|
Sprigge, T. L. S. (2000). Darwinian Dominion: Animal Welfare and Human Interests: Lewis Petrinovich, Cambridge, Mass, London, England, MIT Press, 1999, ix + 431 pages, {pound}31.50 (hc). J. Med. Ethics, 26(5), 412–.
|
|
|
Adamo, S. A., Ehgoetz, K., Sangster, C., & Whitehorne, I. (2006). Signaling to the Enemy? Body Pattern Expression and Its Response to External Cues During Hunting in the Cuttlefish Sepia officinalis (Cephalopoda). Biol. Bull., 210(3), 192–200.
Abstract: Abstract. Cuttlefish can rapidly alter their appearance by using neurally controlled chromatophore organs. This ability may provide a window into their cognitive capacity. We test whether the changes in body pattern that occur during hunting depend on context. If they do, then it may be possible to use these changes to study cephalopod cognition while the animal is engaged in ecologically relevant tasks. We found consistent individual differences in the tendency of cuttlefish to hunt with the first two arms raised. We also found that cuttlefish usually darken their skin after they seize a prey item. This darkening is observed regardless of the identity of the prey (fish, crab, or shrimp), prey context (buried in sand, in a bare tank, or on top of a rock pile), or the presence of a sudden stimulus. The sudden stimulus was created by presenting an overhead model bird to the cuttlefish. The model induced components of the Deimatic Display, which is a form of antipredator behavior, suggesting that the model was perceived as a potential threat. Passing Cloud displays and the Darkening of the arms were significantly reduced after exposure to the model bird. The effect of a potential predator on body pattern expression during hunting suggests it may be possible to use these changes as a sensitive indicator of ecologically relevant learning. N1 -
|
|
|
Gentner, T. Q. (2004). Neural Systems for Individual Song Recognition in Adult Birds. Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci., 1016(1), 282–302.
Abstract: The songbird auditory system is an excellent model for neuroethological studies of the mechanisms that govern the perception and cognition of natural stimuli (i.e., song), and the translation of corresponding representations into natural behaviors. One common songbird behavior is the learned recognition of individual conspecific songs. This chapter summarizes the research effort to identify the brain regions and mechanisms mediating individual song recognition in European starlings, a species of songbird. The results of laboratory behavioral studies are reviewed, which show that when adult starlings learn to recognize other individual's songs, they do so by memorizing large sets of song elements, called motifs. Recent data from single neurons in the caudal medial portion of the mesopallium are then reviewed, showing that song recognition learning leads to explicit representation of acoustic features that correspond closely to specific motifs, but only to motifs in the songs that birds have learned to recognize. This suggests that the strength and tuning of high-level auditory object representations, of the sort that presumably underlie many forms of vocal communication, are shaped by each animal's unique experience.
|
|
|
Stich, K. P., & Winter, Y. (2006). Lack of generalization of object discrimination between spatial contexts by a bat. J. Exp. Biol., 209(23), 4802–4808.
Abstract: Discrimination and generalization are important elements of cognition in the daily lives of animals. Nectar-feeding bats detect flowers by olfaction and probably vision, but also use echolocation and echo-perception of flowers in immediate target surroundings. The echo received from an interference-rich flower corolla is a function of a bat's own relative position in space. This raises the question how easily a free-flying bat will generalize an echo stimulus from a learning situation to a new spatial context where differences in relative flight approach trajectories may lead to an unfamiliar spectral composition of the self-generated echoes. We trained free-flying Glossophaga soricina in echoacoustic discrimination in a two-alternative forced-choice (2-AFC) paradigm at location A. We then tested at location B for spontaneous transfer of discrimination ability. Bats did not spontaneously transfer the discrimination ability acquired at A to location B. This lack of spontaneous generalization may have been caused by factors of the underlying learning mechanisms. 2-AFC tasks may not be representative of the natural foraging behaviour of flower-visiting bats. In contrast to insect-eating bats that constantly evaluate the environment to detect unpredictable prey, the spatial stability of flowers may allow flower visitors to rely on spatial memory to guide foraging. The 2-AFC task requires the disregard (learned irrelevance) of salient spatial location cues that are different at each new location. In Glossophaga, a conjunction between spatial context and 2-AFC discrimination learning may have inhibited the transfer of learned irrelevance of spatial location in the 2-AFC task to new spatial locations. Alternatively, the bats may have learnt the second discrimination task completely anew, and were faster only because of an acquired learning set. We suggest a dissociation between 2-AFC task acquisition and novel object discrimination learning to resolve the issue.
|
|
|
Brembs, B., & Wiener, J. (2006). Context and occasion setting in Drosophila visual learning. Learn. Mem., 13(5), 618–628.
