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Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between the natural and social sciences. Psychologists seek an understanding of the emergent properties of brains, linking the discipline to neuroscience. As social scientists, psychologists aim to understand the behavior of individuals and groups. Ψ (psi), the first letter of the Greek word psyche from which the term psychology is derived, is commonly associated with the science.
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.
Margaret Floy Washburn, leading American psychologist in the early 20th century, was best known for her experimental work in animal behavior and motor theory development. She was the first woman to be granted a PhD in psychology (1894); the second woman, after Mary Whiton Calkins, to serve as an APA President (1921); and the first woman elected to the Society of Experimental Psychologists. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Washburn as the 88th most cited psychologist of the 20th century, tied with John Garcia, James J. Gibson, David Rumelhart, Louis Leon Thurstone, and Robert S. Woodworth.
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.
Robert Allen Bjork is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on human learning and memory and on the implications of the science of learning for instruction and training. He is the creator of the directed forgetting paradigm. He was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2022.
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.
Anthony R. Dickinson is a British academic, neuroscientist and a Scientific Advisor at the Beijing Genomics Institute. He specialises in brain development and incremental intelligence training.
Discrimination learning is defined in psychology as the ability to respond differently to different stimuli. This type of learning is used in studies regarding operant and classical conditioning. Operant conditioning involves the modification of a behavior by means of reinforcement or punishment. In this way, a discriminative stimulus will act as an indicator to when a behavior will persist and when it will not. Classical conditioning involves learning through association when two stimuli are paired together repeatedly. This conditioning demonstrates discrimination through specific micro-instances of reinforcement and non-reinforcement. This phenomenon is considered to be more advanced than learning styles such as generalization and yet simultaneously acts as a basic unit to learning as a whole. The complex and fundamental nature of discrimination learning allows for psychologists and researchers to perform more in-depth research that supports psychological advancements. Research on the basic principles underlying this learning style has their roots in neuropsychology sub-processes.
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.
Josep Call is a Spanish comparative psychologist specializing in primate cognition.
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.
Cecilia Heyes is a British psychologist who studies the evolution of the human mind. She is a Senior Research Fellow in Theoretical Life Sciences at All Souls College, and a Professor of Psychology at the University of Oxford. She is also a Fellow of the British Academy, and President of the Experimental Psychology Society.
The Comparative Cognition Society (CCS) is one of the primary scientific societies for the study of animal cognition and comparative psychology. The CCS is a non-profit, international society dedicated to gaining a greater understanding of the nature and evolution of cognition in human and non-human animals.
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.
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.
The Society for Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Science (SEPCS) is a scholarly organization of psychologists in the principal area of general experimental psychology. The goals of this society are to promote, advance, and increase inclusion and exchange of ideas among the scholars in the many subfields of experimental psychology, both in basic and applied research. The society focuses on supporting research through advocacy, training and education, public policy, and outreach. It engages in a wide variety of service work, including leadership in the American Psychological Association's governance.
Elizabeth Anya Phelps is the Pershing Square Professor of Human Neuroscience at Harvard University in the Department of Psychology. She is a cognitive neuroscientist known for her research at the intersection of memory, learning, and emotion. She was the recipient of the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society Distinguished Scholar Award and the 21st Century Scientist Award from the James S. McDonnell Foundation, as well as other honors and awards in her field. Phelps was honored with the 2018 Thomas William Salmon Lecture and Medal in Psychiatry at the New York Academy of Medicine. She received the 2019 William James Fellow Award from the Association for Psychological Science (APS) which acknowledged how her "multidisciplinary body of research has probed the influence of emotion across cognitive and behavioral domains using novel imaging techniques and neuropsychological studies grounded in animal models of learning."
David Alan Washburn is an American psychologist and professor emeritus of psychology and neuroscience at Georgia State University. From 2001 to 2019, he also served as the Director of the Georgia State University Language Research Center. In August, 2019, he retired at Georgia State University and joined the faculty of his alma mater as professor of psychology at Covenant College. His research includes studies of individual and group differences in cognitive competencies, particularly attention and its relation to learning, memory, and executive functioning. He is best known for his noninvasive behavioral and cognitive research with monkeys, using game-like computerized tasks.
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.
References
- 1 2 "Comparative Cognition Laboratory". uky.edu. Retrieved December 7, 2019.
- ↑ Pappas, Stephanie (October 2010). "Bird Brains: Pigeons Gamble Just Like Humans". LiveScience.com. Retrieved December 7, 2019.
- ↑ Bodkin, Henry (April 18, 2017). "Bird brains not so stupid: pigeons show human-like ability to build knowledge through generations". The Daily Telegraph . Retrieved December 7, 2019.
- ↑ "CCS - CCS Research Award". comparativecognition.org. Retrieved December 7, 2019.
- ↑ "Fellows". Society of Experimental Psychologists. Retrieved December 7, 2019.
