After 150 years of watching: is there a need for synthetic ethology?

The Darwinian idea of mental continuity is about 150 years old. Although nobody has strongly denied this evolutionary link, both conceptually and practically, relative slow advance has been made by ethology and comparative psychology to quantify mental evolution. Debates on the mechanistic interpretation of cognition often struggle with the same old issues (e.g., associationism vs cognitivism), and in general, experimental methods have made also relative slow progress since the introduction of the puzzle box. In this paper, we illustrate the prevailing issues using examples on 'mental state attribution' and 'perspective taking" and argue that the situation could be improved by the introduction of novel methodological inventions and insights. We suggest that focusing on problem-solving skills and constructing artificial agents that aim to correspond and interact with biological ones, may help to understand the functioning of the mind. We urge the establishment of a novel approach, synthetic ethology, in which researchers take on a practical stance and construct artificial embodied minds relying of specific computational architectures the performance of which can be compared directly to biological agents.

The cognitive map debate in insects: A historical perspective on what is at stake.

Though well established in mammals, the cognitive map hypothesis has engendered a decades-long, ongoing debate in insect navigation studies involving many of the field's most prominent researchers. In this paper, I situate the debate within the broader context of 20th century animal behavior research and argue that the debate persists because competing research groups are guided by different constellations of epistemic aims, theoretical commitments, preferred animal subjects, and investigative practices. The expanded history of the cognitive map provided in this paper shows that more is at stake in the cognitive map debate than the truth value of propositions characterizing insect cognition. What is at stake is the future direction of an extraordinarily productive tradition of insect navigation research stretching back to Karl von Frisch. Disciplinary labels like ethology, comparative psychology, and behaviorism became less relevant at the turn of the 21st century, but as I show, the different ways of knowing animals associated with these disciplines continue to motivate debates about animal cognition. This examination of scientific disagreement surrounding the cognitive map hypothesis also has significant consequences for philosophers' use of cognitive map research as a case study.

Pigeons acquire the 1-back task: Implications for implicit versus explicit learning?

In humans, a distinction can be made between implicit or procedural learning (involving stimulus-response associations) and explicit or declarative learning (involving verbalizable rules) that is relatively easy to make in verbal humans. According to several investigators, it is also possible to make such a distinction in nonverbal animals. One way is by training them on a conditional discrimination task (e.g., matching-to-sample) in which reinforcement for correct choice on the current trial is delayed until after a choice is made on the next trial - a method known as the 1-back procedure. According to Smith, Jackson, and Church ( Journal of Comparative Psychology, 134(4), 423-434, 2020), the delay between the sample-correct-comparison response on one trial and reinforcement obtained on the next trial is too long for implicit (associative) learning. Thus, according to this theory, learning must be explicit. In the present experiments we trained pigeons using the 1-back procedure. In Experiment 1, pigeons were trained on red/green 1-back matching using a non-correction procedure. Some of the pigeons showed significant learning. When a correction procedure was introduced, all the pigeons showed evidence of learning. In Experiment 2, new pigeons learned red/green 1-back matching with the correction procedure. In Experiment 3, new pigeons learned symbolic 1-back matching with yellow and blue conditional stimuli and red/green choice stimuli. Thus, pigeons can learn using 1-back reinforcement. Although it would appear that the pigeons acquired this task explicitly, we believe that this procedure does not adequately distinguish between implicit and explicit learning.

Cross-domain comparison and the politics of difference.

This paper makes the case for cross-domain comparison as an undertheorized form of comparative analysis. The units of analysis in such comparisons are not (as in most comparative analysis) predefined units within a domain or system of formally similar yet substantively different categories or entities; they are the domains or systems of categorically organized differences themselves. Focusing on domains of categorical difference that are central to the contemporary politics of difference, we consider two examples of cross-domain comparison. The first compares sex/gender and race/ethnicity as systems of ascribed identities that are increasingly, yet to differing degrees and in differing ways, open to choice and change. The second compares religion and language as domains of categorically organized cultural difference that are centrally implicated in the politics of cultural pluralism. We situate these cross-domain comparisons, premised on a logic of 'different differences', between generalizing and particularizing approaches to the politics of difference, arguing that these domains are similar enough to make comparison meaningful yet different enough to make comparison interesting. We outline five analytical focal points for cross-domain comparison: the criteria of membership and belonging, the categorical versus gradational structure of variation within domains of difference, the consolidation or proliferation of categories of difference, the procedures for dealing with mixed or difficult-to-classify instances, and the relation between categories of difference and the production and reproduction of inequality. We conclude by considering several potential objections to cross-domain comparison.

