Download or read book What Young Chimpanzees Know about Seeing written by Daniel Povinelli and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 2000-05-18 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Previous experimental research has suggested that chimpanzees may understand some of the epitemological aspects of visual perception, such as how the perceptual act of seeing can have internal mental consequences for an individual's state of knowledge. Other research suggests that chimpanzees and other nonhuman primates may understand visual perception at a simpler level; that is, they may at least understand seeing as a mental event that subjectively anchors organisms to the external world. However, these results are ambiguous and are open to several interpretations. In this Monograph, we report the results of 15 studies that were conducted with chimpanzees and preschool children to explore their knowledge about visual perception.

Download or read book Why Chimpanzees Can t Learn Language and Only Humans Can written by Herbert S. Terrace and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1970s, the behavioral psychologist Herbert S. Terrace led a remarkable experiment to see if a chimpanzee could be taught to use language. A young ape, named “Nim Chimpsky” in a nod to the linguist whose theories Terrace challenged, was raised by a family in New York and instructed in American Sign Language. Initially, Terrace thought that Nim could create sentences but later discovered that Nim’s teachers inadvertently cued his signing. Terrace concluded that Project Nim failed—not because Nim couldn’t create sentences but because he couldn’t even learn words. Language is a uniquely human quality, and attempting to find it in animals is wishful thinking at best. The failure of Project Nim meant we were no closer to understanding where language comes from. In this book, Terrace revisits Project Nim to offer a novel view of the origins of human language. In contrast to both Noam Chomsky and his critics, Terrace contends that words, as much as grammar, are the cornerstones of language. Retracing human evolution and developmental psychology, he shows that nonverbal interaction is the foundation of infant language acquisition, leading up to a child’s first words. By placing words and conversation before grammar, we can, for the first time, account for the evolutionary basis of language. Terrace argues that this theory explains Nim’s inability to acquire words and, more broadly, the differences between human and animal communication. Why Chimpanzees Can’t Learn Language and Only Humans Can is a masterful statement of the nature of language and what it means to be human.

Download or read book Can You See a Chimpanzee written by Tish Rabe and published by Random House Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2019-12-10 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cat learns about primates—from marmoset monkeys to silverback gorillas—in this latest addition to the Cat in the Hat's Learning Library series! Traveling in his open-air Chimpmobile, the Cat takes Nick and Sally to Africa, Asia, and Madagascar, where they meet a barrel full of "monkeys," including mandrills, marmosets, gorillas, gibbons, gallagos, tarsiers, tamarin, pottos, bonobos—you name it! Along the way they learn the basic characteristics of primates (among them hands that can grasp and forward-facing eyes); how to tell the difference between an ape and a monkey (most monkeys have tails; apes don't); and most amazingly—that people are primates, too! Fans of the hit PBS Kids show The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That! (which is based on the Cat in the Hat's Learning Library) will go bananas over this latest addition to the series!

Download or read book The Mind of the Chimpanzee written by Elizabeth V. Lonsdorf and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-08-15 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding the chimpanzee mind is akin to opening a window onto human consciousness. Many of our complex cognitive processes have origins that can be seen in the way that chimpanzees think, learn, and behave. The Mind of the Chimpanzee brings together scores of prominent scientists from around the world to share the most recent research into what goes on inside the mind of our closest living relative. Intertwining a range of topics—including imitation, tool use, face recognition, culture, cooperation, and reconciliation—with critical commentaries on conservation and welfare, the collection aims to understand how chimpanzees learn, think, and feel, so that researchers can not only gain insight into the origins of human cognition, but also crystallize collective efforts to protect wild chimpanzee populations and ensure appropriate care in captive settings. With a breadth of material on cognition and culture from the lab and the field, The Mind of the Chimpanzee is a first-rate synthesis of contemporary studies of these fascinating mammals that will appeal to all those interested in animal minds and what we can learn from them.

