Animal Cognition: An Introduction to Modern Comparative Psychology / Edition 1

by Jacques Vauclair

Overview

Animal Cognition presents a clear, concise, and comprehensive overview of what we know about cognitive processes in animals. Focusing mainly on what has been learned from experimental research, Vauclair presents a wide-ranging review of studies of many kinds of animals—bees and wasps, cats and dogs, dolphins and sea otters, pigeons and titmice, baboons, chimpanzees, vervet monkeys, and Japanese macaques. He also offers a novel discussion of the ways Piaget's theory of cognitive development and Piagetian concepts may be used to develop models for the study of animal cognition.

Individual chapters review the current state of our knowledge about specific kinds of cognition in animals: tool use and spatial and temporal representations; social cognition—how animals manage their relational life and the cognitive organization that sustains social behaviors; representation, communication, and language; and imitation, self-recognition, and the theory of mind—what animals know about themselves. The book closes with Vauclair's "agenda for comparative cognition." Here he examines the relationship of the experimental approach to other fields and methods of inquiry, such as cognitive ethology and the ecological approach to species comparisons. It is here, too, that Vauclair addresses the key issue of continuity, or its absence, between animal and human cognition.

Given our still limited knowledge of cognitive systems in animals, Vauclair argues, researchers should be less concerned with the "why" question—the evolutionary or ecological explanations for differences in cognition between the species—and more concerned with the "what"—the careful work that is needed to increase our understanding of similarities and differences in cognitive processes. This thoughtful and lively book will be of great value to students of animal behavior and to anyone who desires a better understanding of humankind's relations to other living creatures.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674037038
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	08/15/1996
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	222
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Jacques Vauclair is Director of Research at the Laboratory for Cognitive Neuroscience of the Center for Scientific Research in Marseilles, France.

Table of Contents

Preface

1. Origins and Development of the Study of Animal Cognition

The Darwinian Heritage and Nineteenth-Century Psychology

The Behaviorist Break

The Emergence of the Cognitive Approach

The Modern Concepts of Representation and Memory

The Study of Representation in Animals

Problems Posed by the Study of Cognition in Animals

2. Laboratory Methods for Assessing Representation in Animals

Learning Sets

Mastery of Relations between Stimuli

Category Formation

Serial Learning as Evidence of Nonverbal Thought

Mental Images in Animals

Summary and Current Debate

3. Piagetian Studies in Animal Psychology

Developmental Psychology and Comparative Psychology

The Development of Intelligence

Sensorimotor Activities in Animals

"Concrete Operations" in Animals

Summary and Current Debate

4. Tool Use and Spatial and Temporal Representations

Tool Use

Spatial Representations

Temporal Representations

Summary and Current Debate

5. Social Cognition

Experimental Methods for the Study of Social Cognition

Social Cognition in Monkeys

Social versus Nonsocial Cognition

Suggestions for Future Research

Summary and Current Debate

6. Animal Communication and Human Language

Comparisons of Animal and Human Communication

Language-Trained Animals

Differences in the Use of Signs by Apes and Children

Pre-Linguistic Communication in Human Infants and Chimpanzee Infants

Summary and Current Debate

7. Imitation, Self-Recognition, and the Theory of Mind

Is There Evidence for Imitation in Animals?

The Attribution of Mental States in Animals

Self-Knowledge and Self-Recognition

Relationships between Mirror Recognition, Social Attribution, Imitation, and Teaching

Summary and Current Debate

8. An Agenda for Comparative Cognitive Studies

Cognitive Ethology: Mental Representations or Mental Experiences?

The Generalist versus Ecological Approach to Animal Cognition

Conclusions

References

Index

Editorial Reviews

Vauclair has produced a state-of-the-field review that reveals contemporary comparative psychology to be vital, interesting and heuristically rich. Eschewing the many parametric investigations of classical and instrumental conditioning (leaving their summary to the excellent volumes already in print) and focusing instead on topics comparable to those typical of human cognition, Vauclair has provided a tool that should encourage a new generation of students to consider a research career in comparative cognition.

Trends in Cognitive Sciences - David A. Washburn

Vauclair has a clear agenda: progress in this field is not to be made with fuzzy concepts, interest in what it is like to be a certain kind of animal, and assumptions of continuity where none exists; the experimental path that eschews issues of animal consciousness is the one to follow. Yet, those with a broader focus than Vauclair's, who welcome richer, more qualitative methods, will still feel comfortable with his presentation of experimental research. Without a polemicist's stick, beating the drum of human uniqueness and grossly underestimating the abilities of animals, he discusses animal cognition, often concluding that the glass is half-empty rather than half-full, but with an eye to reason, not dogma...Clear and very readable, this excellent volume will serve graduate and advanced students well in courses dealing with animal cognition, cognitive studies, primate studies, or philosophy of mind. But, it is best taken as an extended review of current research and essay arguing for methodological precision. Those outside of comparative psychology and cognitive research will be enlightened by reading this careful summation of experimental approaches to questions of animal cognition, along with Vauclair's arguments both for and against continuity between humans and other animals.

Contemporary Psychology - H.L. Miles

Vauclair emphasizes Piagetian studies and laudably presents its framework, chief findings and criticisms of these...Social cognition is considered functionally and experimentally, with appropriate attention to problems of methodology and interpretation (e.g., conditioning or concept-formation as explanatory mechanisms)...The especially illusive topics of imitation, self-recognition, and theory of mind are well treated, with due acknowledgement of controversies...In the final chapter, ambitiously titled Agenda for Comparative Studies, Vauclair attempts to criticize and reconcile different approaches, including Donald Griffin's animal thinking...The style of writing is straightforward; each chapter helpfully ends with a critical summary...This book gives a thoughtful introduction to comparative psychology.

