Comparative cognition: Beginning the second century of the study of animal intelligence.

Abstract

Comparative psychology has undergone many changes since its inception in Victorian England some 100 years ago. Gone are the amusing anecdotes of pet owners and amateur naturalists, replaced by the detailed observations of behavioral scientists made under carefully controlled conditions. Yet, many of the persistent problems in the comparative analysis of intelligence remain: Are the cognitive processes of animals like those of humans? Can researchers construct a phytogeny of intelligence? What is cognition without language? This article briefly reviews the history of the study of comparative cognition. It then discusses 2 of the most active and important areas of empirical inquiry-memory and conceptualization-to acquaint readers with contemporary research in the field. Given increased contact with the related areas of cognitive science, behavioral neuroscience, and behavioral ecology, comparative cognition should continue in its 2nd century to make significant contributions to the overall understanding of the principles of behavior. How familiar a scene it is. A learned and eloquent scientist gazes upward toward the distant heavens, sighs wistfully, and plaintively asks "Is there life beyond earth? Is that life intelli-gent? If so, can we communicate with it?" What a noble quest: to search out alien life and to interact with it. A quest not only noble but also generously funded by governmental agencies. Radio telescopes, orbiting satellites, and both staffed and unstaffed cosmic expeditions have been and will be constructed and undertaken to find extraterrestrial life-at great public expense and with much media fanfare. I wish not to demean these important efforts but rather to suggest that an equally challenging and probably more fruitful search for alien intelligence can take place-right here on earth. Thousands of species of animals inhabit this planet, many of them exhibiting notable craft, flexibility, and ingenuity in adapting to the numerous challenges of survival. The careful and scientific study of our planetmates may shed considerable light on the nature of intelligence, on the character of cognition without language, and on the very possibility of communication with extraterrestrial life-if it is ever found. Perhaps most important, comparing the intelligence of many species of animals may help us know better what it means to be human. Although the study of animal intelligence has been an ongoing concern of scientists for some 100 years-Romanes's (1883/ 1977) classic book, Animal Intelligence, was published in 1883-most people know very little about it. The present popularity of many nature programs on television plus the great publicity that several research projects on animal behavior have recently received suggest that now might be an opportune time to out

Integrating niche-related and general process approaches in the study of learning

“…An advantage of using informationprocessing labels from the study of human cognition is the encouragement to use the same procedures to study both human and non-human examples. For example, Wasserman (1993) and his students have extensively studied the memory and categorization capabilities of pigeons using procedures and models based on human experiments.…”

Matching visual stimuli on the basis of global and local features by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta)

“…Experimental investigation into the abilities of nonhuman animals to perceive and categorize complex stimuli has enjoyed a long history in comparative psychology (see reviews by Roitblat 1987;Wasserman 1993). In the current study, we addressed a very basic question.…”

Memory-basedsame-different conceptualization by pigeons

“…Later, we tested the birds with other lists of same and different items composed of completely novel pictures. Accuracy to the testing lists reliably exceeded chance levels, thus demonstrating same-different conceptualization by pigeons under conditions that, for the first time, (1) eliminated purely perceptual mechanisms of discrimination learning and transfer and (2) required memory-based processing of the experimental stimuli.The search for abstract conceptualization in nonhuman animals has been a protracted and arduous one that has spanned a full century of research in animal intelligence (Wasserman, 1993). Different methods of investigation and species of animals have been used in this search, with decidedly mixed results.…”