The detour paradigm in animal cognition.

In this paper, we review one of the oldest paradigms used in animal cognition: the detour paradigm. The paradigm presents the subject with a situation where a direct route to the goal is blocked and a detour must be made to reach it. Often being an ecologically valid and a versatile tool, the detour paradigm has been used to study diverse cognitive skills like insight, social learning, inhibitory control and route planning. Due to the relative ease of administrating detour tasks, the paradigm has lately been used in large-scale comparative studies in order to investigate the evolution of inhibitory control. Here we review the detour paradigm and some of its cognitive requirements, we identify various ecological and contextual factors that might affect detour performance, we also discuss developmental and neurological underpinnings of detour behaviors, and we suggest some methodological approaches to make species comparisons more robust.

The development and flexibility of gaze alternations in bonobos and chimpanzees.

Infants' early gaze alternations are one of their first steps towards a sophisticated understanding of the social world. This ability, to gaze alternate between an object of interest and another individual also attending to that object, has been considered foundational to the development of many complex social-cognitive abilities, such as theory of mind and language. However, to understand the evolution of these abilities, it is important to identify whether and how gaze alternations are used and develop in our closest living relatives, bonobos (Pan paniscus) and chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Here, we evaluated the development of gaze alternations in a large, developmental sample of bonobos (N = 17) and chimpanzees (N = 35). To assess the flexibility of ape gaze alternations, we tested whether they produced gaze alternations when requesting food from a human who was either visually attentive or visually inattentive. Similarly to human infants, both bonobos and chimpanzees produced gaze alternations, and did so more frequently when a human communicative partner was visually attentive. However, unlike humans, who gaze alternate frequently from early in development, chimpanzees did not begin to gaze alternate frequently until adulthood. Bonobos produced very few gaze alternations, regardless of age. Thus, it may be the early emergence of gaze alternations, as opposed gaze alternations themselves, that is derived in the human lineage. The distinctively early emergence of gaze alternations in humans may be a critical underpinning for the development of complex human social-cognitive abilities.

Comparative psychology without consciousness.

The goal of this paper is to establish the truth of the following conditional: if a global workspace theory of phenomenal consciousness is correct, and is fully reductive in nature, then we should stop asking questions about consciousness in nonhuman animals-not because those questions are too hard to answer, but because there are no substantive facts to discover. The argument in support of this conditional turns on the idea that while global broadcasting is all-or-nothing in the human mind, it is framed in terms that imply gradations across species. Yet our concept of phenomenal consciousness doesn't permit mental states to be to some degree conscious. Before getting to that argument, however, and in order to motivate the subsequent discussion, some of the virtues of global workspace theory are displayed.

In what sense are dogs special? Canine cognition in comparative context.

The great increase in the study of dog cognition in the current century has yielded insights into canine cognition in a variety of domains. In this review, we seek to place our enhanced understanding of canine cognition into context. We argue that in order to assess dog cognition, we need to regard dogs from three different perspectives: phylogenetically, as carnivoran and specifically a canid; ecologically, as social, cursorial hunters; and anthropogenically, as a domestic animal. A principled understanding of canine cognition should therefore involve comparing dogs' cognition with that of other carnivorans, other social hunters, and other domestic animals. This paper contrasts dog cognition with what is known about cognition in species that fit into these three categories, with a particular emphasis on wolves, cats, spotted hyenas, chimpanzees, dolphins, horses, and pigeons. We cover sensory cognition, physical cognition, spatial cognition, social cognition, and self-awareness. Although the comparisons are incomplete, because of the limited range of studies of some of the other relevant species, we conclude that dog cognition is influenced by the membership of all three of these groups, and taking all three groups into account, dog cognition does not look exceptional.

The Development of Sociobiology in Relation to Animal Behavior Studies, 1946-1975.

This paper aims at bridging a gap between the history of American animal behavior studies and the history of sociobiology. In the post-war period, ecology, comparative psychology and ethology were all investigating animal societies, using different approaches ranging from fieldwork to laboratory studies. We argue that this disunity in "practices of place" (Kohler, Robert E. Landscapes & Labscapes: Exploring the Lab-Field Border in Biology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002) explains the attempts of dialogue between those three fields and early calls for unity through "sociobiology" by J. Paul Scott. In turn, tensions between the naturalist tradition and the rising reductionist approach in biology provide an original background for a history of Edward Wilson's own version of sociobiology, much beyond the William Hamilton's papers (Journal of Theoretical Biology 7: 1-16, 17-52, 1964) usually considered as its key antecedent. Naturalists were in a defensive position in the geography of the fields studying animal behavior, and in reaction were a driving force behind the various projects of synthesis called "sociobiology".

