Related Research Articles
Comparative psychology refers to the scientific study of the behavior and mental processes of non-human animals, especially as these relate to the phylogenetic history, adaptive significance, and development of behavior. Research in this area addresses many different issues, uses many different methods and explores the behavior of many different species from insects to primates.
Animal cognition encompasses the mental capacities of non-human animals including insect cognition. The study of animal conditioning and learning used in this field was developed from comparative psychology. It has also been strongly influenced by research in ethology, behavioral ecology, and evolutionary psychology; the alternative name cognitive ethology is sometimes used. Many behaviors associated with the term animal intelligence are also subsumed within animal cognition.
The Psychonomic Society is one of the primary societies for general scientific experimental psychology in the United States. It is open to international researchers, and almost 40% of members are based outside of North America. Although open to all areas of experimental and cognitive psychology, its members typically study areas such as learning, memory, attention, motivation, perception, categorization, decision making, and psycholinguistics. Its name is taken from the word psychonomics, meaning "the science of the laws of the mind".
The difficulty of defining or measuring intelligence in non-human animals makes the subject difficult to study scientifically in birds. In general, birds have relatively large brains compared to their head size. The visual and auditory senses are well developed in most species, though the tactile and olfactory senses are well realized only in a few groups. Birds communicate using visual signals as well as through the use of calls and song. The testing of intelligence in birds is therefore usually based on studying responses to sensory stimuli.
Comparative cognition is the comparative study of the mechanisms and origins of cognition in various species, and is sometimes seen as more general than, or similar to, comparative psychology. From a biological point of view, work is being done on the brains of fruit flies that should yield techniques precise enough to allow an understanding of the workings of the human brain on a scale appreciative of individual groups of neurons rather than the more regional scale previously used. Similarly, gene activity in the human brain is better understood through examination of the brains of mice by the Seattle-based Allen Institute for Brain Science, yielding the freely available Allen Brain Atlas. This type of study is related to comparative cognition, but better classified as one of comparative genomics. Increasing emphasis in psychology and ethology on the biological aspects of perception and behavior is bridging the gap between genomics and behavioral analysis.
Nora S. Newcombe is the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Psychology and the James H. Glackin Distinguished Faculty Fellow at Temple University. She is a Canadian-American researcher in cognitive development, cognitive psychology and cognitive science, working on the development of spatial thinking and reasoning and on the development of episodic memory. She was the principal investigator of the Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center, one of six NSF-funded Science of Learning Centers.
Sara J. Shettleworth is an American-born, Canadian experimental psychologist and zoologist. Her research focuses on animal cognition. She is professor emerita of psychology and ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Toronto.
Ludwig Huber is an Austrian zoologist and a comparative cognitive biologist cognitive biologist at the Messerli Research Institute at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, where he is co-founder head of the Unit of Comparative Cognition. His research is focused on the experimental and comparative study of animal cognition, and he has worked with a wide variety of species, including pigeons, dogs, kea, and marmosets.
Alejandro "Alex" Kacelnik, FRS is an Argentine-British zoologist, professor of behavioural ecology at Oxford University and E.P. Abraham Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford. Kacelnik heads the Behavioural Ecology Research Group at Oxford. The author of more than 200 peer reviewed publications, his research focuses on the evolution of behaviour and mathematical modelling. His work uses an interdisciplinary approach, combining data and methods from zoology, psychology and economic theory. In 2011 Kacelnik was honoured by the Comparative Cognition Society for his contributions to the field of animal cognition. He has also received the Cogito Prize for interdisciplinary research linking the natural and social sciences, shared with Professor Ernst Fehr of the University of Zurich, the de Robertis Medal of the Argentinian Society of Neurosciences, and the Raíces ("Roots") Prize for contributions to international collaborations between Argentinian and other scientists.
Alan C. Kamil is an American experimental psychologist. He is the Director, School of Biological Sciences and George Holmes Professor of Biological Sciences and Psychology at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Kamil's work focusses on the evolution of memory and adaptive specializations of learning in many animal species, especially the Clark's nutcracker and other birds. Kamil has published peer reviewed articles on both theoretical aspects of comparative psychology and animal cognition, and on empirical studies of animal learning and memory. In 2013 Kamil was honoured by the Comparative Cognition Society for his contributions to the study of animal cognition.
