Animal Learning and Cognition

Author: John M. Pearce
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 1317709942
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 432

Book Description
Animal Learning and Cognition: An Introduction provides an up-to-date review of the principal findings from more than a century of research into animal intelligence. This new edition has been expanded to take account of the many exciting developments that have occurred over the last ten years. The book opens with a historical survey of the methods that have been used to study animal intelligence, and follows by summarizing the contribution made by learning processes to intelligent behavior. Topics include Pavlovian and instrumental conditioning, discrimination learning, and categorization. The remainder of the book focuses on animal cognition and covers such topics as memory, navigation, social learning, language and communication, and knowledge representation. Expanded areas include extinction (to which an entire chapter is now devoted), navigation in insects, episodic memory in birds, imitation in birds and primates, and the debate about whether primates are aware of mental states in themselves and others. Issues raised throughout the book are reviewed in a concluding chapter that examines how intelligence is distributed throughout the animal kingdom. The broad spectrum of topics covered in this book ensures that it will be of interest to students of psychology, biology, zoology, and neuroscience. Since very little background knowledge is required, the book will be of equal value to anyone simply interested in either animal intelligence, or the animal origins of human intelligence. This textbook is accompanied by online instructor resources which are free of charge to departments who adopt this book as their text. They include chapter-by-chapter lecture slides, an interactive chapter-by-chapter multiple-choice question test bank, and multiple-choice questions in paper and pen format.

The Cognitive Animal

Author: Marc Bekoff
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262523226
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 508

Book Description
The fifty-seven original essays in this book provide a comprehensive overview of the interdisciplinary field of animal cognition. The contributors include cognitive ethologists, behavioral ecologists, experimental and developmental psychologists, behaviorists, philosophers, neuroscientists, computer scientists and modelers, field biologists, and others. The diversity of approaches is both philosophical and methodological, with contributors demonstrating various degrees of acceptance or disdain for such terms as "consciousness" and varying degrees of concern for laboratory experimentation versus naturalistic research. In addition to primates, particularly the nonhuman great apes, the animals discussed include antelopes, bees, dogs, dolphins, earthworms, fish, hyenas, parrots, prairie dogs, rats, ravens, sea lions, snakes, spiders, and squirrels. The topics include (but are not limited to) definitions of cognition, the role of anecdotes in the study of animal cognition, anthropomorphism, attention, perception, learning, memory, thinking, consciousness, intentionality, communication, planning, play, aggression, dominance, predation, recognition, assessment of self and others, social knowledge, empathy, conflict resolution, reproduction, parent-young interactions and caregiving, ecology, evolution, kin selection, and neuroethology.

Animal Cognition

Author: Clive D.L. Wynne
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350312134
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 490

Book Description
Thoroughly updated for its third edition with the latest research in the field, this innovative text delivers an apt and comprehensive introduction to the rich and complex world of animal behaviour and cognition. Discover pivotal case studies and experiments that have irrevocably shaped how we view the psychological and social lives of animals and discover such key cognitive topics as memory, communication and sensory perception. Projecting an insightful scope into the cognitive world of animals, from considering the use of tools in birds to the dance communication system of the honey bee, Wynne and Udell analyse and explain the importance of the observations and studies that have led to the greater understanding of how animals learn, perceive social relations, form concepts, experience time and navigate space. Written by two leading researchers in the field, including the author of the best-selling popular science book Dog is Love, this textbook is a complete resource for students of animal cognition, animal behaviour or comparative psychology.

Principles of Animal Cognition

Author: William Albert Roberts
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Humanities, Social Sciences & World Languages
ISBN:
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 484

Book Description
This textbook aims to present a systematic, up-to-date review of current research in the area of animal psychology.

Encyclopedia of Animal Cognition and Behavior

Author: Jennifer Vonk
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9783319550640
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
This encyclopedia, representing one of the most multi-disciplinary areas of research, is a comprehensive examination of the key areas in animal cognition and behavior. It will serve as a complementary resource to the handbooks and journals that have emerged in the last decade on this topic, and will be a useful resource for student and researcher alike. With comprehensive coverage of this field, key concepts will be explored. These include social cognition, prey and predator detection, habitat selection, mating and parenting, development, genetics, physiology, memory, learning and perception. Attention is also given to animal-human co-evolution and interaction, and animal welfare. All entries are under the purview of acknowledged experts in the field.

