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Animal Cognition presents a clear, concise, and comprehensive
overview of what we know about cognitive processes in animals.
Focusing mainly on what has been learned from experimental
research, Vauclair presents a wide-ranging review of studies of
many kinds of animals--bees and wasps, cats and dogs, dolphins and
sea otters, pigeons and titmice, baboons, chimpanzees, vervet
monkeys, and Japanese macaques. He also offers a novel discussion
of the ways Piaget's theory of cognitive development and Piagetian
concepts may be used to develop models for the study of animal
cognition. Individual chapters review the current state of our
knowledge about specific kinds of cognition in animals: tool use
and spatial and temporal representations; social cognition--how
animals manage their relational life and the cognitive organization
that sustains social behaviors; representation, communication, and
language; and imitation, self-recognition, and the theory of
mind--what animals know about themselves. The book closes with
Vauclair's "agenda for comparative cognition." Here he examines the
relationship of the experimental approach to other fields and
methods of inquiry, such as cognitive ethology and the ecological
approach to species comparisons. It is here, too, that Vauclair
addresses the key issue of continuity, or its absence, between
animal and human cognition. Given our still limited knowledge of
cognitive systems in animals, Vauclair argues, researchers should
be less concerned with the "why" question--the evolutionary or
ecological explanations for differences in cognition between the
species--and more concerned with the "what"--the careful work that
is needed to increase our understanding of similarities and
differences in cognitive processes. This thoughtful and lively book
will be of great value to students of animal behavior and to anyone
who desires a better understanding of humankind's relations to
other living creatures.
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