About the Book
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 strictures 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 rigourous than purely behavioristic investigations, studies of animal intelligence spanned such wide-ranging topics as perception, spatial learning and memory, timing and numerical competence, categorisation and conceptualisation, 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.
Table of Contents:
Introduction:
Comparative Cognition: A Natural Science Approach to the Study of Animal Intelligence: Edward A. Wasserman and Thomas R. Zentall:
I. Perception and Illusion:
1: Joel Fagot and Isabelle Barbet: Grouping and Segmentation of Visual Objects by Baboons (Papio papior) and Humans (Homo sapiens)
2: Kazuo Fujita: Seeing What is Not There: Illusion, Completion, and Spatio-Temporal Boundary Formation in Comparative Perspective
3: Giorgio Vallortigara: The Cognitive Chicken: Visual and Spatial Cognition in a Non-Mammalian Brain
4: Ronald G. Weisman, Mitchel T. Williams, Jerome S. Cohen, Milan G. Njegovan, and Christopher B. Sturdy: The Comparative Psychology of Absolute Pitch
II. Attention and Search:
5: Donald S. Blough: Reaction-Time Explorations of Visual Perception, Attention, and Decision in Pigeons
6: Alan C. Kamil and Alan B. Bond: Selective Attention, Priming, and Foraging Behavior
7: David A. Washburn and Lauren A. Tagliatela: Attention as it is Manifest Across Species
III. Memory Processes:
8: William A. Roberts: The Questions of Temporal and Spatial Displacement in Animal Cognition
9: Anthony A. Wright: Memory Processing
IV. Spatial Cognition:
10: Ken Chong: Arthropod Navigation: Ants, Bees, Crabs, Spiders Finding Their Way
11: Marcia L. Spetch and Debbie M. Kelly: Comparative Social Cognition: Processes in Landmark and Surface-Based Place Finding
12: Donald M. Wilkie and Christina M. Thorpe: Properties of Time-Place Learning
V. Timing and Counting:
13: Russell M. Church: Behavioristic, Cognitive, Biological, and Quantitative Explanations of Timing
14: Jonathon D. Crystal: Sensitivity to Time: Implications for the Representation of Time
15: J. Gregor Fetterman: Time and Number: Learning, Psychophysics, Stimulus Control, and Retention
VI. Conceptualization and Categorization:
16: Robert G. Cook and Edward A. Wasserman: Relational Discrimination Learning in Pigeons
17: Ludwig Huber and Ulrike Aust: A Modified Feature Theory as an Account of Pigeons Visual Categorization
18: Masako Jitsumori: Category Structure and Typicality Effects
19: Jennifer Vonk and Daniel J. Povinelli: Similarity and Difference in the Conceptual Systems of Primates: The Unobservability Hypothesis
20: Charles P. Shimp, Walter T. Herbranson, Thane Fremouw, Alyson L. Froelich: Rule Learning, Memorization Strategies, Switching Attention Between Local and Global Levels of Perception, and Optimality in Avian Visual Categorization
21: Peter J. Urcuioli: Responses and Acquired Equivalence Classes
VII. Pattern Learning:
22: Michael F. Brown: Spatial Patterns: Behavioral Control and Cognitive Representation
23: Stephen B. Fountain: The Structure of Sequential Behavior
24: Greg Jensen, Claire Miller, and Allen Neuringer: Truly Random Operant Responding: Results & Reasons
25: Herbert S. Terrace: The Simultaneous Chain: A New Look at Serially Organized Behavior
Tool Fabrication and Use:
26: Alex Kacelnik, Jackie Chappell, Ben Kenward, and Alex A.S. Weir: Cognitive Adaptations for Tool-Related Behavior in New Caledonian Crows
27: Elisabetta Visaberghi and Dorothy Fragaszy: What is Challenging About Tool Use? The Capuchin's Perspective
IX. Problem Solving and Behavioral Flexibility:
28: Juan D. Delius and Julia A.M. Deliusr: Intelligence and Brains: An Evolutionary Bird's Eye View
29: Stan A. Kuczaj II and Raches Thames Walker: How Do Dolphins Solve Problems?
