study of the cognitive capacities of animals other than humans emerged as a worthwhile scientific enterprise. No less rigorous than purely behavioristic investigations, studies of animal intelligence spanned such wide-ranging topics as perception, spatial learning and memory, timing and numerical competence, categorization and conceptualization, problem solving, rule learning, and creativity. During the ensuing 25 years, the field of comparative cognition has thrived and grown, and public interest in it has risen to unprecedented levels. In their quest to understand the nature and mechanisms of intelligence, researchers have studied animals from bees to chimpanzees. Sessions on comparative cognition have become common at meetings of the major societies for psychology and neuroscience, and in fact, research in comparative cognition has increased so much that a separate society, the Comparative Cognition Society, has been formed to bring it together. This volume celebrates comparative cognition's first quarter century with a state-of-the-art collection of chapters covering the broad realm of the scientific study of animal intelligence. Comparative Cognition will be an invaluable resource for students and professional researchers in all areas of psychology and neuroscience.

Author Biography

Edward A. Wasserman earned his B.A. at UCLA and his Ph.D. at Indiana University. He is now Stuit Professor of Experimental Psychology at the University of Iowa.
Thomas R. Zentall earned his B.S. degree in psychology, his B.E.E. in Electrical Engineering from Union College in 1963, and his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1969. After an appointment at the University of Pittsburgh, he joined the faculty at the University of Kentucky, where he is now Professor of Psychology.

Table of Contents

Contributors	p. xi
Comparative Cognition: A Natural Science Approach to the Study of Animal Intelligence	p. 3
Perception and Illusion
Grouping and Segmentation of Visual Objects by Baboons (Papio papio) and Humans (Homo sapiens)	p. 15
Seeing What Is Not There: Illusion, Completion, and Spatiotemporal Boundary Formation in Comparative Perspective	p. 29
The Cognitive Chicken: Visual and Spatial Cognition in a Nonmammalian Brain	p. 53
The Comparative Psychology of Absolute Pitch	p. 71
Attention and Search
Reaction-Time Explorations of Visual Perception, Attention, and Decision in Pigeons	p. 89
Selective Attention, Priming, and Foraging Behavior	p. 106
Attention as It Is Manifest Across Species	p. 127
Memory Processes
The Questions of Temporal and Spatial Displacement in Animal Cognition	p. 145
Memory Processing	p. 164
Spatial Cognition
Arthropod Navigation: Ants, Bees, Crabs, Spiders Finding Their Way	p. 189
Comparative Spatial Cognition: Processes in Landmark- and Surface-Based Place Finding	p. 210
Properties of Time-Place Learning	p. 229
Timing and Counting
Behavioristic, Cognitive, Biological, and Quantitative Explanations of Timing	p. 249
Sensitivity to Time: Implications for the Representation of Time	p. 270
Time and Number: Learning, Psychophysics, Stimulus Control, and Retention	p. 285
Conceptualization and Categorization
Relational Discrimination Learning in Pigeons	p. 307
A Modified Feature Theory as an Account of Pigeon Visual Categorization	p. 325
Category Structure and Typicality Effects	p. 343
Similarity and Difference in the Conceptual Systems of Primates: The Unobservability Hypothesis	p. 363
Rule Learning, Memorization Strategies, Switching Attention Between Local and Global Levels of Perception, and Optimality in Avian Visual Categorization	p. 388
Responses and Acquired Equivalence Classes	p. 405
Pattern Learning
Spatial Patterns: Behavioral Control and Cognitive Representation	p. 425
The Structure of Sequential Behavior	p. 439
Truly Random Operant Responding: Results and Reasons	p. 459
The Simultaneous Chain: A New Look at Serially Organized Behavior	p. 481
Tool Fabrication and Use
Cognitive Adaptations for Tool-Related Behavior in New Caledonian Crows	p. 515
What Is Challenging About Tool Use? The Capuchin's Perspective	p. 529
Problem Solving and Behavioral Flexibility
Intelligences and Brains: An Evolutionary Bird's Eye View	p. 555
How Do Dolphins Solve Problems?	p. 580
The Comparative Cognition of Caching	p. 602
The Neural Basis of Cognitive Flexibility in Birds	p. 619
Social Cognition Processes
Chimpanzee Social Cognition in Early Life: Comparative-Developmental Perspective	p. 639
Stimuli Signaling Rewards That Follow a Less-Preferred Event Are Themselves Preferred: Implications for Cognitive Dissonance	p. 651
Postscript: An Essay on the Study of Cognition in Animals	p. 668
Author Index	p. 679
Subject Index	p. 694
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