Animal Learning and Cognition: An Introduction » (REV)

John Pearce gained a B.Sc in Psychology from the University of Leeds, and a D. Phil in Experimental Psychology from the University of Sussex. After conducting research at the Universities of York and Cambridge he moved to a lectureship in the Department of Psychology at Cardiff University in 1980, where he is now Professor of Psychology. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2006.

Animal Learning and Cognition: An Introduction provides an up-to-date review of the principal findings from more than a century of research into animal intelligence. This new edition has been expanded to take account of the many exciting developments that have occurred over the last ten years.

The book opens with a historical survey of the methods that have been used to study animal intelligence, and follows by summarizing the contribution made by learning processes to intelligent behavior. Topics include Pavlovian and instrumental conditioning, discrimination learning, and categorization. The remainder of the book focuses on animal cognition and covers such topics as memory, navigation, social learning, language and communication, and knowledge representation. Expanded areas include extinction (to which an entire chapter is now devoted), navigation in insects, episodic memory in birds, imitation in birds and primates, and the debate about whether primates are aware of mental states in themselves and others. Issues raised throughout the book are reviewed in a concluding chapter that examines how intelligence is distributed throughout the animal kingdom.

The broad spectrum of topics covered in this book ensures that it will be of interest to students of psychology, biology, zoology, and neuroscience. Since very little background knowledge is required, the book will be of equal value to anyone simply interested in either animal intelligence, or the animal origins of human intelligence.

This textbook is accompanied by online instructor resources which are free of charge to departments who adopt this book as their text. They include chapter-by-chapter lecture slides, an interactive chapter-by-chapter multiple-choice question test bank, and multiple-choice questions in paper and pen format.

Preface ix
1 The study of animal intelligence 2 The distribution of intelligence 4 Defining animal intelligence 12 Why study animal intelligence? 16 Methods for studying animal intelligence 20 Historical background 22
2 Associative learning 34 Conditioning techniques 36 The nature of associative learning 42 Stimulus-stimulus learning 49 The nature of US representations 52 The conditioned response 55 Concluding comment: the reflexive nature of the conditioned response 60
3 The conditions for learning: Surprise and attention 62 Part 1 Surprise and conditioning 64 Conditioning with a single CS 64 Conditioning with a compound CS 68 Evaluation of the Rescorla-Wagner model 72 Part 2 Attention and conditioning 74 Wagner's theory 76 Stimulus significance 80 The Pearce-Hall theory 86 Concluding comments 91
4 Instrumental conditioning 92 The nature of instrumental learning 93 The conditions of learning 97 The performance of instrumental behavior 106 The Law of Effect and problem solving 111
5 Extinction 122 Extinction as generalization decrement 123 The conditions for extinction 125 Associative changes during extinction 134 Are trials important for Pavlovian extinction? 142
6 Discrimination learning 148 Theories of discrimination learning 149 Connectionist models of discrimination learning 161 Metacognition and discrimination learning 166
7 Category formation 170 Examples of categorization 171 Theories of categorization 173 Abstract categories 179 Relationships as categories 180 The representation of knowledge 188
8 Short-term retention 190 Methods of study 191 Forgetting 199 Theoretical interpretation 202 Serial position effects 206 Metamemory 207
9 Long-termretention 212 Capacity 214 Durability 215 Theoretical interpretation 218 Episodic memory 225
10 Time, number, and serial order 232 Time 233 Number 243 Serial order 253 Transitive inference 259 Concluding comments 262
11 Navigation 264 Part 1 Short-distance travel 265 Methods of navigation 265 Part 2 Long-distance travel 283 Navigational cues 284 Homing 286 Migration 289 Concluding comments 293
12 Social learning 296 Diet selection and foraging 298 Choosing a mate 301 Fear of predators 301 Copying behavior: mimicry 302 Copying behavior: imitation 304 Theory of mind 312 Self-recognition 319 Concluding comments 324
13 Animal communication and language 326 Animal communication 327 Communication and language 336 Can an ape create a sentence? 339 Language training with other species 350 The requirements for learning a language 356
14 The distribution of intelligence 360 Intelligence and brain size 361 The null hypothesis 364 Intelligence and evolution 369 References 373 Author index 403 Subject index 411