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Fragaszy, D., Johnson-Pynn, J., Hirsh, E., & Brakke, K. (2003). Strategic navigation of two-dimensional alley mazes: comparing capuchin monkeys and chimpanzees. Anim. Cogn., 6(3), 149–160.
Abstract: Planning is an important component of cognition that contributes, for example, to efficient movement through space. In the current study we presented novel two-dimensional alley mazes to four chimpanzees and three capuchin monkeys to identify the nature and efficiency of planning in relation to varying task parameters. All the subjects solved more mazes without error than expected by chance, providing compelling evidence that both species planned their choices in some manner. The probability of making a correct choice on mazes designed to be more demanding and presented later in the testing series was higher than on earlier, simpler mazes (chimpanzees), or unchanged (capuchin monkeys), suggesting microdevelopment of strategic choice. Structural properties of the mazes affected both species' choices. Capuchin monkeys were less likely than chimpanzees to take a correct path that initially led away from the goal but that eventually led to the goal. Chimpanzees were more likely to make an error by passing a correct path than by turning onto a wrong path. Chimpanzees and one capuchin made more errors on choices farther in sequence from the goal. Each species corrected errors before running into the end of an alley in approximately 40% of cases. Together, these findings suggest nascent planning abilities in each species, and the prospect for significant development of strategic planning capabilities on tasks presenting multiple simultaneous or sequential spatial relations. The computerized maze paradigm appears well suited to investigate movement planning and spatial perception in human and nonhuman primates alike.
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Franks, N. R., & Richardson, T. (2006). Teaching in tandem-running ants. Nature, 439(7073), 153.
Abstract: The ant Temnothorax albipennis uses a technique known as tandem running to lead another ant from the nest to food--with signals between the two ants controlling both the speed and course of the run. Here we analyse the results of this communication and show that tandem running is an example of teaching, to our knowledge the first in a non-human animal, that involves bidirectional feedback between teacher and pupil. This behaviour indicates that it could be the value of information, rather than the constraint of brain size, that has influenced the evolution of teaching.
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Gentner, T. Q., Fenn, K. M., Margoliash, D., & Nusbaum, H. C. (2006). Recursive syntactic pattern learning by songbirds. Nature, 440(7088), 1204–1207.
Abstract: Humans regularly produce new utterances that are understood by other members of the same language community. Linguistic theories account for this ability through the use of syntactic rules (or generative grammars) that describe the acceptable structure of utterances. The recursive, hierarchical embedding of language units (for example, words or phrases within shorter sentences) that is part of the ability to construct new utterances minimally requires a 'context-free' grammar that is more complex than the 'finite-state' grammars thought sufficient to specify the structure of all non-human communication signals. Recent hypotheses make the central claim that the capacity for syntactic recursion forms the computational core of a uniquely human language faculty. Here we show that European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) accurately recognize acoustic patterns defined by a recursive, self-embedding, context-free grammar. They are also able to classify new patterns defined by the grammar and reliably exclude agrammatical patterns. Thus, the capacity to classify sequences from recursive, centre-embedded grammars is not uniquely human. This finding opens a new range of complex syntactic processing mechanisms to physiological investigation.
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Gibson, B. M., Shettleworth, S. J., & McDonald, R. J. (2001). Finding a goal on dry land and in the water: differential effects of disorientation on spatial learning. Behav. Brain. Res., 123(1), 103–111.
Abstract: Two previous studies, Martin et al. (J. Exp. Psychol. Anim. Behav. Process. 23 (1997) 183) and Dudchenko et al. (J. Exp. Psychol. Anim. Behav. Process. 23 (1997) 194), report that, compared to non-disoriented controls, rats disoriented before testing were disrupted in their ability to learn the location of a goal on a dry radial-arm maze task, but that both groups learned at the same rate in the Morris water maze. However, the radial-arm maze task was much more difficult than the water maze. In the current set of experiments, we examined the performance of control and disoriented rats on more comparable dry land and water maze tasks. Compared to non-disoriented rats, rats that were disoriented before testing were significantly impaired in locating a goal in a circular dry arena, but not a water tank. The results constrain theoretical explanations for the differential effects of disorientation on different spatial tasks.
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Gomez, J. - C. (2005). Species comparative studies and cognitive development. Trends. Cognit. Sci., 9(3), 118–125.
Abstract: The comparative study of infant development and animal cognition brings to cognitive science the promise of insights into the nature and origins of cognitive skills. In this article, I review a recent wave of comparative studies conducted with similar methodologies and similar theoretical frameworks on how two core components of human cognition--object permanence and gaze following--develop in different species. These comparative findings call for an integration of current competing accounts of developmental change. They further suggest that evolution has produced developmental devices capable at the same time of preserving core adaptive components, and opening themselves up to further adaptive change, not only in interaction with the external environment, but also in interaction with other co-developing cognitive systems.