30: S.R. de Kort, S. Tebbich, J.M. Dally, N.J. Emery, and N.S. Clayton: The Comparative Cognition of Caching
31: Shigeru Watanabe: The Neural Basis of Cognitive Flexibility in Birds
X. Social Cognition Processes:
32: Masaki Tomonaga, Masako Myowa-Yamakoshi, Yuu Mizuno, Sanae Okamoto, Masami K. Yamaguchi, Daisuke Kosugi, Kim A. Bard, Masayuki Tanaka, and Tetsuro Matsuzawa: Chimpanzee Social Cognition in Early Life: Comparative-Developmental Perspective
Epilogue:
Postscript: An Essay on the Study of Cognition in Animals: Stewart M. Hulse:
Review :
"Those who study comparative cognition find themselves in a particularly prosperous time . . . A diversity of available species to study, opportunities for increased national and international collaboration, and technological advances offer us a greater opportunity for data collection and dissemination than at any time in history. The present book attests to how these opportunities can produce compelling research programs that serve as excellent models for the
future of comparative cognition." --Michael J. Beran in PsycCRITIQUES
"This book is an outstanding collection of chapters by an exceptional group of researchers. A unique aspect of this collection is the strong reliance on experimental science in each of the research programs. One chapter after another provides a critical analysis of the state of knowledge about a fascinating cognitive ability. How do animals perceive, order, and categorize the world? Do animals remember their own past? Do species differ in their sense of time
and space? How flexible are animals in the use of tools and in their problem solving? Are there unique social cognitive processes? Each of these well-written chapters contains enough detail to provide
the reader with the information necessary to reach their own conclusions about the validity of an argument. Everyone interested in the cognitive and intellectual capacities of animals should read this book." --Peter Balsam, Samuel R Milbank Professor of Psychology, Barnard College and Columbia University
"This book is a gem. It brings together a large, readable, and rich set of chapters by an international group of experts on many of the most important topics in the study of cognitive processes in animals. It will be a 'must read' for students and scientists who are curious about the state of the art of the modern science of comparative cognition." --Mark E. Bouton, Professor of Psychology, University of Vermont
"This impressive compendium shows the remarkable breadth and depth of current experimental research in comparative cognition. It is sure to become a major landmark in long history of this continually evolving field." --Michael Domjan, Professor of Psychology, University of Texas
"Comparative Cognition will be an invaluable resource for all working or being interested in the wide field of comparative psychology and neuroscience."--European Journal of Neurology
"Excellent book...Highly recommended."--Choice
"Those who study comparative cognition find themselves in a particularly prosperous time . . . A diversity of available species to study, opportunities for increased national and international collaboration, and technological advances offer us a greater opportunity for data collection and dissemination than at any time in history. The present book attests to how these opportunities can produce compelling research programs that serve as excellent models for the
future of comparative cognition." --Michael J. Beran in PsycCRITIQUES
"This book is an outstanding collection of chapters by an exceptional group of researchers. A unique aspect of this collection is the strong reliance on experimental science in each of the research programs. One chapter after another provides a critical analysis of the state of knowledge about a fascinating cognitive ability. How do animals perceive, order, and categorize the world? Do animals remember their own past? Do species differ in their sense of time
and space? How flexible are animals in the use of tools and in their problem solving? Are there unique social cognitive processes? Each of these well-written chapters contains enough detail to provide
the reader with the information necessary to reach their own conclusions about the validity of an argument. Everyone interested in the cognitive and intellectual capacities of animals should read this book." --Peter Balsam, Samuel R Milbank Professor of Psychology, Barnard College and Columbia University
"This book is a gem. It brings together a large, readable, and rich set of chapters by an international group of experts on many of the most important topics in the study of cognitive processes in animals. It will be a 'must read' for students and scientists who are curious about the state of the art of the modern science of comparative cognition." --Mark E. Bouton, Professor of Psychology, University of Vermont
"This impressive compendium shows the remarkable breadth and depth of current experimental research in comparative cognition. It is sure to become a major landmark in long history of this continually evolving field."--Michael Domjan, Professor of Psychology, University of Texas
"Comparative Cognition will be an invaluable resource for all working or being interested in the wide field of comparative psychology and neuroscience."--European Journal of Neurology
"Excellent book...Highly recommended."--Choice