Cognitive biology is an emerging science that regards natural cognition as a biological function. It is based on the theoretical assumption that every organism—whether a single cell or multicellular—is continually engaged in systematic acts of cognition coupled with intentional behaviors, i.e., a sensory-motor coupling. That is to say, if an organism can sense stimuli in its environment and respond accordingly, it is cognitive. Any explanation of how natural cognition may manifest in an organism is constrained by the biological conditions in which its genes survive from one generation to the next. And since by Darwinian theory the species of every organism is evolving from a common root, three further elements of cognitive biology are required: (i) the study of cognition in one species of organism is useful, through contrast and comparison, to the study of another species’ cognitive abilities; (ii) it is useful to proceed from organisms with simpler to those with more complex cognitive systems, and (iii) the greater the number and variety of species studied in this regard, the more we understand the nature of cognition.
Edward A. ('Ed') Wasserman is a professor of psychology at the University of Iowa. His research focusses on comparing cognitive processes in human and non-human animals. Wasserman has over 250 publications in peer reviewed academic journals. In 2015 Wasserman was honoured by the Comparative Cognition Society for his contributions to the study of animal cognition.
Thomas R. Zentall is a professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky. His research focusses on learning and memory in non-human animals. A former president of both the Midwestern Psychological Association and the Eastern Psychological Association, Zentall has over 300 publications in peer reviewed journals. In 2014 Zentall was honoured by the Comparative Cognition Society for his contributions to the study of animal cognition.
Pain is an aversive sensation and feeling associated with actual, or potential, tissue damage. It is widely accepted by a broad spectrum of scientists and philosophers that non-human animals can perceive pain, including pain in amphibians.
Karen Hollis is an American professor of psychology and education at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley Massachusetts. Hollis's research focusses on an evolutionary approach to learning and cognition in non human animals. She served as the head of the American Psychological Association's sixth division from 2006-2007 and the third division (experimental psychology] from 2010-2011. Hollis was the first woman to head the third division. She has served on the editorial boards of many journals, including Animal Behaviour, Animal Learning and Behavior and the Journal of Comparative Psychology.
Gisela Kaplan is an Australian ethologist who primarily specialises in ornithology and primatology. She is a professor emeritus in animal behaviour at the University of New England, Australia, and also honorary professor of the Queensland Brain Institute.
Insect cognition describes the mental capacities and study of those capacities in insects. The field developed from comparative psychology where early studies focused more on animal behavior. Researchers have examined insect cognition in bees, fruit flies, and wasps.
Elizabeth Adkins-Regan is an American comparative behavioral neuroendocrinologist best known for her research on the hormonal and neural mechanisms of reproductive behavior and sexual differentiation in birds. She is currently a professor emeritus in the Department of Psychology and the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at Cornell University.
William D. Timberlake was a psychologist and animal behavior scientist. His work included behavioral economics, contrast effects, spatial cognition, adjunctive behavior, time horizons, and circadian entrainment of feeding and drug use. He is best known for his theoretical work: Behavior Systems Theory and the Disequilibrium Theory of reinforcement.
Susan Denise Healy FRSE professor of biology at the University of St. Andrews, specialist in cognitive evolution and behavioural studies of birds and understanding the neurological basis of this. She was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2021.
References
- ↑ CCS | CCS Home Page
- 1 2 CCS | CCS Fall Meeting 2013
- ↑ CCS | Founding Members
- ↑ "CCS | Leadership". comparativecognition.org. Retrieved 2017-12-09.
- ↑ CCS | CO3 2013
- ↑ The Oxford handbook of comparative cognition. Zentall, Thomas R., Wasserman, Edward A. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2012. ISBN 9780195392661. OCLC 707628145.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link) - ↑ "comparativecognition". YouTube. Retrieved 2017-12-09.
- ↑ CCS | CCS Research Award
- ↑ Behavioural Processes | Vol 93, Pgs 1-166, (February, 2013) | ScienceDirect.com
- ↑ CCBR Main Page
- ↑ "Comparative Cognition & Behavior Reviews". comparative-cognition-and-behavior-reviews.org. Retrieved 2017-12-09.
- ↑ Avian Visual Cognition
- ↑ Animal Spatial Cognition
- ↑ "co3 - comparativecognition". sites.google.com. Retrieved 2017-12-09.