Orthographic processing in animals: Implications for comparative psychologists.

Two recent studies have shown that pigeons and baboons can discriminate written English words from nonwords, and these findings were interpreted as demonstrating that orthographic processing is possible in absence of linguistic knowledge. Here, I emphasize a different idea, which is that these studies also inform comparative psychologists on the evolutionary history of statistical learning in nonhuman animals, and on its pervasiveness and flexibility.

Comparative approaches to same/different abstract-concept learning.

Martinho and Kacelnik (2016) imprinted newly hatched ducklings (Anas platyrhynchos domestica) with a moving pair of either same or different objects, and following only one session, the ducklings accurately transferred the same/different relationship to novel object pairs that maintained the training relationship. This rapid learning and transfer of the concepts same and different far outstrips the more gradual learning of these basic concepts by animals in associative-learning tasks in which reinforcement is given for correct responses.

Spontaneous Metacognition in Rhesus Monkeys.

Metacognition is the ability to think about thinking. Although monitoring and controlling one's knowledge is a key feature of human cognition, its evolutionary origins are debated. In the current study, we examined whether rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta; N = 120) could make metacognitive inferences in a one-shot decision. Each monkey experienced one of four conditions, observing a human appearing to hide a food reward in an apparatus consisting of either one or two tubes. The monkeys tended to search the correct location when they observed this baiting event, but engaged in information seeking-by peering into a center location where they could check both potential hiding spots-if their view had been occluded and information seeking was possible. The monkeys only occasionally approached the center when information seeking was not possible. These results show that monkeys spontaneously use information about their own knowledge states to solve naturalistic foraging problems, and thus provide the first evidence that nonhumans exhibit information-seeking responses in situations with which they have no prior experience.

Chimpanzees, cooking, and a more comparative psychology.

A recent report suggested that chimpanzees demonstrate the cognitive capacities necessary to understand cooking (Warneken & Rosati, 2015). We offered alternative explanations and mechanisms that could account for the behavioral responses of those chimpanzees, and questioned the manner in which the data were used to examine human evolution (Beran, Hopper, de Waal, Sayers, & Brosnan, 2015). Two commentaries suggested either that we were overly critical of the original report's claims and methodology (Rosati & Warneken, 2016), or that, contrary to our statements, early biological thinkers contributed little to questions concerning the evolutionary importance of cooking (Wrangham, 2016). In addition, both commentaries took issue with our treatment of chimpanzee referential models in human evolutionary studies. Our response offers points of continued disagreement as well as points of conciliation. We view Warneken and Rosati's general conclusions as a case of affirming the consequent-a logical conundrum in which, in this case, a demonstration of a partial list of the underlying abilities required for a cognitive trait/suite (understanding of cooking) are suggested as evidence for that ability. And although we strongly concur with both Warneken and Rosati (2015) and Wrangham (2016) that chimpanzee research is invaluable and essential to understanding humanness, it can only achieve its potential via the holistic inclusion of all available evidence-including that from other animals, evolutionary theory, and the fossil and archaeological records.

How comparative psychology can shed light on human evolution: Response to Beran et al.'s discussion of "Cognitive capacities for cooking in chimpanzees".

We recently reported a study (Warneken & Rosati Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 282, 20150229, 2015) examining whether chimpanzees possess several cognitive capacities that are critical to engage in cooking. In a subsequent commentary, Beran, Hopper, de Waal, Sayers, and Brosnan Learning & Behavior (2015) asserted that our paper has several flaws. Their commentary (1) critiques some aspects of our methodology and argues that our work does not constitute evidence that chimpanzees can actually cook; (2) claims that these results are old news, as previous work had already demonstrated that chimpanzees possess most or all of these capacities; and, finally, (3) argues that comparative psychological studies of chimpanzees cannot adequately address questions about human evolution, anyway. However, their critique of the premise of our study simply reiterates several points we made in the original paper. To quote ourselves: "As chimpanzees neither control fire nor cook food in their natural behavior, these experiments therefore focus not on whether chimpanzees can actually cook food, but rather whether they can apply their cognitive skills to novel problems that emulate cooking" (Warneken & Rosati Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 282, 20150229, 2015, p. 2). Furthermore, the methodological issues they raise are standard points about psychological research with animals-many of which were addressed synthetically across our 9 experiments, or else are orthogonal to our claims. Finally, we argue that comparative studies of extant apes (and other nonhuman species) are a powerful and indispensable method for understanding human cognitive evolution.

