Editing Animal cognition (section)

== Historical background ==
=== Earliest inferences ===
[[File:Drinking frooti standing at edge.jpg|thumb|335x335px|A monkey drinking [[Frooti]] from a juice box using its hands]]
The mind and behavior of non-human animals has captivated the human imagination for centuries. Many writers, such as [[René Descartes|Descartes]], have speculated about the presence or absence of the animal mind.<ref>{{cite book | vauthors = Descartes R | date = 1649 | title = Passions of the Soul}}</ref> These speculations led to many observations of animal behavior before modern science and testing were available. This ultimately resulted in the creation of multiple hypotheses about animal intelligence.

One of [[Aesop's Fables]] was ''[[The Crow and the Pitcher]]'', in which a crow drops pebbles into a vessel of water until he is able to drink. This was a relatively accurate reflection of the capability of [[Corvidae|corvids]] to understand water displacement.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140326182039.htm |title=Crows understand water displacement at the level of a small child: Show causal understanding of a 5- to 7-year-old child |website=ScienceDaily |access-date=2019-12-08}}</ref> The Roman naturalist [[Pliny the Elder]] was the earliest to attest that said story reflects the behavior of real-life corvids.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sDwZAAAAYAAJ&q=pliny+crow+urn+stones+water&pg=PA525|title=The Natural History of Pliny | volume = 2 |last=Pliny the Elder|year=1855|publisher=H. G. Bohn |isbn=9780598910769}}</ref>

[[Aristotle]], in [[Aristotle's biology|his biology]], hypothesized a [[causal chain]] where an animal's sense organs transmitted information to an organ capable of making decisions, and then to a motor organ. Despite Aristotle's [[cardiocentrism]] (mistaken belief that cognition occurred in the heart), this approached some modern understandings of [[Information processing (psychology)|information processing]].<ref>{{Cite journal| vauthors = Corcilius K, Gregoric P |s2cid=52242579 |date=2013-01-01 |title=Aristotle's Model of Animal Motion |journal=Phronesis |volume=58 |issue=1 |pages=52–97 |doi=10.1163/15685284-12341242}}</ref>

Early inferences were not necessarily precise or accurate. Nonetheless, interest in animal mental abilities, and comparisons to humans, increased with early [[myrmecology]], the study of ant behavior, as well as the classification of humans as primates beginning with [[Carl Linnaeus|Linnaeus]].

===Morgan's Canon===
{{main|Morgan's Canon}}
Coined by 19th-century British psychologist [[C. Lloyd Morgan]], Morgan's Canon remains a fundamental precept of [[comparative psychology|comparative (animal) psychology]]. In its developed form, it states that:<ref>{{cite book| vauthors = Morgan CL |year=1903|title=An Introduction to Comparative Psychology|url=https://archive.org/details/introductiontoco00morguoft|edition=2|publisher=W. Scott, London|pages=[https://archive.org/details/introductiontoco00morguoft/page/59 59]}}</ref>
<blockquote>In no case is an animal activity to be interpreted in terms of higher psychological processes if it can be fairly interpreted in terms of processes which stand lower in the scale of psychological evolution and development.</blockquote>

In other words, Morgan believed that [[Anthropomorphism|anthropomorphic]] approaches to animal behavior were fallacious, and that people should only consider behaviour as, for example, rational, purposive or affectionate, if there is no other explanation in terms of the behaviours of more primitive life-forms to which we do not attribute those faculties.

