Animal cognition
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'''Animal cognition''' is the title given to a modern approach to the mental capacities of (non-human) [[animals]]. It has developed out of [[comparative psychology]], but has also been strongly influenced by the approach of [[ethology]], [[behavioral ecology]], and [[evolutionary psychology]]. The alternative name [[cognitive ethology]] is therefore sometimes used; and much of what used to be considered under the title of '''animal intelligence''' is now thought of under this heading.
In practice, animal cognition mostly concerns [[mammals]], especially [[primate intelligence|primates]], [[Cetacean intelligence|cetaceans]] and [[elephant intelligence|elephants]], besides [[Dog intelligence|canidae]], [[Cat intelligence|felidae]] and [[rodents]], but research also extends to non-mammalian [[vertebrates]] such as [[bird intelligence|birds]] ([[Pigeon intelligence|pigeons]]), [[Monitor_lizard#Intelligence|lizards]] or [[fish]], and even to non-vertebrates ([[cephalopod intelligence|cephalopods]]).
==Historical background==
For most of the twentieth century, the dominant approach to animal psychology was to use experiments on intelligence in animals to uncover simple processes (such as [[classical conditioning]] and [[operant conditioning]]) that might then account for the apparently more complex intellectual abilities of humans. This approach is well summarised in the mid-century book by Hilgard (1958), but its reductionist philosophy was combined with a strongly [[behaviorism|behaviorist]] methodology, in which overt behavior was taken as the only valid data for the study of psychology, and in its more extreme forms (the [[radical behaviorism]] of [[B. F. Skinner]] and his [[experimental analysis of behavior]]) behavior was taken as the only topic of interest. In effect, the mental processes that humans experience in themselves were viewed as [[epiphenomenon|epiphenomena]] (see, for example, Skinner, 1969).
The success of [[cognitive psychology]] in addressing human mental processes, which began in the late 1950s and was proclaimed by Neisser (1967), led to a re-evaluation of the research paradigm, and researchers began to address animal mental processes from the opposite direction, by taking what is known about human mental processes and looking for evidence of comparable processes in other species. In a sense this was a return to the approach of [[Charles Darwin|Darwin's]] protegé [[George Romanes]] (e.g. 1886), arguably the first comparative psychologist of the modern era. However, whereas Romanes relied heavily on anecdote and an anthropomorphic projection of human capacities onto other species, modern researchers in animal cognition are in most cases firmly behaviorist in methodology, even though they differ sharply from the behaviorist philosophy. There are some exceptions to the rule of behaviorist methodology, such as [[John C. Lilly|John Lilly]] and, some would argue, [[Donald Griffin]] (e.g. 1992), who have been prepared to take a strong position that other animals do have [[mind]]s and that humans should approach the study of their cognition accordingly. However, their claims have not found wide acceptance in the scientific community, though they have attracted an enthusiastic following among lay people.
The development of animal cognition was also strongly influenced by:
*increased use of and interest in [[primate]]s (and also [[cetacean]]s) rather than the [[rat]]s and [[pigeon]]s that had become the classic [[species]] of the comparative psychology laboratory, and by developments within [[primatology]];
*advancing knowledge of animals' behavior in their natural environments through studies in ethology, [[sociobiology]] and behavioral ecology; such studies often showed that animals needed certain cognitive abilities in order to adapt to their [[ecological niche]] (as for example in studies of [[caching]] [[birds]] such as [[Clark's Nutcracker]] by [[Alan Kamil]] and his colleagues (e.g. Kamil & Balda, 1990), or appeared to use cognitive abilities under natural conditions (for example in [[Jane Goodall]]'s studies of [[chimpanzee]]s, see Goodall (1991);
*one or two high profile projects, in particular [[Allen Gardner|Allen]] and [[Beatrice Gardner]]'s [[Washoe (chimpanzee)|Washoe]] project in which a chimpanzee learned at least some elements of [[American Sign Language]].
*advancing understanding of brain function through work in [[physiological psychology]] and [[cognitive neuropsychology]]
This account of the history of the study of animal cognition is inevitably oversimplified. From Romanes on, there have always been comparative psychologists who have been more or less cognitively inclined: obvious examples are [[Wolfgang Köhler]], famous for his studies of [[insight]] in chimpanzees, and [[Edward C. Tolman]], who introduced into psychology, as an explanation of the behavior of rats in mazes, two ideas that have been immensely influential in human cognitive psychology - the [[cognitive map]] and the idea of decision-making in [[risky choice]] according to [[expected value]].
