Allen, C. (1998). Assessing animal cognition: ethological and philosophical perspectives. J. Anim Sci., 76(1), 42–47.
Abstract: Developments in the scientific and philosophical study of animal cognition and mentality are of great importance to animal scientists who face continued public scrutiny of the treatment of animals in research and agriculture. Because beliefs about animal minds, animal cognition, and animal consciousness underlie many people's views about the ethical treatment of nonhuman animals, it has become increasingly difficult for animal scientists to avoid these issues. Animal scientists may learn from ethologists who study animal cognition and mentality from an evolutionary and comparative perspective and who are at the forefront of the development of naturalistic and laboratory techniques of observation and experimentation that are capable of revealing the cognitive and mental properties of nonhuman animals. Despite growing acceptance of the ethological study of animal cognition, there are critics who dispute the scientific validity of the field, especially when the topic is animal consciousness. Here, a proper understanding of developments in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of science can help to place cognitive studies on a firm methodological and philosophical foundation. Ultimately, this is an interdisciplinary task, involving scientists and philosophers. Animal scientists are well-positioned to contribute to the study of animal cognition because they typically have access to a large pool of potential research subjects whose habitats are more controlled than in most field studies while being more natural than most laboratory psychology experiments. Despite some formidable questions remaining for analysis, the prospects for progress in assessing animal cognition are bright.
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Nissani, M. (2006). Do Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) apply causal reasoning to tool-use tasks? J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process, 32(1), 91–96.
Abstract: Two experiments addressed contradictory claims about causal reasoning in elephants. In Experiment 1, 4 Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) were pretrained to remove a lid from the top of a bucket and retrieve a food reward. Subsequently, in the first 5 critical trials, when the lid was placed alongside the bucket and no longer obstructed access to the reward, each elephant continued to remove the lid before retrieving the reward. Experiment 2, which involved 11 additional elephants and variations of the original design, yielded similarly counterintuitive observations. Although the results are open to alternative interpretations, they appear more consistent with associative learning than with causal reasoning. Future applications of Fabrean methodologies (J. H. Fabre, 1915) to animal cognition are proposed.
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Katz, J. S., & Wright, A. A. (2006). Same/different abstract-concept learning by pigeons. J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process, 32(1), 80–86.
Abstract: Eight pigeons were trained and tested in a simultaneous same/different task. After pecking an upper picture, they pecked a lower picture to indicate same or a white rectangle to indicate different. Increases in the training set size from 8 to 1,024 items produced improved transfer from 51.3% to 84.6%. This is the first evidence that pigeons can perform a two-item same/different task as accurately with novel items as training items and both above 80% correct. Fixed-set control groups ruled out training time or transfer testing as producing the high level of abstract-concept learning. Comparisons with similar experiments with rhesus and capuchin monkeys showed that the ability to learn the same/different abstract concept was similar but that pigeons require more training exemplars.
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Vlamings, P. H. J. M., Uher, J., & Call, J. (2006). How the great apes (Pan troglodytes, Pongo pygmaeus, Pan paniscus, and Gorilla gorilla) perform on the reversed contingency task: the effects of food quantity and food visibility. J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process, 32(1), 60–70.
Abstract: S. T. Boysen and G. G. Berntson (1995) found that chimpanzees performed poorly on a reversed contingency task in which they had to point to the smaller of 2 food quantities to acquire the larger quantity. The authors compared the performance of 4 great ape species (Pan troglodytes, Pongo pygmaeus, Pan paniscus, and Gorilla gorilla) on the reversed contingency task while manipulating food quantity (0-4 or 1-4) and food visibility (visible pairs or covered pairs). Results showed no systematic species differences but large individual differences. Some individuals of each species were able to solve the reversed contingency task. Both quantity and visibility of the food items had a significant effect on performance. Subjects performed better when the disparity between quantities was smaller and the quantities were not directly visible.
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Cerutti, D. T., & Staddon, J. E. R. (2004). Immediacy versus anticipated delay in the time-left experiment: a test of the cognitive hypothesis. J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process, 30(1), 45–57.
Abstract: In the time-left experiment (J. Gibbon & R. M. Church, 1981), animals are said to compare an expectation of a fixed delay to food, for one choice, with a decreasing delay expectation for the other, mentally representing both upcoming time to food and the difference between current time and upcoming time (the cognitive hypothesis). The results of 2 experiments support a simpler view: that animals choose according to the immediacies of reinforcement for each response at a time signaled by available time markers (the temporal control hypothesis). It is not necessary to assume that animals can either represent or subtract representations of times to food to explain the results of the time-left experiment.
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Cavoto, K. K., & Cook, R. G. (2001). Cognitive precedence for local information in hierarchical stimulus processing by pigeons. J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process, 27(1), 3–16.
