Animal Learning and Cognition: An Introduction provides an up-to-date review of the principal findings from more than a century of research into animal intelligence. This new edition has been expanded to take account of the many exciting developments that have occurred over the last ten years.
The book opens with a historical survey of the methods that have been used to study animal intelligence, and follows by summarizing the contribution made by learning processes to intelligent behavior. Topics include Pavlovian and instrumental conditioning, discrimination learning, and categorization. The remainder of the book focuses on animal cognition and covers such topics as memory, navigation, social learning, language and communication, and knowledge representation. Expanded areas include extinction (to which an entire chapter is now devoted), navigation in insects, episodic memory in birds, imitation in birds and primates, and the debate about whether primates are aware of mental states in themselves and others. Issues raised throughout the book are reviewed in a concluding chapter that examines how intelligence is distributed throughout the animal kingdom.
The broad spectrum of topics covered in this book ensures that it will be of interest to students of psychology, biology, zoology, and neuroscience. Since very little background knowledge is required, the book will be of equal value to anyone simply interested in either animal intelligence, or the animal origins of human intelligence.
This textbook is accompanied by online instructor resources which are free of charge to departments who adopt this book as their text. They include chapter-by-chapter lecture slides, an interactive chapter-by-chapter multiple-choice question test bank, and multiple-choice questions in paper and pen format.
Preface. 1. The Study of Animal Intelligence. The Distribution of Intelligence. Defining Animal Intelligence. Why Study Animal Intelligence? Methods for Studying Animal Intelligence. Historical Background. 2. Associative Learning Conditioning Techniques. The Nature of Associative Learning. Stimulus-stimulus Learning. The Nature of us Representations. The Conditioned Response. Concluding Comment: The Reflexive Nature of the Conditioned Response. 3. The Conditions for Learning: Surprise and Attention. Part 1: Surprise and Conditioning. Conditioning with a Single CS. Conditioning with a Compound CS. Evaluation of the Rescorla-Wagner Model. Part 2: Attention and Conditioning Wagner's Theory. Stimulus Significance. The Pearce-Hall Theory. Concluding Comments. 4. Instrumental Conditioning. The Nature of Instrumental Learning. The Conditions of Learning. The Performance of Instrumental Behavior. The Law of Effect and Problem Solving. 5. Extinction. Extinction as Generalization Decrement. The Conditions for Extinction. Associative Changes During Extinction. Are Trials Important for Pavlovian Extinction? 6. Discrimination Learning. Theories of Discrimination Learning. Connectionist Models of Discrimination Learning. Metacognition and Discrimination Learning. 7. Category Formation. Examples of Categorization. Theories of Categorization. Abstract Categories Relationships as Categories. The Representation of Knowledge. 8. Short-term Retention. Methods of Study. Forgetting. Theoretical Interpretation. Serial Position Effects. Metamemory. 9. Long-term Retention. Capacity. Durability. Theoretical Interpretation. Episodic Memory. 10. Time, Number, and Serial Order. Time. Number. Serial order. Transitive Inference. Concluding Comments. 11. Navigation. Part 1: Short-distance Travel. Methods of Navigation. Part 2: Long-distance Travel. Navigational Cues. Homing. Migration. Concluding Comments. 12. Social Learning. Diet Selection and Foraging. Choosing a Mate. Fear of Predators. Copying Behavior: Mimicry. Copying Behavior: Imitation. Theory of Mind. Self-recognition. Concluding Comments. 13. Animal Communication and Language. Animal Communication. Communication and Language. Can an Ape Create a Sentence? Language Training with Other Species. The Requirements for Learning a Language. 14. The Distribution of Intelligence. Intelligence and Brain Size. The Null Hypothesis. Intelligence and Evolution. References.