==Methodology==
Research in animal cognition continues to use some of the established research techniques of comparative psychology and the experimental analysis of behavior, such as mazes and [[Skinner box]]es, though it employs them in new varieties (such as the 8-arm maze and [[Morris water maze]] that have been used in many studies of [[spatial memory]]) and in new ways. However, it complements those with observation of animals in their natural environments, or quasi-natural environments and also with [[field experiment]]s. It has also been characterised by a number of very long term projects, such as the Washoe project and other [[ape-language experiment]]s (e.g. [[Nim Chimpsky|project Nim]]), [[Irene Pepperberg]]'s extended series of studies with the [[African Gray Parrot]] [[Alex (parrot)|Alex]], [[Louis Herman|Louis Herman's]] work with [[bottlenosed dolphin]]s, and studies of long-term memory in pigeons in which birds were shown to remember pictures for periods of several years. Some cognitive research also requires the management of animal behavior, and the use of [[operant conditioning]] to facilitate [[animal training]]. In general, the conclusion of concept formation in an animal requires a generalization test where the animal responds appropriately to a novel stimulus to which associative learning cannot explain the response behavior. Some researchers have made effective use of a [[Jean Piaget|Piaget]]ian methodology, taking tasks which human children are known to master at different stages of development, and investigating which of them can be performed by particular species. Others have been inspired by concerns for [[animal welfare]] and the management of domestic species: for example [[Temple Grandin]] has harnessed her unique expertise in animal welfare and the ethical treatment of farm livestock to highlight underlying similarities between humans and other animals.
==Research questions==
[[Image:Chimpanzee and stick.jpg|250px|thumb|right|The common Chimpanzee can use tools. This chimpanzee is using a stick in order to get food.]]
Given the broad program of animal cognition, of looking for the animal analogs of human cognitive processes, the areas of study in animal cognition follow more or less from those in human cognitive psychology. However, progress in the different areas has been variable. Among the fields of interest are:
===Attention===
Research has focused on animals' ability to distribute attention between different aspects of a stimulus, and on [[visual search]]. As in humans, it appears that sharing [[attention]] between stimulus features reduces the capacity to detect any one of them, though there are some ecologically relevant visual search tasks at which particular species show remarkable abilities (for example, pigeons have an extraordinary capacity to pick out grain from substrate).
===Categorization===
Following pioneering research by [[Richard Herrnstein]], there has been a mass of research on birds' ability to discriminate between categories of stimuli, including the kinds of ill-defined category that are used in everyday human speech. Birds have been found to learn this kind of task easily, and to transfer correct responses readily to new instances of the categories.
===Memory===
The categories that have been developed to analyse [[memory|human memory]] ([[short term memory]], [[long term memory]], [[working memory]]) have been applied to the study of animal memory, and some of the phenomena characteristic of human short term memory (e.g. the [[serial position effect]]) have been detected in animals particularly [[monkey]]s. However most progress has been made in the analysis of [[spatial memory]], partly in relation to studies of the physiological basis of spatial memory and the role of the [[hippocampus]], and partly in relation to [[scatter-hoarder]] animals such as [[Clark's Nutcracker]], certain [[jay]]s, [[titmice]] and certain [[squirrel]]s, whose ecological niches require them to remember the locations of thousands of caches, often following radical changes in the environment.
===Spatial Cognition===
The ability to properly navigate and search through the environment is a critical task for many animals. Research in this area (Brown & Cook, 2006<ref>http://pigeon.psy.tufts.edu/asc/toc.htm</ref>) has focused on such diffuse topics as landmark and beacon use by [[Ants]] and [[Bees]], the encoding and use of geometric properties of the environment by [[Pigeons]], and the ability of [[Rats]] to represent a spatial pattern in either [[Radial Maze]]s or [[Pole Box Mazes]]. Sometimes included under the envelope of Spatial Cognition is work in humans and other animals in [[Visual Search]] tasks, which aim to experimentally address questions about searching through one's environment for a particular object.
===Tool and weapon use===
{{see|Tool use by animals}}
Some species, such as the [[Woodpecker Finch]] of the [[Galapagos Islands]], use particular tools as an essential part of their [[foraging]] behavior. However, these behaviors are often quite inflexible and cannot be applied effectively in new situations. Several species have now been shown to be capable of more flexible tool use. A well known example is Jane Goodall's observation of chimpanzees "fishing" for [[termite]]s in their natural environment, and captive great apes are often observed to use tools effectively; several species of [[corvid]]s have also been trained to use tools in controlled experiments, or use bread crumbs for bait-fishing [http://www.orenhasson.com/EN/bait-fishing.htm].