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Gould, J. L. (2004). Animal cognition. Curr Biol, 14(10), R372–5.
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Grosenick, L., Clement, T. S., & Fernald, R. D. (2007). Fish can infer social rank by observation alone. Nature, 445(7126), 429–432.
Abstract: Transitive inference (TI) involves using known relationships to deduce unknown ones (for example, using A > B and B > C to infer A > C), and is thus essential to logical reasoning. First described as a developmental milestone in children, TI has since been reported in nonhuman primates, rats and birds. Still, how animals acquire and represent transitive relationships and why such abilities might have evolved remain open problems. Here we show that male fish (Astatotilapia burtoni) can successfully make inferences on a hierarchy implied by pairwise fights between rival males. These fish learned the implied hierarchy vicariously (as 'bystanders'), by watching fights between rivals arranged around them in separate tank units. Our findings show that fish use TI when trained on socially relevant stimuli, and that they can make such inferences by using indirect information alone. Further, these bystanders seem to have both spatial and featural representations related to rival abilities, which they can use to make correct inferences depending on what kind of information is available to them. Beyond extending TI to fish and experimentally demonstrating indirect TI learning in animals, these results indicate that a universal mechanism underlying TI is unlikely. Rather, animals probably use multiple domain-specific representations adapted to different social and ecological pressures that they encounter during the course of their natural lives.
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Hayashi, M., & Matsuzawa, T. (2003). Cognitive development in object manipulation by infant chimpanzees. Anim. Cogn., 6(4), 225–233.
Abstract: This study focuses on the development of spontaneous object manipulation in three infant chimpanzees during their first 2 years of life. The three infants were raised by their biological mothers who lived among a group of chimpanzees. A human tester conducted a series of cognitive tests in a triadic situation where mothers collaborated with the researcher during the testing of the infants. Four tasks were presented, taken from normative studies of cognitive development of Japanese infants: inserting objects into corresponding holes in a box, seriating nesting cups, inserting variously shaped objects into corresponding holes in a template, and stacking up wooden blocks. The mothers had already acquired skills to perform these manipulation tasks. The infants were free to observe the mothers' manipulative behavior from immediately after birth. We focused on object-object combinations that were made spontaneously by the infant chimpanzees, without providing food reinforcement for any specific behavior that the infants performed. The three main findings can be summarized as follows. First, there was precocious appearance of object-object combination in infant chimpanzees: the age of onset (8-11 months) was comparable to that in humans (around 10 months old). Second, object-object combinations in chimpanzees remained at a low frequency between 11 and 16 months, then increased dramatically at the age of approximately 1.5 years. At the same time, the accuracy of these object-object combinations also increased. Third, chimpanzee infants showed inserting behavior frequently and from an early age but they did not exhibit stacking behavior during their first 2 years of life, in clear contrast to human data.
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Hodgson, Z. G., & Healy, S. D. (2005). Preference for spatial cues in a non-storing songbird species. Anim. Cogn., 8(3), 211–214.
Abstract: Male mammals typically outperform their conspecific females on spatial tasks. A sex difference in cues used to solve the task could underlie this performance difference as spatial ability is reliant on appropriate cue use. Although comparative studies of memory in food-storing and non-storing birds have examined species differences in cue preference, few studies have investigated differences in cue use within a species. In this study, we used a one-trial associative food-finding task to test for sex differences in cue use in the great tit, Parus major. Birds were trained to locate a food reward hidden in a well covered by a coloured cloth. To determine whether the colour of the cloth or the location of the well was learned during training, the birds were presented with three wells in the test phase: one in the original location, but covered by a cloth of a novel colour, a second in a new location covered with the original cloth and a third in a new location covered by a differently coloured cloth. Both sexes preferentially visited the well in the training location rather than either alternative. As great tits prefer colour cues over spatial cues in one-trial associative conditioning tasks, cue preference appears to be related to the task type rather than being species dependent.
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Imura, T., & Tomonaga, M. (2003). Perception of depth from shading in infant chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes). Anim. Cogn., 6(4), 253–258.
Abstract: We investigated the ability to perceive depth from shading, one of the pictorial depth cues, in three chimpanzee infants aged 4-10 months old, using a preferential reaching task commonly used to study pictorial depth perception in human infants. The chimpanzee infants reached significantly more to three-dimensional toys than to pictures thereof and more to the three-dimensional convex than to the concave. Furthermore, two of the three infants reached significantly more to the photographic convex than to the photographic concave. These infants also looked longer at the photographic convex than the concave. Our results suggest that chimpanzees perceive, at least as early as the latter half of the first year of life, pictorial depth defined by shading information. Photographic convexes contain richer information about pictorial depth (e.g., attached shadow, cast shadow, highlighted area, and global difference in brightness) than simple computer-graphic graded patterns. These cues together might facilitate the infants' perception of depth from shading.
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