Cognition: The Thinking Animal (3rd Edition)

Book Description

This unique book helps readers understand why cognitive psychologists approach problems as they do. It explains the questions cognitive psychologists ask, gives clear answers, and provides interesting, lively and comprehensive coverage of controversies in the field. This book is a study of cognition: of how humans think. Topics covered include visual perception, attention, sensory and primary memory, memory encoding, memory retrieval, memory storage, motor control, visual imagery, decision making and deductive reasoning, problem solving, and language. For readers that are interested in understanding the mysteries of cognition, including psychiatrists, psychologists, psychoanalysts, and those in the field of cognitive neuroscience.

Customer Reviews:

An adequate text.......2004-11-19

I used the Willingham text for my cognition course. At first I was delighted to find an author who attempted to frame the content of cognitive psychology as simple questions, devoid of jargon, the importance of which could be easily grasped by students. As the semester went on however, I found that the students found the text tedious and confusing. I feel that this was due to the lack of explicitly connecting the specific concepts back to the general theme of the chapter. Furthermore, his descriptions of certain experiments were outright confusing and ambiguously described, even to me. I think the approach is admirable- but the goal hasnt been reached yet. I look forward to the next edition, and hope I can once again use the text.

The Easiest to Read and Understand Required Text Ever!.......2004-04-27

If you actually have interest in the subject - this book is very easy to follow and understand. There are great 'real-life' examples for everything and questions (with answers in the back) at the end of every section so you can test yourself. The writing style is pretty casual (which is what separates it from many other books on the topic) and I also noticed a few minor spelling and grammatical errors - but nothing that disrupts the reading or understanding, provided your reading level is at or above 5th grade.

Outstanding cognitive psychology textbook.......2003-12-13

Before selecting a textbook for my cognitive psychology course, I read sections of many of the textbooks available. The Willingham textbook was by far the most readable and engaging. The students' evaluations confirmed my opinion; the vast majority loved the book. I had the same result in two different semester with about 100 students per semester. I'm using the second edition next semester.

Good, for a text book.......2003-04-07

Most psychology text books I've had to read have been a pain, but I found this one pretty easy to read and understand. (I think maybe the guys from UVA with the prof. that wrote this book must have a personal agenda...) But, that's just my opinion. Not that most of us have a choice in reading text books...

Really Bad Book.......2003-01-20

I wanted to learn about this subject and took the class from the author of the book at UVa. He's a pretty good professor but a terrible author of books. there are many usuage/grammatical mistakes in the book and its extremely hard to read. Doesnt make much sense and is highly not recommended.

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Comprehensive Review of Animal thinking

Rational Animals?
Susan, Ed. Hurley
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press
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Binding: Paperback

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Simulating Minds: The Philosophy, Psychology, and Neuroscience of Mindreading (Philosophy of Mind)
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Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong

ASIN: 0198528272

Book Description

To what extent can animal behaviour be described as rational? What does it even mean to describe behaviour as rational? This book focuses on one of the major debates in science today - how closely does mental processing in animals resemble mental processing in humans. It addresses the question of whether and to what extent non-human animals are rational, that is, whether any animal behaviour can be regarded as the result of a rational thought processes. It does this with attention to three key questions, which recur throughout the book and which have both empirical and philosophical aspects: What kinds of behavioural tasks can animals successfully perform? What if any mental processes must be postulated to explain their performance at these tasks? What properties must processes have to count as rational? The book is distinctive in pursuing these questions not only in relation to our closest relatives, the primates, whose intelligence usually gets the most attention, but also in relation to birds and dolphins, where striking results are also being obtained. Some chapters focus on a particular species. They describe some of the extraordinary and complex behaviour of these species - using tools in novel ways to solve foraging problems, for example, or behaving in novel ways to solve complex social problems - and ask whether such behaviour should be explained in rational or merely mechanistic terms. Other chapters address more theoretical issues and ask, for example, what it means for behaviour to be rational, and whether rationality can be understood in the absence of language. The book includes many of the world's leading figures doing empirical work on rationality in primates, dolphins, and birds, as well as distinguished philosophers of mind and science. The book includes an editors' introduction which summarises the philosophical and empirical work presented, and draws together the issues discussed by the contributors.

