The fifty-seven original essays in this book provide a comprehensive overview of the interdisciplinary field of animal cognition. The contributors include cognitive ethologists, behavioral ecologists, experimental and developmental psychologists, behaviorists, philosophers, neuroscientists, computer scientists and modelers, field biologists, and others. The diversity of approaches is both philosophical and methodological, with contributors demonstrating various degrees of acceptance or disdain for such terms as "consciousness" and varying degrees of concern for laboratory experimentation versus naturalistic research. In addition to primates, particularly the nonhuman great apes, the animals discussed include antelopes, bees, dogs, dolphins, earthworms, fish, hyenas, parrots, prairie dogs, rats, ravens, sea lions, snakes, spiders, and squirrels. The topics include (but are not limited to) definitions of cognition, the role of anecdotes in the study of animal cognition, anthropomorphism, attention, perception, learning, memory, thinking, consciousness, intentionality, communication, planning, play, aggression, dominance, predation, recognition, assessment of self and others, social knowledge, empathy, conflict resolution, reproduction, parent-young interactions and caregiving, ecology, evolution, kin selection, and neuroethology.

These volumes represent the proceedings of NATO Advanced Study Institute on the topic of "Cognitive Processes and Spatial Orientation in Animal and Man" held at La-Baume-les-Aix, Aix-en-Provence, France, in June-July 1985. The motivation underlying this Institute stemmed from the recent advances and interest in the problems of spatial behavior. In Psychology, traditional S-R concepts were found to be unsatisfactorY for fully accounting for the complexity of spatial behavior. Coupled with the decline in such an approach, has been a resurgence of interest in cognitive types of concepts. In Ethology, investigators have begun to use more sophisticated methods for the study of homing and navigational behaviors. In the general area of Neuroscience, marked advances have been achieved in the understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying spatial behaviors. And finally, there has been a burgeoning interest and body of knowledge concerning the development of spatial behavior in humans. All of these factors combined to suggest the necessity of bringing together scientists working in these areas with the intent that such a meeting might lead to a cross-fertilization of the various areas. Possibly by providing a context in which members of the various disciplines could interact, it was felt that we might increase the likelihood of identifying those similarities and differences in the concepts and methods common to all groups. Such an identification could provide the basis for a subsequent interdisciplinary research effort.

Animal Cognition presents a lucid and comprehensive overview of cognitive processes in animals--bees and wasps, cats and dogs, dolphins and sea otters, pigeons, titmice, and chimpanzees--and offers a novel discussion of the ways in which Piagetian concepts may be used to develop models for the study of animal cognition.

This encyclopedia, representing one of the most multi-disciplinary areas of research, is a comprehensive examination of the key areas in animal cognition and behavior. It will serve as a complementary resource to the handbooks and journals that have emerged in the last decade on this topic, and will be a useful resource for student and researcher alike. With comprehensive coverage of this field, key concepts will be explored. These include social cognition, prey and predator detection, habitat selection, mating and parenting, development, genetics, physiology, memory, learning and perception. Attention is also given to animal-human co-evolution and interaction, and animal welfare. All entries are under the purview of acknowledged experts in the field.

Covering a wide range of key topics, from reasoning and communication to sensation and complex problem-solving, this engagingly-written text presents a comprehensive survey of contemporary research on animal cognition. Written for anyone with an interest in animal cognition, but without a background in animal behavior, it endeavors to explain what makes animals tick.

In 1978, Hulse, Fowler, and Honig published Cognitive Processes in Animal Behavior, an edited volume that was a landmark in the scientific study of animal intelligence. It liberated interest in complex learning and cognition from the grasp of the rigid theoretical structures of behaviorism that had prevailed during the previous four decades, and as a result, the field of comparative cognition was born. At long last, the study of the cognitive capacities of animals other than humans emerged as a worthwhile scientific enterprise. No less rigorous than purely behavioristic investigations, studies of animal intelligence spanned such wide-ranging topics as perception, spatial learning and memory, timing and numerical competence, categorization and conceptualization, problem solving, rule learning, and creativity. During the ensuing 25 years, the field of comparative cognition has thrived and grown, and public interest in it has risen to unprecedented levels. In their quest to understand the nature and mechanisms of intelligence, researchers have studied animals from bees to chimpanzees. Sessions on comparative cognition have become common at meetings of the major societies for psychology and neuroscience, and in fact, research in comparative cognition has increased so much that a separate society, the Comparative Cognition Society, has been formed to bring it together. This volume celebrates comparative cognition's first quarter century with a state-of-the-art collection of chapters covering the broad realm of the scientific study of animal intelligence. Comparative Cognition will be an invaluable resource for students and professional researchers in all areas of psychology and neuroscience.

Originally published in 1978, this book is a collection of chapters based on the papers read at a conference in 1976 at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The title starts with an introductory essay in which a metatheoretical and philosophical approach to the problem of cognition in animals is discussed. The succeeding chapters are arranged, topically, from basic associative processes to higher mental operations. Problems derived from models of association are discussed; as well as work on attention, memory, and the processing of stimulus information; other deal with time, spatial, and serial organization of behaviour, and concept formation.