Behavioural Processes

The book can be recommended to those seeking an overview of experimental studies of animal cognition that have been conducted in the last decade or so. Within the topics that are covered, the review of the relevant literature is on the whole thorough. Moreover, the conclusions that are drawn from experimental findings are fair and, when necessary, appropriately cautious.

Animal Behaviour - J.M. Pearce

Vauclair's well-referenced volume provides an excellent introduction to the scientific study of cognition in animals. The book traces the roots of modern comparative psychology and describes the typical laboratory methods for assessing mental representations of knowledge; it then discusses diverse topics such as animal applications of Piagetian concepts, tool use in animals, spatial and temporal representations, social cognition, animal communication, and theory of mind in a straightforward, easily comprehensible manner...An excellent resource.

Choice

A concise and very useful introduction to what the author identifies as 'modern comparative psychology'. Although the text is kept simple and accessible to the non-specialized reader, the treatment is rigorous and reliable.

Estudios de Psicología - Juan Carlos Gómez

Animal Cognition accounts for all the main study areas as well as some key experiments [in comparative psychology]. The treatment is economical, empirical, and overtly psychological...Straightforward chapters cover the cognitive implications of tool use, spatial orientation, communication, imitation, theory of mind and self-awareness. [Vauclair] has a knack for distilling out the essence of experiments and letting the reader decide. But the book is not devoid of theoretical context. A whole chapter is devoted to Piaget's 'experimental epistemology' and its application to comparative psychology and the book concludes with a sketch of semiotics and its application. Animal cognition has been in danger of becoming something of a bandwagon, with researchers nourishing their own theoretical idiosyncrasies, speculating on the basis of their own particular experiments on their own particular species. Since ideas come rather cheaply, Animal Cognition has wisely built its foundations on empirical ground.

Times Higher Education Supplement - Thomas Sambrook

This is an interesting and thought-provoking book that works well at several levels. It provides a good introduction to animal cognition for the reader new to the subject, and its crisp approach and fresh organisation of material means that experts, too, will have something to learn from it.

Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology

A concise and very useful introduction to what the author identifies as 'modern comparative psychology'. Although the text is kept simple and accessible to the non-specialized reader, the treatment is rigorous and reliable.
— Juan Carlos Gómez

Estudios de Psicologia

The book can be recommended to those seeking an overview of experimental studies of animal cognition that have been conducted in the last decade or so. Within the topics that are covered, the review of the relevant literature is on the whole thorough. Moreover, the conclusions that are drawn from experimental findings are fair and, when necessary, appropriately cautious.
— J.M. Pearce

Animal Behaviour

Vauclair has produced a state-of-the-field review that reveals contemporary comparative psychology to be vital, interesting and heuristically rich. Eschewing the many parametric investigations of classical and instrumental conditioning (leaving their summary to the excellent volumes already in print) and focusing instead on topics comparable to those typical of human cognition, Vauclair has provided a tool that should encourage a new generation of students to consider a research career in comparative cognition.
— David A. Washburn

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Vauclair has a clear agenda: progress in this field is not to be made with fuzzy concepts, interest in what it is like to be a certain kind of animal, and assumptions of continuity where none exists; the experimental path that eschews issues of animal consciousness is the one to follow. Yet, those with a broader focus than Vauclair's, who welcome richer, more qualitative methods, will still feel comfortable with his presentation of experimental research. Without a polemicist's stick, beating the drum of human uniqueness and grossly underestimating the abilities of animals, he discusses animal cognition, often concluding that the glass is half-empty rather than half-full, but with an eye to reason, not dogma...Clear and very readable, this excellent volume will serve graduate and advanced students well in courses dealing with animal cognition, cognitive studies, primate studies, or philosophy of mind. But, it is best taken as an extended review of current research and essay arguing for methodological precision. Those outside of comparative psychology and cognitive research will be enlightened by reading this careful summation of experimental approaches to questions of animal cognition, along with Vauclair's arguments both for and against continuity between humans and other animals.
— H.L. Miles

Contemporary Psychology

Animal Cognition accounts for all the main study areas as well as some key experiments [in comparative psychology]. The treatment is economical, empirical, and overtly psychological...Straightforward chapters cover the cognitive implications of tool use, spatial orientation, communication, imitation, theory of mind and self-awareness. [Vauclair] has a knack for distilling out the essence of experiments and letting the reader decide. But the book is not devoid of theoretical context. A whole chapter is devoted to Piaget's 'experimental epistemology' and its application to comparative psychology and the book concludes with a sketch of semiotics and its application. Animal cognition has been in danger of becoming something of a bandwagon, with researchers nourishing their own theoretical idiosyncrasies, speculating on the basis of their own particular experiments on their own particular species. Since ideas come rather cheaply, Animal Cognition has wisely built its foundations on empirical ground.
— Thomas Sambrook

Times Higher Education Supplement

A comprehensive overview of cognitive processes in animals focusing on experimental research with a diverse range of animals including bees, dogs, dolphins, mice, monkeys and Japanese macaques. Vauclair (Research Director, Laboratory for Cognitive Neuroscience, National Center for Scientific Research, France) presents novel discussions of animal cognitive development using Piagetian concepts, and reviews specific types of cognition exhibited in studies observing tool use and spatial representations, social relations and behaviors, communication, language, imitations, and self-recognition in animals. Throughout, the author argues that researchers should be less concerned with evolutionary or ecological explanations for cognition differences between species, and more concerned with the work required to increase general understanding. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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