Research in 2007 shows that chimpanzees in the [[Fongoli]] [[savannah]] sharpen sticks to use as [[spear]]s when hunting, considered the first evidence of systematic use of weapons in a species other than humans.<ref>http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070223/NEWS/702230385/-1/NEWS04</ref><ref>[http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070222-chimps-spears.html Chimps Use "Spears" to Hunt Mammals, Study Says<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>
===Reasoning and problem solving===
Closely related to tool use is the study of reasoning and problem solving. Many of the data on these issues come from earlier comparative psychologists such as Wolfgang Köhler, rather than recent experiments. It is clear that animals of quite a range of species are capable of solving a range of problems that are argued to involve abstract reasoning; modern research has tended to show that the performances of Köhler's chimpanzees, who could achieve spontaneous solutions to problems without training, were by no means unique to that species, and that apparently similar behavior can be found in animals usually thought of as much less intelligent, if appropriate training is given.
===Language===
The modeling of human language in animals is known as [[animal language]] research. In addition to the ape-language experiments mentioned above, there have also been more or less successful attempts to teach language or language-like behavior to some non-primate species, including [[parrots]] and [[Great Spotted Woodpecker]]s. [[Louis Herman]] published research on artificial language comprehension in the bottlenosed dolphin using cognitive research methods at the height of the skepticism produced by Herbert Terrace's criticism of chimpanzee language experiments through his own results with the animal [[Nim Chimpsky]]. In particular, the focus on the ''comprehension'' mode only allowed cognitive methods of utilizing blinded observers to grade the animals' gross physical behavior, rather than trying to interpret putative language ''production''. Herman's results (Herman, Richards, & Wolz, 1984) were published in the (human) journal ''Cognition'', regarding work on the dolphins [[Akeakamai]] and Phoenix. All such research has been controversial among [[cognitive linguistics|cognitive linguists]].
===Consciousness===
The sense in which animals can be said to have [[consciousness]] or a [[self-concept]] has been hotly debated; it is often referred to as the debate over [[animal mind]]s. The best known research technique in this area is the [[mirror test]] devised by Gordon Gallup, in which an animal's skin is marked in some way while it is asleep or sedated, and it is then allowed to see its reflection in a mirror; if the animal spontaneously directs grooming behaviour towards the mark, that is taken as an indication that it is aware of itself. Self-awareness, by this criterion, has been reported for chimpanzees and also for some other great apes, some [[cetaceans]] and a solitary [[elephant]], but not for monkeys. The mirror test has attracted controversy among some researchers because it is entirely focused on vision, the primary sense in humans, while other species rely more heavily on other senses such as the [[olfactory]] sense in dogs.{{Fact|date=April 2008}}
A different approach to determine whether a non-human animal is conscious derives from passive speech research with a macaw (refer to Arielle under [[Talking Birds]]). By passively listening to an animal's voluntary speech, it is possible to learn about the thoughts of another creature and to determine that the speaker is conscious. This type of research was originally used to investigate a child's crib speech by Weir (1962) and in investigations of early speech in children by Greenfield and others (1976). With speech-capable birds, the methods of passive-speech research open a new avenue for investigation.
===Emotion===
The question of whether animals have emotions, that is, feelings, and if those are qualitatively the same as humans' feelings or in fact simple stimulus responses, is under debate at the moment. See [[Emotion in animals]].
==Continuing controversy==
{{Unreferencedsection|date=June 2008}}
The results and philosophy of research into animal cognition continue to be controversial on a number of grounds:
*Particular issues within animal cognition, particularly the interpretation of language-learning and self-awareness experiments, have generated major controversies both about the extent of the animals' achievements, and about the correct interpretation of the behavior observed.
*[[Cognitive science|Cognitive scientists]] have been interested in comparing and contrasting human cognition with [[artificial intelligence]] or machine cognition, but have been less interested in including animal cognition in the analysis - despite the fact that the common biological origins of human and animal cognition suggest that there might be greater resemblance, at least in some respects, between human and animal cognition than between human and machine cognition. There is also a minority of cognitive scientists who simply neglect accumulated [[psychology|psychological]] knowledge about cognition, whether animal or human.