Abstract: Four experiments investigated the processing of hierarchical stimuli by pigeons. Using a 4 alternative divided-attention task, 4 pigeons were food-reinforced for accurately identifying letters arranged as either hierarchical global- or local-relevant stimuli or as size-matched filled stimuli. Experiment 1 found that task acquisition was faster with local-relevant than global-relevant stimuli. This difference was not due to letter size. Experiment 2 demonstrated successful transfer to a novel irrelevant letter configuration. Experiments 3 and 4 tested pigeons' responses to conflict probe stimuli composed of equally discriminable relevant letters at each level. These tests revealed that all of the pigeons showed a cognitive precedence for local information early in processing, with the pigeons using different cues to initiate the processing of global information. This local advantage contrasts with previously reported results for humans and pigeons but is similar to that reported for nonhuman primates. Alternatives attempting to reconcile these contrasting comparative results are considered.
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Brannon, E. M., & Terrace, H. S. (2000). Representation of the numerosities 1-9 by rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta). J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process, 26(1), 31–49.
Abstract: Three rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) were trained to respond to exemplars of 1, 2, 3, and 4 in an ascending, descending, or a nonmonotonic numerical order (1-->2-->3-->4, 4-->3-->2--1, 3-->1-->4-->2). The monkeys were then tested on their ability to order pairs of the novel numerosities 5-9. In Experiment 1, all 3 monkeys ordered novel exemplars of the numerosities 1-4 in ascending or descending order. The attempt to train a nonmonotonic order (3-->1-->4-->2) failed. In Experiment 2A, the 2 monkeys who learned the ascending numerical rule ordered pairs of the novel numerosities 5-9 on unreinforced trials. The monkey who learned the descending numerical rule failed to extrapolate the descending rule to new numerosities. In Experiment 2B all 3 monkeys ordered novel exemplars of pairs of the numerosities 5-9. Accuracy and latency of responding revealed distance and magnitude effects analogous to previous findings with human participants (R. S. Moyer & T. K. Landaeur, 1967). Collectively these studies show that monkeys represent the numerosities 1-9 on at least an ordinal scale.
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Crystal, J. D. (1999). Systematic nonlinearities in the perception of temporal intervals. J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process, 25(1), 3–17.
Abstract: Rats judged time intervals in a choice procedure in which accuracy was maintained at approximately 75% correct. Sensitivity to time (d') was approximately constant for short durations 2.0-32.0 s with 1.0- or 2.0-s spacing between intervals (n = 5 in each group, Experiment 1), 2.0-50.0 s with 2.0-s spacing (n = 2, Experiment 1), and 0.1-2.0 s with 0.1- or 0.2-s spacing (n = 6 in each group, Experiment 2). However, systematic departures from average sensitivity were observed, with local maxima in sensitivity at approximately 0.3, 1.2, 10.0, 24.0, and 36.0 s. Such systematic departures from an approximately constant d' are predicted by a connectionist theory of time with multiple oscillators and may require a modification of the linear timing hypothesis of scalar timing theory.
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Boysen, S. T., Bernston, G. G., Hannan, M. B., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1996). Quantity-based interference and symbolic representations in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process, 22(1), 76–86.
Abstract: Five chimpanzees with training in counting and numerical skills selected between 2 arrays of different amounts of candy or 2 Arabic numerals. A reversed reinforcement contingency was in effect, in which the selected array was removed and the subject received the nonselected candies (or the number of candies represented by the nonselected Arabic numeral). Animals were unable to maximize reward by selecting the smaller array when candies were used as array elements. When Arabic numerals were substituted for the candy arrays, all animals showed an immediate shift to a more optimal response strategy of selecting the smaller numeral, thereby receiving the larger reward. Results suggest that a response disposition to the high-incentive candy stimuli introduced a powerful interference effect on performance, which was effectively overridden by the use of symbolic representations.
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Fetterman, J. G. (1996). Dimensions of stimulus complexity. J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process, 22(1), 3–18.
Abstract: Animal learning research has increasingly used complex stimuli that approximate natural objects, events, and locations, a trend that has accompanied a resurgence of interest in the role of cognitive factors in learning. Accounts of complex stimulus control have focused mainly on cognitive mechanisms and largely ignored the contribution of stimulus information to perception and memory for complex events. It is argued here that research on animal learning stands to benefit from a more detailed consideration of the stimulus and that James Gibson's stimulus-centered theory of perception serves as a useful framework for analyses of complex stimuli. Several issues in the field of animal learning and cognition are considered from the Gibsonian perspective on stimuli, including the fundamental problem of defining the effective stimulus.
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