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Gould, J. L. (2004). Animal cognition. Curr Biol, 14(10), R372–5.
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Griffin, D. R., & Speck, G. B. (2004). New evidence of animal consciousness. Anim. Cogn., 7(1), 5–18.
Abstract: This paper reviews evidence that increases the probability that many animals experience at least simple levels of consciousness. First, the search for neural correlates of consciousness has not found any consciousness-producing structure or process that is limited to human brains. Second, appropriate responses to novel challenges for which the animal has not been prepared by genetic programming or previous experience provide suggestive evidence of animal consciousness because such versatility is most effectively organized by conscious thinking. For example, certain types of classical conditioning require awareness of the learned contingency in human subjects, suggesting comparable awareness in similarly conditioned animals. Other significant examples of versatile behavior suggestive of conscious thinking are scrub jays that exhibit all the objective attributes of episodic memory, evidence that monkeys sometimes know what they know, creative tool-making by crows, and recent interpretation of goal-directed behavior of rats as requiring simple nonreflexive consciousness. Third, animal communication often reports subjective experiences. Apes have demonstrated increased ability to use gestures or keyboard symbols to make requests and answer questions; and parrots have refined their ability to use the imitation of human words to ask for things they want and answer moderately complex questions. New data have demonstrated increased flexibility in the gestural communication of swarming honey bees that leads to vitally important group decisions as to which cavity a swarm should select as its new home. Although no single piece of evidence provides absolute proof of consciousness, this accumulation of strongly suggestive evidence increases significantly the likelihood that some animals experience at least simple conscious thoughts and feelings. The next challenge for cognitive ethologists is to investigate for particular animals the content of their awareness and what life is actually like, for them.
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Hampton, R. R., Zivin, A., & Murray, E. A. (2004). Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) discriminate between knowing and not knowing and collect information as needed before acting. Anim. Cogn., 7(4), 239–246.
Abstract: Humans use memory awareness to determine whether relevant knowledge is available before acting, as when we determine whether we know a phone number before dialing. Such metacognition, or thinking about thinking, can improve selection of appropriate behavior. We investigated whether rhesus monkeys ( Macaca mulatta) are capable of a simple form of metacognitive access to the contents of short-term memory. Monkeys chose among four opaque tubes, one of which concealed food. The tube containing the reward varied randomly from trial to trial. On half the trials the monkeys observed the experimenter baiting the tube, whereas on the remaining trials their view of the baiting was blocked. On each trial, monkeys were allowed a single chance to select the tube containing the reward. During the choice period the monkeys had the opportunity to look down the length of each tube, to determine if it contained food. When they knew the location of the reward, most monkeys chose without looking. In contrast, when ignorant, monkeys often made the effort required to look, thereby learning the location of the reward before choosing. Looking improved accuracy on trials on which monkeys had not observed the baiting. The difference in looking behavior between trials on which the monkeys knew, and trials on which they were ignorant, suggests that rhesus monkeys discriminate between knowing and not knowing. This result extends similar observations made of children and apes to a species of Old World monkey, suggesting that the underlying cognitive capacities may be widely distributed among primates.
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Hart, D., & Whitlow, J. W. J. (1995). The experience of self in the bottlenose dolphin. Conscious Cogn, 4(2), 244–247.
Abstract: Marten and Psarakos have presented some evidence which suggests that objective self-awareness and possibly representations of self may characterize the dolphins' experience of self. Their research demonstrates the possibility of similarities in the sense of self between primate species and dolphins, although whether dolphins have subjective self-awareness, personal memories, and theories of self--all important facets of the sense of self in humans--was not examined. Clearly, even this limited evidence was difficult to achieve; the difficulties in adapting methods and coding behavior are quite apparent in their report. Future progress, however, may depend upon clarification of what are the necessary components for a sense of self and an explication of how these might be reflected in dolphin behavior. We are mindful of the authors' point (pp. 219 and 220) that the dolphin lives more in an acoustic than a visual environment. Thus, while tasks relying upon vision may reveal the presence or absence of the sense of self in primates, it might well be the case that in dolphins self-related experiences might be better revealed in auditory tasks. But then, what is the nature of human self-awareness in terms of audition? While both conceptual and methodological hurdles remain, Marten and Psarakos have demonstrated that important questions can be asked about the minds and phenomenal worlds of nonanthropoid species.