*Those psychologists who are committed to radical behaviorism and the experimental analysis of behaviour discount cognitive analyses of animal behavior. This is not surprising since for the most part they also reject cognitive analyses of human behaviour. It is perhaps a [[category error]] to oppose behavioural and cognitive analyses: insofar as the study of animal cognition exposes new behavioural phenomena, it simply provides more that a radical behaviourist must explain without using mentalistic language.
== Cognitive faculty by species==
Some animals, including [[great ape]]s, [[crow]]s, [[dolphin]]s, [[dog]]s, [[elephant]]s, [[cat]]s, [[pig]]s, [[rat]]s, and [[parrot]]s are still typically thought by [[laypeople]]{{huh}} as intelligent in ways that some other species of animal are not. For example, crows are attributed with human-like intelligence in the folklore of many cultures. A number of recent survey studies have demonstrated the consistency of these rankings between people in a given culture and indeed to a considerable extent across cultures (e.g. Nakajima et al., 2002).
A common image is the [[Great chain of being|scala naturae]], the ladder of nature on which animals of different species occupy successively higher rungs, with humans typically at the top <ref name=campbell1991snr>Campbell, C.B.G., & Hodos, W. (1991). The Scala Naturae revisited: Evolutionary scales and anagenesis in comparative psychology. J. Comp. Psychol. 105:211-221.</ref>.
A more fruitful approach has been to recognise that different animals may have different kinds of cognitive processes, which are better understood in terms of the ways in which they are cognitively adapted to their different ecological niches, than by positing any kind of hierarchy. This is the approach taken by the most comprehensive reference text of animal cognition, [[Sara Shettleworth|Shettleworth]] (1998).
One question that can be asked coherently is how far different species are intelligent in the same ways as humans are, i.e., are their cognitive processes similar to ours. Not surprisingly, our closest biological relatives, the [[great ape]]s, tend to do best on such an assessment. Among the birds, [[corvid]]s and parrots have typically been found to perform well. Despite ambitious claims, evidence of unusually high human-like intelligence among [[cetacean]]s is patchy, partly because the cost and difficulty of carrying out research with marine mammals mean that experiments frequently suffer from small sample sizes and inadequate controls and replication.{{Fact|date=June 2008}} [[Octopus]]es have also been claimed to exhibit a number of higher-level problem-solving skills, but the amount of research on [[cephalopod intelligence]] is too limited for it to be conclusive.
==See also==
* [[Anthropomorphism]]
* [[Bird intelligence]]
* [[Cat intelligence]]
* [[Cephalopod intelligence]]
* [[Cetacean intelligence]]
* [[Cognitive ethology]]
* [[Comparative Cognition]]
* [[Dog intelligence]]
* [[Elephant intelligence]]
* [[Hominid intelligence]]
* [[List of animals by number of neurons]]
* [[Vocal learning]]
* [[Zoosemiotics]]
==References==
*Brown, M.F., & Cook, R.G. (Eds.). (2006). Animal Spatial Cognition: Comparative, Neural, and Computational Approaches. [On-line]. Available: www.pigeon.psy.tufts.edu/asc/
*Goodall, J. (1991). ''Through a window''. London: Penguin.
*Griffin, D. R. (1992). ''Animal minds''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
*Kamil A. C., Balda R. P. (1990). Differential memory for different cache sites by Clark's nutcrackers (Nucifraga columbiana). ''Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 16'', 162-168.
*Hilgard, E. R. (1958). ''Theories of learning'', 2nd edn. London: Methuen.
*Nakajima, S., Arimitsu, K., & Lattal, K. M. (2002). Estimation of animal intelligence by university students in Japan and the United States. ''Anthrozoös, 15'', 194-205.
*Neisser, U. (1967). ''Cognitive psychology''. New York, Appleton-Century-Crofts.
*Romanes, G. J. (1886). ''Animal intelligence'', 4th edn. London: Kegan Paul, Trench.
*Shettleworth, S. J. (1998). ''Cognition, evolution and behavior''. New York: Oxford University Press.
*Skinner, B. F. (1969). ''Contingencies of reinforcement: a theoretical analysis''. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
<references/>
==External links==
*{{sep entry|cognition-animal|Animal Cognition|Kristin Andrews}}
*{{sep entry|consciousness-animal|Animal Consciousness|Colin Allen}}
*[http://www.animalcognition.net/home.html Animal Cognition Network]
{{animal language}}
[[Category:Zoology]]
[[Category:Animal intelligence]]
[[es:Cognición animal]]
[[fr:Intelligence animale]]
[[he:אינטליגנציה בבעלי חיים]]
[[pt:Inteligência animal]]
[[tl:Katalinuhan ng mga hayop]]