Download or read book The Chimpanzee Me written by Ben Garrod and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-07-11 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ben Garrod: As seen on TV – Baby Chimps Rescue. 'Celebrities blamed for the rise in people keeping primates as pets in Britain' TIMES 2. '4,500 primates owned as pets in the UK' SKY NEWS. 'As ownership of exotic pets booms, no wonder experts are asking... conservation or cruelty?' DAILY MAIL. The Chimpanzee & Me is a unique look at conservation of the species and Ben's life-long love of chimps, illustrated with full colour photos. For over a decade, Ben Garrod has studied chimpanzees to find ways to protect and conserve them. We join Ben on a journey that has taken him around the world, studying eastern chimps in the humid forests of Uganda and the critically endangered western chimps of Liberia. In his trademark infectious, lighthearted style, Ben describes encounters with chimpanzees that highlight the different threats they face. From the illegal international pet trade, to bushmeat markets, and the effects of relentless habitat destruction – not to mention how your new furniture, your toothpaste and even your mobile phone are all implicated in their falling numbers. In an interview with world-renowned primatologist Dr Jane Goodall, Ben shows how we can protect the chimps of the future and help conserve this endlessly fascinating species.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Evolutionary Psychology written by Jennifer Vonk and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2012-02-13 with total page 591 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together leading experts in comparative and evolutionary psychology. Top scholars summarize the histories and possible futures of their disciplines, and the contribution of each to illuminating the evolutionary forces that give rise to unique abilities in distantly and closely related species.

Download or read book Chimpanzees in Research written by Committee on Long-Term Care of Chimpanzees and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1997-09-01 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chimpanzees in biomedical and behavioral research constitute a national resource that has been valuable in addressing national health needs. Facilities that house chimpanzees owned and supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have successfully met the research requirements of the scientific community. The captive chimpanzee population in the United States has grown substantially, particularly over the last decade. That growth is due primarily to the success of the NIH-sponsored Chimpanzee Breeding and Research Program, which achieved the birth numbers thought necessary to meet the projected needs of biomedical research. However, the expected level of use of the chimpanzee model in biomedical research did not materialize, and that has created a complex problem that threatens both the availability of chimpanzees for research in the future and the infrastructure required to ensure the well-being of captive chimpanzees used in biomedical research. Because the present system is fragmented, it is impossible to formulate an accurate overview of the size and nature of the chimpanzee population. But, if the chimpanzee is to continue to be used in biomedical research responsibly, effectively, and cost-effectively, we must be able to oversee, track, and coordinate the maintenance and use of chimpanzees and to control the size of the population. To assess the long-range situation and to develop, implement, and monitor the application of policies for the proper use and care of chimpanzees, an authoritative, centralized oversight structure is imperative. Once it is in place, it will be possible to refine and implement this report's recommendations.

Download or read book Oxford Studies in Epistemology Volume 4 written by Tamar Szabó Gendler and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-04-25 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oxford Studies in Epistemology is a biennial publicaton which offers a regular snapshot of state-of-the-art work in this important field. Under the guidance of a distinguished editorial board composed of leading philosophers in North America, Europe and Australasia, it publishes exemplary papers in epistemology, broadly construed. Topics within its purview include: *traditional epistemological questions concerning the nature of belief, justification, and knowledge, the status of scepticism, the nature of the a priori, etc; *new developments in epistemology, including movements such as naturalized epistemology, feminist epistemology, social epistemology, and virtue epistemology, and approaches such as contextualism; *foundational questions in decision-theory; *confirmation theory and other branches of philosophy of science that bear on traditional issues in epistemology; *topics in the philosophy of perception relevant to epistemology; *topics in cognitive science, computer science, developmental, cognitive, and social psychology that bear directly on traditional epistemological questions; and *work that examines connections between epistemology and other branches of philosophy, including work on testimony and the ethics of belief. Anyone wanting to understand the latest developments at the leading edge of the discipline can start here.

Download or read book Functional Perspectives on Grammar and Discourse written by Christopher S. Butler and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2007-07-13 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, a tribute to Angela Downing, consists of twenty papers taking a broadly functional perspective on language, with topics ranging from the general (grammar as an evolutionary product, text comprehension, integrative linguistics) to particular aspects of the grammars of languages (Bulgarian, English, Icelandic, Spanish, Swedish). The more specific papers are sequenced according to Halliday’s division into ideational, textual and interpersonal aspects of the grammar, and cover a wide range of areas, including aspect, argument structure, noun phrase/nominal group structure and nominalisations, pronominal clitics, theme in relation to writing skills, discourse structures and markers, the role of attention in conversation, the functions of topic, phatic communion, subjectification, formulaic language and modality. A recurrent theme in the volume is the use of corpus materials in order to base functional descriptions on authentic productions. Overall, the volume constitutes a panoramic but nevertheless detailed view of some important current trends in functional linguistics.