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Comprehensive Review of Animal thinking.......2006-10-04

Rational Animals? edited by Susan Hurley, Matthew Nudds (Oxford University Press) Are any nonhuman animals rational? What issues are we raising when we ask this question? Are there different kinds or levels of rationality, some of which fall short of full human rationality? Should any behaviour by nonhuman animals be regarded as rational? What kinds of tasks can animals successfully perform? From what kinds of processes does their behaviour result, and do they count as rational processes? Is it useful or theoretically justified to raise questions about the rationality of animals at all? Should we be interested in whether they are rational? Why does it matter?
This book pursues these questions both theoretically and empirically. The contributors include ' distinguished philosophers, as well as scientists who report and reflect on their work with such impressive animals as Kanzi the bonobo, Betty the New Caledonian crow, Sheba the chimpanzee, Sweetie-Pie the scrub jay, Akeakamai the bottlenose dolphin, and Alex the African Grey parrot. Studies of different species are brought together for comparison, and philosophical arguments about rationality are brought into contact with empirical evidence of the behavioural and cognitive capacities of animals. Sections of the volume focus on various types and levels of rationality, on rational versus associative processes, on metacognition and metarepresentation, on social behaviour and cognition, on mind reading versus behaviour reading, and on behaviour and cognition in symbolic environments. An editorial introduction provides an analytical framework for the issues discussed by contributors and a comparative summary of the chapters.
Contributors: Elsa Addessi, Colin Allen, Jose Luis Bermudez, Sarah T Boysen, Josep Call, Nicola S Clayton, Richard Connor, Gregory Currie, Anthony Dickinson, Fred I Dretske, Nathan J Emery, William M Fields, Louis M Herman, Cecilia Heyes, Susan Hurley, Alex Kacelnik, Janet Mann, Ruth G Mikan, Matthew Nudds, David Papineau, Irene M Pepperberg, Daniel Povinelli, Jolle Proust, Duane M Rumbaugh, E. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, Sara J Shettleworth, Kim Sterelny, Jennifer E Sutton, Michael Tomasello, Alain J-P Tschudin, Elisabetta Visalberghi, Jennifer Vonk

Are any non-human animals rational? What issues are we raising when we ask this question? Are there different kinds or levels of rationality, some of which fall short of full human rationality? Should any behaviour by non-human animals be regarded as rational? What kinds of tasks can animals successfully perform? What kinds of processes control their performance at these tasks, and do they count as rational processes? Is it useful or theoretically justified to raise questions about the rationality of animals at all? Should we be interested in whether they are rational? Why does it matter?
The contributors to this volume approach these questions from a variety of theoretical and empirical perspectives. Contributors include distinguished philosophers as well as scientists, who report and reflect on their work with such impressive animals as Kanzi the bonobo, Betty the New Caledonian crow, Sheba the chimpanzee, Sweetie-Pie the scrub jay, Akeakamai the bottlenose dolphin, and Alex the African grey parrot. The volume aims both to bring leading empirical work with different species together for compar¬ison, and to bring philosophical arguments about rationality into contact with empirical evidence of the behavioural and cognitive capacities of animals.
Section 1.1 of this chapter provides a landscape of theoretical issues and distinctions that bear on attributions of rationality to animals; it can be read independently of the synopses of chapters, which follow in the remaining sections. These summarize the arguments of the chapters in each of the volume's six parts, on: types and levels of ration¬ality (Section 1.2); rational versus associative processes (Section 1.3); metacognition
(Section 1.4); social behaviour and cognition (Section 1.5); mind reading and behaviour reading (Section 1.6); and behaviour and cognition in symbolic environments (Section 1.7). The introduction as a whole aims to provide a substantive and self-standing survey of the topic of animal rationality that is accessible to students and researchers in different disciplines, including philosophy and various sciences...
Why, then, does it matter whether animals are rational? It matters both for our understanding of other animals and of ourselves. We live with animals, we interact with them and use them in our daily lives, and share a planet with them. Yet we see ourselves as discontinuous from them in important ways. Rationality is one of the main hooks on which human distinctiveness and specialness has been hung. We treat rationality as having intrinsic worth, in addition to sentience. If a creature can feel pain, we feel we ought to avoid making it suffer unnecessarily, but we may not on that account grant it the additional intrinsic value and dignity associated with rationality. Understanding whether and in what ways non-human animals can be rational may prompt us to rethink human rationality, our relations to other animals, and our own irrationalities. Perhaps our rationality is more piecemeal, less theoretical, more embedded in and conditioned by our environments than we realize. The possibility of explaining relatively complex animal behaviour by appealing to a variety of relatively simple, domain-specific processes may lead us to re-evaluate our presuppositions about human rationality and to ask whether we are operating a double standard in assessing human vs. animal rationality (see and cf. Shettleworth 1998, 563). On a disaggregated view of rationality, there is no single boundary distinguishing the human mind from other animal minds in respect of rationality; rather, there are various specific dimensions of comparison. Making comparisons across species and with human beings in this way elucidates the extent to which the abilities of different animals and of humans can be explained by appealing to similar kinds of processes, and in what sense these processes are rational. Should this rethinking debunk human rationality? Not necessarily. Rather, it may help us to understand it better, and to understand the continuities as well as the discontinuities between human and other animals.

