This book presents an overview of selected topics in comparative cognition, which is the study of behaviour and mental activities in nonhuman animals. Human psychological capacities are often used as a heuristic by comparative cognitive scientists, whose tasks include designing valid procedures for studying species sensory, linguistic or manipulatory abilities that differ from those of humans. Nonetheless, researchers have developed many original ways to gain insights into how other species perceive the world, store and integrate information, and communicate.
The contributors to this book have all been involved in such work, and will present some of the approaches that have led to clear advances in our understanding of cognitive processes in other species. The chapters integrate a review of past literature with recent work, covering a variety of subject species including birds, domestic dogs and cats, and nonhuman primates. All contributors have worked with or been otherwise influenced by Professor Kazuo Fujita, to whom the volume will be dedicated. Fujitas openness to research on various topics and species is reflected in the diversity of the chapters presented.
The book will be of interest to students and more experienced researchers in diverse fields including psychology, anthropology, biology and veterinary studies.
Chapter
1. Amodal Completion, and Recognizing the Meaning of Cognitive
Diversity.
Chapter
2. Visual Illusions: Insights from Comparative
Cognition.
Chapter
3. Comparative Studies on Geometric Illusions: A Review
of Methods.
Chapter
4. It Takes One to Know One: Do Human and Nonhuman
Primates Share Similar Face Processing?
Chapter
5. Factors Affecting Facial
Recognition in Capuchin Monkeys.
Chapter
6. Visual Body Perception in
Primates: From Individual to Social Dyad.
Chapter
7. Attending to Others
Visual Attention.
Chapter
8. Understanding Others Behavior: Effect of Ones
Own Experience.
Chapter
9. Behavioral Coordination and Synchronization in
Non-human Primates.
Chapter
10. The Lasting and the Passing: Behavioral
Traditions and Opportunities for Social.
Chapter
11. Capuchins (Sapajus
apella) and Their Aversion to Inequity.
Chapter
12. Evolutionary Perspective
on Prosocial Behaviors in Nonhuman Animals.
Chapter
13. Social Evaluation in
Non-human Animals.
Chapter
14. Planning Abilities in Nonhuman Animals: In
Search of the Evolutionary Origins of Thought.
Chapter
15. Studies of
Prospective Information-seeking in Capuchin Monkeys, Pigeons and Human
Children.
Chapter
16. Worth the Wait: Evidence for Self-Control in Nonhuman
Primates.
Chapter
17. Developments in Research on Cat Cognition and
Personality.
Chapter
18. Dog-Human Attachment as an Aspect of Social
Cognition: Evaluating the Secure Base Test.
James R. Anderson is Professor in Psychology at Kyoto University, Japan. He has previously held positions at the Université Louis Pasteur (Strasbourg, France) and the University of Stirling (Scotland). For several decades his research has focused mainly on social behavior and communication, as well as learning and cognition in various nonhuman primate species. He has also conducted research on environmental enrichment for captive primates, and studied baboons and chimpanzees in west Africa. Many of his studies have been collaborative projects with psychologists and primatologists from various countries and several continents. Hika Kuroshima is Associate Professor in Psychology at Kyoto University, Japan. She graduated with a BA from Osaka City University in 1998, and received her PhD in Psychology from Kyoto University Graduate School of Letters in 2003, for her research on social cognition in squirrel monkeys and capuchin monkeys. She has been one of Prof. Fujitas many students in the Graduate School of Letters at Kyoto, where she currently directs the Comparative Cognitive Science Laboratory, following Prof. Fujita's retirement. Her main research focus is social cognition in New World monkeys and companion animals, topics on which she has collaborated with co-editor Anderson since she was a Masters course student.
