|
|
Shettleworth, S. J. (1998). Cognition, Evolution and Behaviour. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Abstract: Description
How do animals perceive the world, learn, remember, search for food or mates, and find their way around? Do any non-human animals count, imitate one another, use a language, or think as we do? What use is cognition in nature and how might it have evolved? Historically, research on such questions has been fragmented between psychology, where the emphasis has been on theoretical models and lab experiments, and biology, where studies focus on evolution and the adaptive use of perception, learning, and decision-making in the field.
Cognition, Evolution and the Study of Behavior integrates research from psychology, behavioral ecology, and ethology in a wide-ranging synthesis of theory and research about animal cognition in the broadest sense, from species-specific adaptations in fish to cognitive mapping in rats and honeybees to theories of mind for chimpanzees. As a major contribution to the emerging discipline of comparative cognition, the book is an invaluable resource for all students and researchers in psychology, zoology, behavioral neuroscience. It will also interest general readers curious about the details of how and why animals--including humans--process, retain, and use information as they do.
Reviews
“This book is a very comprehensive review of animal cognition. It differs from other texts on this topic in a number of ways, as outlined by Shettleworth in her preface and in the opening chapter. Essentially, Shettleworth wants to advocate an 'adaptationist or ecological approach to cognition'. In doing so, she brings together a wealth of data on animal cognition, studied from quite different theoretical viewpoints, such as cognitive ethology, animal learning theory, neuroscience, behavioural ecology and cognitive psychology. . . . Each chapter ends with a clear and useful summary, and helpful suggestions for further reading. The book's numerous illustrations, which are mostly tables or figures redrawn by Margaret Nelson, greatly add to its appeal. . . . [T]his is a marvellously rich, well-written and stimulating book. . . . I greatly enjoyed reading [and] recommend it highly to anyone interested in animal cognition, evolution and behaviour.”--Animal Behaviour
“Sara Shettleworth has probably written the most comprehensive study of the animal mind ever and therefore a fundamental textbook on 'comparative cognition'. She first gets consciousness out of the way: whether an animal is conscious or not is impossible to determine, since consciousness is a private, subjective phenomenon. We can study cognition, and certainly cognition lends credibility to the idea that at least some animals must be at least to some degree conscious, but experiments can only prove facts about cognition. She reviews the field of cognitive ethology from the beginning and then analyzes the main cognitive tasks from an information-processing perspective By the end of her review of cognitive faculties, it become apparent that, at least among vertebrates, there are no significant differences in learning, except for language. All vertebrates are capable of 'associative' learning What no other vertebrate seems to be capable of is 'syntax'.” -- Piero Scaruffi, Thymos.com
|
|
|
|
Shettleworth, S. J. (1978). Reinforcement and the organization of behavior in golden hamsters: Pavlovian conditioning with food and shock unconditioned stimuli. J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process, 4(2), 152–169.
Abstract: The effects of Pavlovian conditioned stimuli (CSs) for food or shock on a variety of behaviors of golden hamsters were observed in three experiments. The aim was to see whether previously reported differences among the behaviors produced by food reinforcement and punishment procedures could be accounted for by differential effects of Pavlovian conditioning on the behaviors. There was some correspondence between the behaviors observed to the CSs and the previously reported effects of instrumental training. However, the Pavlovian conditioned responses (CRs) alone would not have predicted the effects of instrumental training. Moreover, CRs depended to some extent on the context in which training and testing occurred. These findings, together with others in the literature, suggest that the results of Pavlovian conditioning procedures may not unambiguously predict what system of behaviors will be most readily modified by instrumental training with a given reinforcer.
|
|
|
|
Hampton, R. R., Healy, S. D., Shettleworth, S. J., & Kamil, A. C. (2002). Neuroecologists' are not made of straw. Trends. Cognit. Sci., 6(1), 6–7.
|
|
|
|
Krebs, J. R., Clayton, N. S., Hampton, R. R., & Shettleworth, S. J. (1995). Effects of photoperiod on food-storing and the hippocampus in birds. Neuroreport, 6(12), 1701–1704.
Abstract: Birds that store food have a relatively large hippocampus compared to non-storing species. The hippocampus shows seasonal differences in neurogenesis and volume in black-capped chikadees (Parus atricapillus) taken from the wild at different times of year. We compared hippocampal volumes in black-capped chickadees captured at the same time but differing in food-storing behaviour because of manipulations of photoperiod in the laboratory. Differences in food-storing behaviour were not accompanied by differences in the volume of the hippocampus. Hippocampal volumes also did not differ between two groups of a non-food-storing control species, house sparrows (Passer domesticus), exposed to the same conditions as the chickadees.
|
|
|
|
Shettleworth, S. J., & Juergensen, M. R. (1980). Reinforcement and the organization of behavior in golden hamsters: brain stimulation reinforcement for seven action patterns. J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process, 6(4), 352–375.