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Commonsense challenge to behaviorism in ethology

Animal Thinking
Donald R. Griffin
Manufacturer: Harvard University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Animal Minds
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ASIN: 0674037138

Customer Reviews:

Commonsense challenge to behaviorism in ethology.......2002-11-10

Donald Griffin wants, in this book, to challenge the behaviorism that has dominated much thinking about animal behavior for the past several decades. In several books, such as THE QUESTION OF ANIMAL AWARENESS and his later ANIMAL MINDS, Griffin has been intent on challenging assumptions that most or all animal behavior is merely instinctive.

Griffin's basic argument is that, counter to what many behaviorists have assumed, the presupposition that animals have the ability to think and undertake much of their actions on the basis of deliberation rather than pure instinct, is actually a simpler thesis than behaviorism. One example he gives are leaf cutter ants, and shows how a behaviorist model does not explain how they are able to adapt to each leaf they need to cut. Not having the ability to think on a least a very elementary level, Griffin argues, would require a large cognitive capacity merely to store all the instinctive behavior patterns that not being able to think would require.

Griffin also provides many instances from the animal world at large of instances in which the assumption that all animal behavior is instinctive is rendered untenable. For instance, lions hunting cooperatively, where a group splits up, several members gaining attention of the prey, while another stealthily sneaks up on the prey animals from behind.

Book Description

Our ability to 'think' is really one of our most puzzling characteristics. What it would be like to be unable to think? What would it be like to lack self-awareness? The complexity of this activity is striking. 'Thinking' involves the interaction of a range of mental processes - attention, emotion, memory, planning, self-consciousness, free will, and language. So where did these processes arise? What evolutionary advantages were bestowed upon those with an ability to deceive, to plan, to empathize, or to understand the intention of others? In this compelling new work, Peter Gardenfors embarks on an evolutionary detective story to try and solve one of the big mysteries surrounding human existence - how has the modern human being's way of thinking come into existence. He starts by taking in turn the more basic cognitive processes - such as attention and memory, then builds upon these to explore more complex behaviours, such as self-consciousness, mindreading, and imitation. Having done this, he examines the consequences of "putting thought into the world" - using external media like cave paintings, drawings, writing, Immensely readable and humorous, the book will be valuable for students in psychology and biology, whilst remaining accessible to readers of popular science.

Customer Reviews:

Revised and Updated Edition to Reflect Recent Discoveries.......2006-07-13

While the fossil evidence is pretty good in showing how humankind's bones developed, it is not at all clear how the ever increasing brainpower (actually I guess you'd have to say 'room for a brain') translated into true thinking. Then again, even defining thinking is pretty hard. (And in the case of some people I know, it's really hard to define.)

In the standard area of bone development, Gardenfors has no argument with the well documented evolutionary findings. He also gives a very good report on the research that has been conducted on the thinking patterns of other primates, and on the theories that have resulted. He crystalizes all of these together to give some opinions as to the general theories of the development of human thought and to some variations in the standard theories.

One technique that he uses in this book is to place a lot of the discussion in the form of a discussion between a speaking monkey and himself. I found that to be a little distracting, but it does help to move the story along.