Abstract: In a permanently changing environment, it is by no means an easy task to distinguish potentially important events from negligible ones. Yet, to survive, every animal has to continuously face that challenge. How does the brain accomplish this feat? Building on previous work in Drosophila melanogaster visual learning, we have developed an experimental methodology in which combinations of visual stimuli (colors and patterns) can be arranged such that the same stimuli can either be directly predictive, indirectly predictive, or nonpredictive of punishment. Varying this relationship, we found that wild-type flies can establish different memory templates for the same contextual color cues. The colors can either leave no trace in the pattern memory template, leading to context-independent pattern memory (context generalization), or be learned as a higher-order cue indicating the nature of the pattern-heat contingency leading to context-dependent memory (occasion setting) or serve as a conditioned stimulus predicting the punishment directly (simple conditioning). In transgenic flies with compromised mushroom-body function, the sensitivity to these subtle variations is altered. Our methodology constitutes a new concept for designing learning experiments. Our findings suggest that the insect mushroom bodies stabilize visual memories against context changes and are not required for cognition-like higher-order learning.
|
|
|
Bickerton, D. (2000). Resolving Discontinuity: A Minimalist Distinction between Human and Non-human Minds. Integr. Comp. Biol., 40(6), 862–873.
Abstract: Our genotype is so similar to those of the African apes, and our last common ancestor with them so recent, that it seems impossible that human and non-human cognition should differ qualitatively. But the outputs of human cognition are unique in their limitless creativity and adaptability. Exaption resolves the apparent paradox. Assume that the power to create symbols emerges from stimulus-stimulus linkages and is latent in many animals, and that the structural side of language emerges from the argument structures inherent in the social calculus associated with reciprocal altruism. These adaptations confer the potential for language. However, creating complex messages requires uniquely long-lasting coherence of neural signals, which depends in turn on the large quantities of neurons unique to Homo. The only difference between human and non-human minds is that we can sustain longer and more complex trains of thought. All else (emotions, rational processes, even consciousness) could be exactly the same.
|
|
|
Delacour, J. (1997). Object Perception and Recognition: A Model for the Scientific Study of Consciousness. Theory Psychology, 7(2), 257–262.
Abstract: The main obstacles to the scientific study of consciousness are its subjectivity and its complexity. Object perception and recognition (OPR) can be a useful model in such a study because there is a remarkable agreement between the subjective and objective aspects of OPR; in addition, while OPR is somewhat simpler than other forms of cognition, it adequately represents one characteristic feature of consciousness: intentionality. It thus allows convergent studies of experimental psychology, artificial intelligence and biology, in both humans and animals. Recent advances in the neurophysiology of visual OPR in subhuman primates and its brain imaging in humans provide a vital thread to the neural basis of consciousness, especially of its integrative, unifying character.
|
|
|
Tomasello, M. (2001). Cultural Transmission: A View from Chimpanzees and Human Infants. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 32(2), 135–146.
Abstract: Human beings are biologically adapted for culture in ways that other primates are not, as evidenced most clearly by the fact that only human cultural traditions accumulate modifications over historical time (the ratchet effect). The key adaptation is one that enables individuals to understand other individuals as intentional agents like the self. This species-unique form of social cognition emerges in human ontogeny at around 1 year of age as infants begin to engage with other persons in various kinds of joint attentional activities involving gaze following, social referencing, and gestural communication. Young children's joint attentional skills then engender some uniquely powerful forms of cultural learning, enabling the acquisition of language, discourse skills, tool use practices, and many other conventional activities. These novel forms of cultural learning allow human beings to pool their cognitive resources both contemporaneously and over historical time in ways that are unique in the animal kingdom.
|
|
|
Kanazawa, S. (2004). Social sciences are branches of biology. Socioecon. Rev., 2(3), 371–390.
Abstract: Since biology is the study of living organisms, their behaviour and social systems, and since humans are living organisms, it is possible to suggest that social sciences (the study of human behaviour and social systems) are branches of biology and all social scientific theories should be consistent with known biological principles. To claim otherwise and to establish a separate science only for humans might be analogous to the establishment of hydrogenology, the study of hydrogen separate from and inconsistent with the rest of physics. Evolutionary psychology is the application of evolutionary biology to humans, and provides the most general (panspecific) explanations of human behaviour, cognitions, emotions and human social systems. Evolutionary psychology's recognition that humans are animals can explain some otherwise perplexing empirical puzzles in social sciences, such as why there is a wage penalty for motherhood but a wage reward for fatherhood, and why boys produce a greater wage reward for fathers than do girls. The General Social Survey data illustrate the evolutionary psychological argument that reproductive success is important for both men's and women's happiness, but money is only important for men's.
|
|
|
Bermú, & dez, J. é. (2007). Thinking Without Words: An Overview for Animal Ethics. The Journal of Ethics, 11, 319–335.
|
|