Abstract: Golden hamsters were reinforced with intracranial electrical stimulation of the lateral hypothalamus (ICS) for spending time engaging in one of seven topographically defined action patterns (APs). The stimulation used as reinforcer elicited hoarding and/or feeding and supported high rates of bar pressing. In Experiment 1, hamsters were reinforced successively for digging, open rearing, and face washing. Digging increased most in time spent, and face washing increased least. Experiments 2-5 examined these effects further and also showed that “scrabbling,” like digging, was performed a large proportion of the time, almost without interruption, for contingent ICS but that scratching the body with a hindleg and scent-marking showed relatively little effect of contingent ICS, the latter even in an environment that facilitated marking. In Experiment 6, naive hamsters received ICS not contingent on behavior every 30 sec (fixed-time 30-sec schedule). Terminal behaviors that developed on this schedule were APs that were easy to reinforce in the other experiments, but a facultative behavior, face washing, was one not so readily reinforced. Experiment 7 confirmed a novel prediction from Experiment 6--that wall rearing, a terminal AP, would be performed at a high level for contingent ICS. All together, the results point to both motivational factors and associative factors being involved in the considerable differences in performance among different reinforced activities.
|
|
|
|
Shettleworth, S. J., & Krebs, J. R. (1982). How marsh tits find their hoards: the roles of site preference and spatial memory. J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process, 8(4), 354–375.
Abstract: Marsh tits (Parus palustris) store single food items in scattered locations and recover them hours or days later. Some properties of the spatial memory involved were analyzed in two laboratory experiments. In the first, marsh tits were offered 97 sites for storing 12 seeds. They recovered a median of 65% of them 2-3 hr later, making only two errors per seed while doing so. Over trials, they used some sites more often than others, but during recovery they were more likely to visit a site of any preference value if they had stored a seed there that day than if they had not. Recovery performance was much worse if the experimenters moved the seeds between storage and recovery. A fixed search strategy that had some of the same average properties as the tits' search behavior also did worse than the real birds. In Experiment 2, any tendency to visit the same sites on successive daily tests in the aviary was placed in opposition to memory for storage sites by allowing the tits to store more seeds 2 hr after storing a first batch. They tended to avoid individual storage sites holding seeds from the first batch. When the tits searched for all the seeds 2 hr later, they tended to recover more seeds from the second batch than from the first, i.e., there was a recency effect.
|
|
|
|
Nevin, J. A., & Shettleworth, S. J. (1966). An analysis of contrast effects in multiple schedules. J Exp Anal Behav, 9(4), 305–315.
|
|
|
|
Sole, L. M., Shettleworth, S. J., & Bennett, P. J. (2003). Uncertainty in pigeons. Psychon Bull Rev, 10(3), 738–745.
Abstract: Pigeons classified a display of illuminated pixels on a touchscreen as sparse or dense. Correct responses were reinforced with six food pellets; incorrect responses were unreinforced. On some trials an uncertain response option was available. Pecking it was always reinforced with an intermediate number of pellets. Like monkeys and people in related experiments, the birds chose the uncertain response most often when the stimulus presented was difficult to classify correctly, but in other respects their behavior was not functionally similar to human behavior based on conscious uncertainty or to the behavior of monkeys in comparable experiments. Our data were well described by a signal detection model that assumed that the birds were maximizing perceived reward in a consistent way across all the experimental conditions.
|
|
|
|
Shettleworth, S. J. (2000). Cognitive ecology: field or label? Trends. Ecol. Evol, 15(4), 161.
|
|
|
|
Reid, P. J., & Shettleworth, S. J. (1992). Detection of cryptic prey: search image or search rate? J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process, 18(3), 273–286.
Abstract: Animals' improvement in capturing cryptic prey with experience has long been attributed to a perceptual mechanism, the specific search image. Detection could also be improved by adjusting rate of search. In a series of studies using both naturalistic and operant search tasks, pigeons searched for wheat, dyed to produce 1 conspicuous and 2 equally cryptic prey types. Contrary to the predictions of the search-rate hypothesis, pigeons given a choice between the 2 cryptic types took the type experienced most recently. However, experience with 1 cryptic type improved accuracy on the other cryptic type, a result inconsistent with a search image specific to 1 prey type. Search image may better be thought of as priming of attention to those features of the prey type that best distinguish the prey from the background.
|
|
