Psychology of Learning

Module 15: Comparative Cognition

Key Terms

Absolute Differences: Unique features completely absent in other species when comparing human cognition.

Adaptive Specialization: Hypothesis that cognitive abilities evolve to match species-specific ecological demands.

Analogous Structures: Anatomical features with similar functions but different evolutionary origins (e.g., bird & insect wings).

Animal Intelligence: Cognitive capacity for reasoning, problem-solving, learning, & adaptation in nonhuman species.

Approximate Number System: Cognitive system representing quantities as analog magnitudes following Weber’s law.

Arbitrariness: Language feature where relationship between symbols & meanings is conventional, not inherent.

Autism Service Dogs: Service dogs providing support & safety for individuals with autism spectrum disorder.

Behavior-Reading Versus Mind-Reading: Debate over whether animals respond to observable behavioral cues or truly represent mental states.

Big Team Science: Collaborative research involving many laboratories studying diverse species to address replication & generalizability.

Cognitive Integration: Combination of multiple cognitive abilities into unified systems enabling emergent capacities.

Common Descent: Principle that all species share ancestors, forming a branching tree of life.

Comparative Cognition: Scientific study of cognitive processes across species, integrating psychology, ethology, & neuroscience.

Concept Formation: Ability to group stimuli into categories based on shared features or relationships.

Convergent Evolution: Independent evolution of similar traits in unrelated species facing similar selection pressures.

Culture: Learned behaviors transmitted socially across generations, creating population-specific traditions.

Cumulative Cultural Evolution: Cultural change where each generation builds on previous achievements, creating increasing complexity.

Directional Selection: Selection favoring one extreme of a trait distribution, shifting the population mean.

Displacement: Language feature enabling communication about things not present in immediate environment.

Disruptive Selection: Selection favoring both extremes of a trait distribution, potentially leading to speciation.

Duality of Patterning: Language feature where meaningless sounds combine into meaningful units following grammatical rules.

Ecological Intelligence: Perspective viewing intelligence as adaptive problem-solving shaped by species-specific environmental demands.

Episodic-Like Memory: Memory for specific events integrating what, where, & when information.

Ethology: Biological study of animal behavior emphasizing naturalistic observation & evolutionary function.

Evolutionary Psychology: Application of evolutionary principles to understand human cognition & behavior.

False Belief Task: Test of theory of mind requiring prediction of behavior based on another’s mistaken belief.

Fitness: Reproductive success; the relative contribution of an individual’s genes to the next generation.

FOXP2 Gene: Gene involved in speech & language development; mutations cause language impairments.

Genotypes: Genetic makeup of an organism; the alleles inherited from parents.

Great Chain of Being: Pre-evolutionary hierarchical view ranking organisms from simple to complex, with humans at the top.

Guide Dogs: Service dogs assisting blind individuals with navigation & obstacle avoidance.

Hafting: Attaching stone points to wooden handles, requiring understanding of component integration.

Hearing Dogs: Service dogs alerting deaf individuals to important environmental sounds.

Homologous Structures: Anatomical features sharing common ancestry despite different functions (e.g., bat wings & human arms).

Incidental Encoding: Remembering details that seemed irrelevant at encoding but can be recalled when later queried.

Kin Selection: Selection favoring behaviors that benefit genetic relatives, explaining altruism toward kin.

Lamarckian Inheritance: Discredited theory that organisms pass acquired characteristics to offspring.

Lexigrams: Arbitrary visual symbols representing words, used in ape language research.

Mentalizing: Cognitive process of representing & reasoning about others’ mental states.

Metatool Use: Using one tool to obtain another tool, demonstrating hierarchical planning.

Mindreading: Informal term for theory of mind; inferring what others think, know, or intend.

Mobility Assistance Dogs: Service dogs helping individuals with physical disabilities perform daily tasks.

Natural Selection: Differential survival & reproduction of individuals based on heritable traits, driving evolutionary change.

Numerosity Discrimination: Ability to distinguish quantities or amounts without precise counting.

Object Permanence: Understanding that objects continue to exist when not directly perceived.

Obligatory: Characteristic of human tool use as essential for survival rather than optional.

Pedagogical: Relating to teaching; behaviors involving explicit instruction, demonstration, & feedback.

Phenotypes: Observable characteristics of an organism resulting from gene-environment interaction.

Productivity: Language feature enabling creation of unlimited novel utterances from finite elements.

PTSD Service Dogs: Service dogs trained to help individuals manage post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms.

Punctuated Equilibrium: Evolutionary pattern of long periods of stasis interrupted by rapid change during speciation events.

Ratchet Effect: Mechanism of cumulative culture where improvements are preserved until further innovations occur.

Reciprocal Altruism: Cooperation between unrelated individuals based on expectation of future reciprocation.

Recursive Tool Manufacture: Using tools to make other tools in extended chains of production.

Relative Differences: Shared features differing in degree between humans & other species.

Scalar Timing: Temporal discrimination with precision proportional to duration, following Weber’s law.

Service Animal: Animal trained to perform tasks assisting individuals with disabilities.

Simple Systems Approach: Strategy of studying simpler organisms to understand basic principles before tackling more complex systems.

Social Brain Hypothesis: Theory that social living demands drove brain & cognitive evolution in primates.

Sociobiology: Study of social behavior from an evolutionary perspective, examining how natural selection shapes social systems.

Spatial Memory: Memory for locations, spatial relationships, & navigation through environments.

Stabilizing Selection: Selection favoring intermediate trait values, reducing variation around the mean.

Syntax: Grammatical rules governing word order & sentence structure in language.

Theory of Mind: Ability to attribute mental states (beliefs, desires, intentions) to oneself & others.

Tool Use: Using an object to modify the environment or another object to achieve a goal.

Uniformitarianism: Principle that natural processes operating today also operated in the past, allowing gradual geological & biological change.

Vestigial Structures: Reduced or functionless structures that were functional in ancestors.

Working Memory: Limited-capacity system for temporarily holding & manipulating information.