Mentality as a Lego construct.......2004-12-01

With all the primate observations and experiments done in recent years, it's not clear whether they've been tested with that favourite childhood toy, Lego blocks. Peter Gardenfors must have been a keen Lego practitioner, however. His thesis of how our primate ancestors developed the unique cognitive skills we possess reflects those childhood building techniques. He has a great deal of imagination as shown in his ideas and the in the manner he presents them. In this highly readable and innovative treatise, he proposes that our African ancestors developed a high level of self-awareness before other cognitive skills could follow. From that condition, our thinking abilities burgeoned well past that of our primate cousins. He utilises the Platonic dialog in a fresh manner to present his ideas. Gardenfors produces an imaginary talking monkey - Egon - to present questions readers might have on the proposed scenarios. Readers may judge the appropriateness of the technique for themselves.

Most of his thesis resounds of commonly-accepted views. The physical progression from Homo habilis to sapiens is established. What is not is the development of cognitive skills. How did the brain develop and what promoted its impetus? Gardenfors' departure is in how the process unfolded. Instead of building a few basic traits and skills, adding a bit to each over time, he suggests that various elements in our cognitive abilities emerged, developed into a mature state, then "rested". Then another trait would follow the same path to achieve an equivalent level of functionality. He starts with the physical, of course, touch sensation and perception of visual and auditory signals. From these would arise such elements as emotions, memory and planning. In turn, these advances build self-consciousness, "free will" and language, the ultimate achievement.

Gardenfors tentatively proposes that the adding of each level of cognitive ability drove the brain to become the structure humans enjoy today. The feedback loop is through hunting and meat consumption, which provides resources for an enlarging brain. The enlarging brain demands more resources and advanced cognitive skills to obtain them. Once the first steps beyond what our savannah-living ancestors ate and how they acquired food took place, the continuing reinforcement expanded our thinking abilities. Gardenfors relies on Daniel C. Dennett's ["Darwin's Dangerous Idea"] four-step sequence of the evolution of awareness. While the model is valid, it remains an open question whether Gardenfors' depiction of it as a segmented advancements is equally plausible.

For humans today cognitive skills go beyond those of mere survival and mating tactics. This step means incorporating a sense of intentionality on the part of others. Are the goals we strive for related to those of someone else? Are they in conflict? Can that conflict be resolved and how do we accomplish that? Gardenfors addresses these questions carefully, using "Egon the Talking Monkey" as his foil. "Egon" stands in for the remainder of the animal kingdom, and Gardenfors is at pains to establish what he sees as an abyss between "us" and "them". He's not denying our evolutionary roots, but notes that our cognitive skills represent a major departure from other primates - "apes don't ape" he declares.

This book is a good entry to the realm of cognitive studies, whether for the student considering the field or for someone with a general interest. Gardenfors's technique of using a "talking monkey" may seem a bit bizarre at first glance, but it proves a useful means of bringing various commonly posed questions to light. It also avoids having to crudely interpret or synopsise the views of others in the field. The author's text is a fine balance between the academic and the superficial popular writing too often encountered. Consciousness studies are a minefield of contrasting opinions. Gardenfors navigates the treacherous path skillfully, while presenting his own thinking. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Phänomenologie der schwachen Phantasie: Untersuchungen der Psychologie, Cognitive Science, Neurologie und Phänomenologie zur Funktion der Phantasie in der Wahrnehmung (Phaenomenologica)

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Phänomenologie der schwachen Phantasie: Untersuchungen der Psychologie, Cognitive Science, Neurologie und Phänomenologie zur Funktion der Phantasie in der Wahrnehmung (Phaenomenologica)
Dieter Lohmar
Manufacturer: Springer
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Consciousness & Thought | Philosophy | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

Book Description

This book is an effort to bring genetic-phenomenological analyses in contact with empirical psychology, neurology, cognitive science and research in primate cognition. The first part adresses the role of weak but not arbitrary phantasy in perception, and argues that it has a transcendental function with several different aspects. Weak phantasma can be found in all fields of sensibility and at all levels of constitution. Relevant aspects of Charles-Bonnet Syndrome are analyzed in addition to the contributions of empirical psychology to our understanding of hallucinations in normal subjects. The second part is dedicated to the process of self-organization in human and animal perception from the point of view of genetic phenomenology, concentrating on the formation, change and use of the so-called "types" (Typus). The third part investigates whether cognition, thinking and other higher order performances of the mind - both human and animal - can be understood by taking into account the contributions of phantasmatic elements in three important fields: scenic imagination in daydreams, feelings, and co-feeling with others. To this end dual-mode theories of mind and some contributions from neurology are taken into account. The conclusion reached is that most higher-order achievements of our mind - which we tend to identify with the performance of our language-system - might in fact be accomplished without language in the low-level system of phantasmatic imagination. This leads to an "inclusive theory of the subject" which allows us to understand how higher-organized animals like primates can think.

