Fundamentals Of Comparative Cognition

With the growing accessibility of original journal articles and papers, a staggering number of professors teaching junior/senior level courses are turning away from the use of textbooks in favor of primary research papers. The Fundamentals of Cognition series covers the main topics in thefield of Cognitive Psychology, and will address the need professors have for a brief, yet detailed, overview of specific topics in cognitive psychology. The books in this series will serve as a unifying discussion of the topic and provide continuity and cohesion to the discussion of primaryresearch papers. These primers will be written by prominent cognitive scientists with the ability to write accessibly about complex subjects. They will capture the current state of this fast moving field and reflect the authors' views.Comparative Cognition has countless connections to the rest of psychology and encompasses the comparative and evolutionary basis of development and social psychological processes as well as every aspect of cognition. Comparative research also provides the basis for the animal models used inbehavioral neuroscience and genetics. This text on the Fundamentals of Comparative Cognition will convey the richness and excitement of this diverse field while addressing the fundamental questions of what makes us uniquely human and what we share with other creatures. Professors' experience withShettleworth's graduate text and her clear, direct, and interesting writing style makes them very excited about the possibility of Shettleworth writing an undergraduate text in this field.

This book represents a unique and elaborate exposition of the neural organization of language, memory, and spatial perception in a wide variety of species including humans, bees, fish, rodents, and monkeys. The editors have united the comparative approach with its emphasis on evolutionary determinants of behavior, the neurobiological approach with its emphasis on the neural determinants of behavior, and the cognitive approach with its emphasis on understanding higher-order mental functions. The combination of these three approaches provides an unusual look at the neurobiology of comparative cognition, and should stimulate increased investigations in this field and related disciplines.

Animal Cognition presents a lucid and comprehensive overview of cognitive processes in animals--bees and wasps, cats and dogs, dolphins and sea otters, pigeons, titmice, and chimpanzees--and offers a novel discussion of the ways in which Piagetian concepts may be used to develop models for the study of animal cognition.

This book presents an overview of selected topics in comparative cognition, which is the study of behaviour and mental activities in nonhuman animals. Human psychological capacities are often used as a heuristic by comparative cognitive scientists, whose tasks include designing valid procedures for studying species’ sensory, linguistic or manipulatory abilities that differ from those of humans. Nonetheless, researchers have developed many original ways to gain insights into how other species perceive the world, store and integrate information, and communicate. The contributors to this book have all been involved in such work, and will present some of the approaches that have led to clear advances in our understanding of cognitive processes in other species. The chapters integrate a review of past literature with recent work, covering a variety of subject species including birds, domestic dogs and cats, and nonhuman primates. All contributors have worked with or been otherwise influenced by Professor Kazuo Fujita, to whom the volume will be dedicated. Fujita’s openness to research on various topics and species is reflected in the diversity of the chapters presented.The book will be of interest to students and more experienced researchers in diverse fields including psychology, anthropology, biology and veterinary studies.

This revised third edition provides an up to date, comprehensive overview of the field of comparative psychology, integrating both evolutionary and developmental studies of brain and behavior. This book provides a unique combination of areas normally covered independently to satisfy the requirements of comparative psychology courses. Papini ensures thorough coverage of topics like the fundamentals of neural function, the cognitive and associative capacities of animals, the development of the central nervous system and behavior, and the fossil record of animals including human ancestors. This text includes many examples drawn from the study of human behavior, highlighting general and basic principles that apply broadly to the animal kingdom. New topics introduced in this edition include genetics, epigenetics, neurobiological, and cognitive advances made in recent years into this evolutionary-developmental framework. An essential textbook for upper level undergraduate and graduate courses in comparative psychology, animal behavior, and evolutionary psychology, developmental psychology, neuroscience and behavioral biology.

While philosophers have been interested in animals since ancient times, in the last few decades the subject of animal minds has emerged as a major topic in philosophy. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Animal Minds is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems, and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising nearly fifty chapters by a team of international contributors, the Handbook is divided into eight parts: Mental representation Reasoning and metacognition Consciousness Mindreading Communication Social cognition and culture Association, simplicity, and modeling Ethics. Within these sections, central issues, debates, and problems are examined, including: whether and how animals represent and reason about the world; how animal cognition differs from human cognition; whether animals are conscious; whether animals represent their own mental states or those of others; how animals communicate; the extent to which animals have cultures; how to choose among competing models and explanations of animal behavior; and whether animals are moral agents and/or moral patients. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Animal Minds is essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, ethics, and related disciplines such as ethology, biology, psychology, linguistics, and anthropology.

The study of animal cognition raises profound questions about the minds of animals and philosophy of mind itself. Aristotle argued that humans are the only animal to laugh, but in recent experiments rats have also been shown to laugh. In other experiments, dogs have been shown to respond appropriately to over two hundred words in human language. In this introduction to the philosophy of animal minds Kristin Andrews introduces and assesses the essential topics, problems and debates as they cut across animal cognition and philosophy of mind. She addresses the following key topics: what is cognition, and what is it to have a mind? What questions should we ask to determine whether behaviour has a cognitive basis? the science of animal minds explained: ethology, behaviourist psychology, and cognitive ethology rationality in animals animal consciousness: what does research into pain and the emotions reveal? What can empirical evidence about animal behaviour tell us about philosophical theories of consciousness? does animal cognition involve belief and concepts; do animals have a ‘Language of Thought’? animal communication other minds: do animals attribute ‘mindedness’ to other creatures? moral reasoning and ethical behaviour in animals animal cognition and memory. Extensive use of empirical examples and case studies is made throughout the book. These include Cheney and Seyfarth’s ververt monkey research, Thorndike’s cat puzzle boxes, Jensen’s research into humans and chimpanzees and the ultimatum game, Pankseep and Burgdorf’s research on rat laughter, and Clayton and Emery’s research on memory in scrub-jays. Additional features such as chapter summaries, annotated further reading and a glossary make this an indispensable introduction to those teaching philosophy of mind, animal cognition. It will also be an excellent resource for those in fields such as ethology, biology and psychology.

Leading researchers present current methodological approaches and future directions for a less anthropocentric study of animal cognition.