=== From anecdote to laboratory ===
{{See also|Comparative psychology}}

Speculation about animal intelligence gradually yielded to scientific study after [[Charles Darwin|Darwin]] placed humans and animals on a continuum, although Darwin's largely anecdotal approach to the cognition topic would not pass scientific muster later on.<ref>{{cite book | vauthors = Darwin C | date = 1871 | title = The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex}}</ref> This method would be expanded by his protégé [[George Romanes|George J. Romanes]],<ref>{{cite book | vauthors = Romanes JG | date = 1883 | title = Animal Intelligence}}</ref> who played a key role in the defense of [[Darwinism]] and its refinement over the years. Still, Romanes is most famous for two major flaws in his work: his focus on anecdotal observations and entrenched [[anthropomorphism]].<ref>{{cite book | vauthors = Dewsbury D | date = 1978 | title = Comparative Animal Behavior | publisher = McGraw-Hill Book Company | location = New York, NY}}</ref> Unsatisfied with the previous approach, [[E. L. Thorndike]] brought animal behavior into the laboratory for objective scrutiny.  Thorndike's careful observations of the escape of cats, dogs, and chicks from puzzle boxes led him to conclude that what appears to the naive human observer to be intelligent behavior may be strictly attributable to simple associations.  According to Thorndike, using Morgan's Canon, the inference of animal reason, insight, or consciousness is unnecessary and misleading.<ref name="cats" />  At about the same time, [[I. P. Pavlov]] began his seminal studies of conditioned reflexes in dogs. Pavlov quickly abandoned attempts to infer canine mental processes; such attempts, he said, led only to disagreement and confusion. He was, however, willing to propose unseen physiological processes that might explain his observations.<ref>{{cite book | vauthors = Pavlov IP | date = 1928 | title = Lectures on conditioned reflexes}}</ref>

=== The behavioristic half-century ===

The work of Thorndike, Pavlov and a little later of the outspoken behaviorist [[John B. Watson]]<ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = Watson JB | s2cid = 145372026 | year = 1913 | title = Psychology as the Behaviorist Views it. | journal = Psychological Review | volume = 20 | issue = 2| pages = 158–177 | doi=10.1037/h0074428| hdl = 21.11116/0000-0001-9182-7 | hdl-access = free}}</ref>  set the direction of much research on animal behavior for more than half a century.  During this time there was considerable progress in understanding simple associations; notably, around 1930 the differences between Thorndike's [[Operant conditioning|instrumental (or operant) conditioning]] and Pavlov's [[Classical conditioning|classical (or Pavlovian) conditioning]] were clarified, first by Miller and Kanorski, and then by [[B. F. Skinner]].<ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = Miller S, Konorski J | year = 1928 | title = Sur une forme particulière des reflexes conditionels | journal = Comptes Rendus des Séances de la Société de Biologie et de Ses Filiales | volume = 99 | pages = 1155–1157}}</ref><ref>{{cite book | vauthors = Skinner BF | date = 1932 | title = The Behavior of Organisms}}</ref>  Many experiments on conditioning followed; they generated some complex theories,<ref>{{cite book | vauthors = Hull CL | date = 1943 | title = The Principles of Behavior}}</ref> but they made little or no reference to intervening mental processes. Probably the most explicit dismissal of the idea that mental processes control behavior was the [[radical behaviorism]] of Skinner. This view seeks to explain behavior, including "private events" like mental images, solely by reference to the environmental contingencies impinging on the human or animal.<ref>{{cite book | vauthors = Skinner BF | title = About Behaviorism | date = 1976}}</ref>

Despite the predominantly behaviorist orientation of research before 1960, the rejection of mental processes in animals was not universal during those years. Influential exceptions included, for example, [[Wolfgang Köhler]] and his insightful chimpanzees<ref name="Köhler_1917">{{cite book | vauthors = Köhler W | date = 1917 | title = The Mentality of Apes}}</ref> and [[Edward Tolman]] whose proposed [[cognitive map]] was a significant contribution to subsequent cognitive research in both humans and animals.<ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = Tolman EC | date = 1948 | title = Cognitive maps in rats and men | journal = Psychological Review | volume = 55 | issue = 4 | pages = 189–208 | doi = 10.1037/h0061626 | pmid = 18870876 | s2cid = 42496633}}</ref>

=== The cognitive revolution ===
{{Main|Cognitive revolution}}
Beginning around 1960, a "cognitive revolution" in research on humans<ref>{{cite book | vauthors = Niesser U | date = 1967 | title = Cognitive Psychology}}</ref>  gradually spurred a similar transformation of research with animals. Inference to processes not directly observable became acceptable and then commonplace. An important proponent of this shift in thinking was [[Donald O. Hebb]],  who argued that "mind" is simply a name for processes in the head that control complex behavior, and that it is both necessary and possible to infer those processes from behavior.<ref>{{cite book | page = 3 | vauthors = Hebb DO | date = 1958 | title = A Textbook of Psychology}}</ref>  Animals came to be seen as  "goal seeking agents that acquire, store, retrieve, and internally process information at many levels of cognitive complexity".<ref>{{cite book | pages = 2 | vauthors = Menzel R, Fischer J | date = 2010 | title = Animal Thinking: Contemporary Issues in Comparative Cognition}}</ref>