The Thinking Ape: The Evolutionary Origins of Intelligence

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Thoughts on thinking

The Thinking Ape: The Evolutionary Origins of Intelligence
Richard Byrne
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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Binding: Paperback

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Introduction to Learning and Behavior
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ASIN: 0198522657

Book Description

"Intelligence" has long been considered to be a feature unique to human beings, giving us the capacity to imagine, to think, to deceive, to make complex connections between cause and effect, to devise elaborate stategies for solving problems. However, like all our other features, intelligence is a product of evolutionary change. Until recently, it was difficult to obtain evidence of this process from the frail testimony of a few bones and stone tools. It has become clear in the last 15 years that the origins of human intelligence can be investigated by the comparative study of primates, our closest non-human relatives, giving strong impetus to the case for an "evolutionary psychology", the scientific study of the mind.

Customer Reviews:

Thoughts on thinking.......2002-06-14

Byrne presents an outstanding summary of the research tracing the roots of human intelligence. He begins by noting the problem of describing the evolution of human intelligence from fossil remains. Thoughts don't leave fossils, but many "popular" accounts of human evolution are full of speculations about the development of human cognition. The stories presented, according to Byrne, are frequently contradictory. What is the careful reader able to believe? Byrne accepts the necessity of competing speculations. After all, "detective work is fun." Byrne stresses that there are answers available. The evidence comes from the behaviour of other animals.

He begins with a lesson in taxonomy, those bushy diagrams relating the place of humans with our fellow creatures. He argues that every animal is born with innate behavioural traits - there are no "blank slates" on which cognition must be built. As Byrne puts it: "Genetically channeled learning is evidently a powerful and efficient tool for giving animals what they need to survive." As animals hone derived skills and develop new ones, new levels of cognition arise. If these can be passed on, the result is higher levels of intelligence. Limited only by how much a species can carry over to new generations, the process is recursive.

Byrne examines many levels of learning, particularly food seeking and memory in both field and laboratory. His description of monkeys seeking ways of obtaining food from a plastic tube make one wonder how long a monkey would persist in probing for hard-to-reach food in the wild. Surely, the frustrations the monkeys were forced to endure would rarely occur in the wild. A hungry monkey would simply move on to another site. Their skills in the wild are impressive enough. Byrne describes many species, particularly chimpanzees and orang-utans learning the seasonal locations of many plant foods and applying the most energy efficient routes to obtain it. He stresses that "Learning mechanisms are best regarded as devices for ensuring that animals learn adaptive information." All these studies lead, of course, that humans are driven by the same genetic forces as our fellow creatures.

Byrne reviews the many studies done with various monkey and ape species. There are few consistent patterns among them. Some monkeys attain high social and cognitive skills for particular environments. Some species attain surprising levels of reception, adaptation in dealing with available food, reaction to predators, interactions with their fellows. From these studies in both the field and laboratory, he argues that "in a limited way, great apes can think."

Many studies in the evolution of human cognition stress our use of symbols as the foundation of language skills. Byrne argues that many apes have learned symbols, but notes that this skill is limited to practical applications. They can apply symbols to seek things which are then immediately put to use. The limitation in these linguistic abilities is "grammar." Byrne's discussion of ape "language" and "grammar" is comprehensive and thorough. Most significant, according to Byrne, is the different levels of language skill achieved by various individual apes. The lack of uniform patterns in language use indicates no universal rules should be applied to ape learning. The ability is there, but varies from one ape to another.

In the final analysis, Byrne stresses the support given intelligence by social interaction. Brain size is a factor, he argues, but size must be correlated with other factors. Byrne's use of various studies give this contention strong support. He relates studies showing that enlargement of the neocortex is observed in large ape species who range over extensive areas. He traces a new lineage on our evolutionary path from primitive mammals through large-brained, rapidly-learning species to linguistic species. The gaps among "the thinking primates are bridgeable." It's a compelling argument, forcefully and effectively presented.

Cognition: the Thinking Animal
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Cognition: the Thinking Animal
Daniel B. Willingham
Manufacturer: Prentice Hall
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000OHM7I2

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