The Cambridge Handbook of Animal Cognition

Author: Allison B. Kaufman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110856125X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 1032

Book Description
This handbook lays out the science behind how animals think, remember, create, calculate, and remember. It provides concise overviews on major areas of study such as animal communication and language, memory and recall, social cognition, social learning and teaching, numerical and quantitative abilities, as well as innovation and problem solving. The chapters also explore more nuanced topics in greater detail, showing how the research was conducted and how it can be used for further study. The authors range from academics working in renowned university departments to those from research institutions and practitioners in zoos. The volume encompasses a wide variety of species, ensuring the breadth of the field is explored.

Cognition, Evolution, and Behavior

Author: Sara J. Shettleworth
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199717818
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 715

Book Description
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.

Comparative Cognition

Author: Edward A. Wasserman
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780195167658
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 734

Book Description
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.

Animal Cognition

Author: Mary C. Olmstead
Publisher: Nova Science Publishers
ISBN: 9781634853637
Category : Cognition in animals
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
The study of animal cognition has undergone enormous growth in the last two decades. In the early part of the 20th century, the work was conducted primarily by psychologists who studied animal behavior in the laboratory as a model of human cognition. By the middle of the century, ethological studies of animal behavior in the natural environment revealed an amazing array of cognitive abilities in different species, worthy of study in their own right. In many cases, scientists in these two disciplines were investigating the same process (e.g., learning, navigation, communication) from very different perspectives. Psychologists tended to focus on developmental or mechanistic explanations, whereas ethologists and behavioral ecologists emphasised adaptive or functional ones. Eventually, it became clear that the two fields are complementary with a full description of any cognitive process, depending on both proximate and ultimate explanations. This text builds on the tradition of combining data from laboratory and field studies of animal behavior as a means of understanding the evolution and function of cognition. In keeping with contemporary terminology, cognition refers to a wide range of processes from modification of simple reflexes to abstract concept learning to social interactions to the expression of emotions, such as guilt. These are examined throughout the text in animal groups ranging from insects to great apes. A general theme across chapters is that the evolution of behavioral patterns is adaptive, thereby reflected in underlying neural structures. Many of the authors go on to examine the adaptive significance of a behavior in relation to a species ecological history in order to develop theories of cognitive evolution. These issues are becoming increasingly important in a world with rapidly changing environments to which all animals, including humans, must adjust. A primary goal of this volume is to introduce the exciting field of animal cognition to a new group of young scientists. The editor also hopes to encourage experienced researchers to expand their ideas of what constitutes animal cognition and how it can be studied in the future. From the editors own reading, one area of potential growth is the development of more formal models of cognition to guide quantitative predictions of behavior. Although no chapter focuses exclusively on humans, readers should have no difficulty extrapolating research findings and theories from other species to those of our own. Differences are clearly based on degree, not kind.

Animal Minds

Author: Donald R. Griffin
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022622712X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 372

Book Description
In Animal Minds, Donald R. Griffin takes us on a guided tour of the recent explosion of scientific research on animal mentality. Are animals consciously aware of anything, or are they merely living machines, incapable of conscious thoughts or emotional feelings? How can we tell? Such questions have long fascinated Griffin, who has been a pioneer at the forefront of research in animal cognition for decades, and is recognized as one of the leading behavioral ecologists of the twentieth century. With this new edition of his classic book, which he has completely revised and updated, Griffin moves beyond considerations of animal cognition to argue that scientists can and should investigate questions of animal consciousness. Using examples from studies of species ranging from chimpanzees and dolphins to birds and honeybees, he demonstrates how communication among animals can serve as a "window" into what animals think and feel, just as human speech and nonverbal communication tell us most of what we know about the thoughts and feelings of other people. Even when they don't communicate about it, animals respond with sometimes surprising versatility to new situations for which neither their genes nor their previous experiences have prepared them, and Griffin discusses what these behaviors can tell us about animal minds. He also reviews the latest research in cognitive neuroscience, which has revealed startling similarities in the neural mechanisms underlying brain functioning in both humans and other animals. Finally, in four chapters greatly expanded for this edition, Griffin considers the latest scientific research on animal consciousness, pro and con, and explores its profound philosophical and ethical implications.