The visual cliff's forgotten menagerie: rats, goats, babies, and myth-making in the history of psychology.

Eleanor Gibson and Richard Walk's famous visual cliff experiment is one of psychology's classic studies, included in most introductory textbooks. Yet the famous version which centers on babies is actually a simplification, the result of disciplinary myth-making. In fact the visual cliff's first subjects were rats, and a wide range of animals were tested on the cliff, including chicks, turtles, lambs, kid goats, pigs, kittens, dogs, and monkeys. The visual cliff experiment was more accurately a series of experiments, employing varying methods and a changing apparatus, modified to test different species. This paper focuses on the initial, nonhuman subjects of the visual cliff, resituating the study in its original experimental logic, connecting it to the history of comparative psychology, Gibson's interest in comparative psychology, as well as gender-based discrimination. Recovering the visual cliff's forgotten menagerie helps to counter the romanticization of experimentation by focusing on the role of extrascientific factors, chance, complexity, and uncertainty in the experimental process.

Defining reward value by cross-modal scaling.

Researchers in comparative psychology often use different food rewards in their studies, with food values defined by a pre-experimental preference test. While this technique rank orders food values, it provides limited information about value differences because preferences may reflect not only value differences, but also the degree to which one good may "substitute" for another (e.g., one food may substitute well for another food, but neither substitutes well for water). We propose scaling the value of food pairs by a third food that is less substitutable for either food offered in preference tests (cross-modal scaling). Here, Cebus monkeys chose between four pairwise alternatives: fruits A versus B; cereal amount X versus fruit A and cereal amount Y versus fruit B where X and Y were adjusted to produce indifference between each cereal amount and each fruit; and cereal amounts X versus Y. When choice was between perfect substitutes (different cereal amounts), preferences were nearly absolute; so too when choice was between close substitutes (fruits); however, when choice was between fruits and cereal amounts, preferences were more modest and less likely due to substitutability. These results suggest that scaling between-good value differences in terms of a third, less-substitutable good may be better than simple preference tests in defining between-good value differences.

Using virtual reality to investigate comparative spatial cognitive abilities in chimpanzees and humans.

The purpose of the present study was to determine the efficacy of investigating spatial cognitive abilities across two primate species using virtual reality. In this study, we presented four captive adult chimpanzees and 16 humans (12 children and 4 adults) with simulated environments of increasing complexity and size to compare species' attention to visuo-spatial features during navigation. The specific task required participants to attend to landmarks in navigating along routes in order to localize the goal site. Both species were found to discriminate effectively between positive and negative landmarks. Assessing path efficiency revealed that both species and all age groups used relatively efficient, distance reducing routes during navigation. Compared to the chimpanzees and adult humans however, younger children's performance decreased as maze complexity and size increased. Surprisingly, in the most complex maze category the humans' performance was less accurate compared to one female chimpanzee. These results suggest that the method of using virtual reality to test captive primates, and in particular, chimpanzees, affords significant cross-species investigations of spatial cognitive and developmental comparisons.

Willard Stanton Small (1870-1943): The man who made the maze.

Willard Stanton Small (1870-1943) was among the earliest scientists to perform psychological research with rats and conducted the first experiment with a rat in a maze. This article represents the first biography devoted to Small and provides highlights from his childhood, undergraduate and graduate work, personal life, and professional career. Special attention is given to the events that led to the first rat maze experiment, which Small performed as a graduate student at Clark University. A detailed analysis of Small's published report of the maze experiment is also provided. His employment history after graduate school is discussed and includes teaching and administrative roles at multiple academic institutions, in addition to his role as a field investigator for the U.S. Bureau of Education. It is shown that Small's work impacted not only comparative psychology, but also U.S. public health, school hygiene, and education. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Sleep consolidation of interfering auditory memories in starlings.

Memory consolidation has been described as a process to strengthen newly formed memories and to stabilize them against interference from similar learning experiences. Sleep facilitates memory consolidation in humans, improving memory performance and protecting against interference encountered after sleep. The European starling, a songbird, has also manifested sleep-dependent memory consolidation when trained on an auditory-classification task. Here, we examined how memory for two similar classification tasks is consolidated across waking and sleep in starlings. We demonstrated for the first time that the learning of each classification reliably interferes with the retention of the other classification across waking retention but that sleep enhances and stabilizes the memory of both classifications even after performance is impaired by interference. These observations demonstrate that sleep consolidation enhances retention of interfering experiences, facilitating opportunistic daytime learning and the subsequent formation of stable long-term memories.