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Hostetter, A. B., Russell, J. L., Freeman, H., & Hopkins, W. D. (2007). Now you see me, now you don't: evidence that chimpanzees understand the role of the eyes in attention. Anim. Cogn., 10(1), 55–62.
Abstract: Chimpanzees appear to understand something about the attentional states of others; in the present experiment, we investigated whether they understand that the attentional state of a human is based on eye gaze. In all, 116 adult chimpanzees were offered food by an experimenter who engaged in one of the four experimental manipulations: eyes closed, eyes open, hand over eyes, and hand over mouth. The communicative behavior of the chimpanzees was observed. More visible behaviors were produced when the experimenter's eyes were visible than when the experimenter's eyes were not visible. More vocalizations were produced when the experimenter's eyes were closed than when they were open, but there were no differences in other attention getting behaviors. There was no effect of age or rearing history. The results suggest that chimpanzees use the presence of the eyes as a cue that their visual gestures will be effective.
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Hoy, R. (2005). Animal awareness: The (un)binding of multisensory cues in decision making by animals. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A., 102(7), 2267–2268.
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Klein, E. D., Bhatt, R. S., & Zentall, T. R. (2005). Contrast and the justification of effort. Psychon Bull Rev, 12(2), 335–339.
Abstract: When humans are asked to evaluate rewards or outcomes that follow unpleasant (e.g., high-effort) events, they often assign higher value to that reward. This phenomenon has been referred to as cognitive dissonance or justification of effort. There is now evidence that a similar phenomenon can be found in nonhuman animals. When demonstrated in animals, however, it has been attributed to contrast between the unpleasant high effort and the conditioned stimulus for food. In the present experiment, we asked whether an analogous effect could be found in humans under conditions similar to those found in animals. Adult humans were trained to discriminate between shapes that followed a high-effort versus a low-effort response. In test, participants were found to prefer shapes that followed the high-effort response in training. These results suggest the possibility that contrast effects of the sort extensively studied in animals may play a role in cognitive dissonance and other related phenomena in humans.
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Lomas, C. A., Piggins, D., & Phillips, C. J. C. (1998). Visual awareness. Appl. Anim. Behav. Sci., 57(3-4), 247–257.
Abstract: Awareness varies between different species and humans can never truly appreciate what it is like to be another individual, either of the same species or another. Visual perceptual faculties provide some evidence of the extent to which domesticated animals derive information from objects in their environment, whilst changes in behaviour resulting from different visual stimuli can also provide valuable information on the state of visual awareness. Extensive processing of potentially visual information must occur in all domesticated species, but is much less well understood than purely sensory based information. For example, sensory aspects of colour vision are reasonably well understood, but the role of wavelength variables in an animal's cognition and its colour experience is not clear. Considerable use is made of diurnal changes in photoperiod to synchronise endogenous rhythms to particular times of the day and the year. Variation in light intensity in natural images is also important for social reasons for animals to be able to discriminate between, e.g., different faces, but little is known about intensity preferences or the effects of intensity on behaviour. It appears likely that in many cases visual stimuli represent some of the most important influences on an animal's awareness, either alone or in combination with, e.g., olfactory cues. However, a much greater understanding of their processing is required before we can make useful deductions about visual awareness in domesticated animals.
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Loveland, K. A. (1995). Self-recognition in the bottlenose dolphin: ecological considerations. Conscious Cogn, 4(2), 254–257.
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Manns, J. R., Clark, R. E., & Squire, L. R. (2002). Standard delay eyeblink classical conditioning is independent of awareness. J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process, 28(1), 32–37.
Abstract: P. F. Lovibond and D. R. Shanks (2002) suggested that all forms of classical conditioning depend on awareness of the stimulus contingencies. This article considers the available data for eyeblink classical conditioning, including data from 2 studies (R. E. Clark, J. R. Manns, & L. R. Squire, 2001; J. R. Manns, R. E. Clark, & L. R. Squire, 2001) that were completed too recently to have been considered in their review. In addition, in response to questions raised by P. F. Lovibond and D. R. Shanks, 2 new analyses of data are presented from studies published previously. The available data from humans and experimental animals provide strong evidence that delay eyeblink classical conditioning (but not trace eyeblink classical conditioning) can be acquired and retained independently of the forebrain and independently of awareness. This conclusion applies to standard conditioning paradigms; for example, to single-cue delay conditioning when a tone is used as the conditioned stimulus (CS) and to differential delay conditioning when the positive and negative conditioned stimuli (CS+ and CS-) are a tone and white noise.
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