Download or read book World Without Weight written by Daniel Povinelli and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2012 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In every domain of reasoning humans deploy an wide range of intuitive 'theories' about how the world works. So are we alone in trying to make sense of the world by postulating theoretical entities to explain how the world works, or do we share this ability with other species. This is the focus of this new book from Daniel Povinelli

Download or read book Three Seductive Ideas written by Jerome Kagan and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2000-04-07 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do the first two years of life really determine a child's future development? Are human beings, like other primates, only motivated by pleasure? And do people actually have stable traits, like intelligence, fear, anxiety, and temperament? This book, the product of a lifetime of research by one of the founders of developmental psychology, takes on the powerful assumptions behind these questions--and proves them mistaken. Ranging with impressive ease from cultural history to philosophy to psychological research literature, Jerome Kagan weaves an argument that will rock the social sciences and the foundations of public policy. Scientists, as well as lay people, tend to think of abstract processes--like intelligence or fear--as measurable entities, of which someone might have more or less. This approach, in Kagan's analysis, shows a blindness to the power of context and to the great variability within any individual subject to different emotions and circumstances. "Infant determinism" is another widespread and dearly held conviction that Kagan contests. This theory--with its claim that early relationships determine lifelong patterns--underestimates human resiliency and adaptiveness, both emotional and cognitive (and, of course, fails to account for the happy products of miserable childhoods and vice versa). The last of Kagan's targets is the vastly overrated pleasure principle, which, he argues, can hardly make sense of unselfish behavior impelled by the desire for virtue and self-respect--the wish to do the right thing. Written in a lively style that uses fables and fairy tales, history and science to make philosophical points, this book challenges some of our most cherished notions about human nature.

Download or read book Understanding Children s Development written by Peter K. Smith and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-12-14 with total page 741 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding Children's Development is the UK's best-selling developmental psychology textbook and has been widely acclaimed for its international coverage and rigorous research-based approach. This dynamic text emphasizes the practical and applied implications of developmental research. It begins by introducing the ways in which psychologists study developmental processes before going on to consider all major aspects of development from conception through to adolescence.

Download or read book Context as Other Minds written by Talmy Givón and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Givon's new book re-casts pragmatics, and most conspicuously the pragmatics of sociality and communication, in neuro-cognitive, bio-adaptive, evolutionary terms. The fact that context, the core notion of pragmatics, is a framing operation undertaken on the fly through judgements of relevance, has been well known since Aristotle, Kant and Peirce. But the context that is relevant to the pragmatics of sociality and communication is a highly specific mental operation — the mental modeling of the interlocutor's current, rapidly shifting belief-and-intention states. The construed context of social interaction and communication is thus a mental representation of other minds. Following a condensed intellectual history of pragmatics, the book investigates the adaptive pragmatics of lexical-semantic categories — the 1st-order framing of “reality", what cognitive psychologists call “semantic memory”. Utilizing the network model, the book then takes a fresh look at the adaptive underpinnings of metaphoric meaning. The core chapters of the book outline the re-interpretation of “communicative context” as the systematic, on-line construction of mental models of the interlocutor's current, rapidly-shifting states of belief and intention. This grand theme is elaborated through examples from the grammar of referential coherence, verbal modalities and clause-chaining. In its final chapters, the book pushes pragmatics beyond its traditional bounds, surveying its interdisciplinary implications for philosophy of science, theory of personality, personality disorders and the calculus of social interaction.

Download or read book Animal Learning and Cognition written by John M. Pearce and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2013-12-19 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Reasoning written by Daniel Krawczyk and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2017-11-13 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reasoning: The Neuroscience of How We Think is a comprehensive guide to the core topics related to a thorough understanding of reasoning. It presents the current knowledge of the subject in a unified, complete manner, ranging from animal studies, to applied situations, and is the only book available that presents a sustained focus on the neurobiological processes behind reasoning throughout all chapters, while also synthesizing research from animal behavior, cognitive psychology, development, and philosophy for a truly multidisciplinary approach. The book considers historical perspectives, state-of-the-art research methods, and future directions in emerging technology and cognitive enhancement. Written by an expert in the field, this book provides a coherent and structured narrative appropriate for students in need of an introduction to the topic of reasoning as well as researchers seeking well-rounded foundational content. It is essential reading for neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, neuropsychologists and others interested in the neural mechanisms behind thinking, reasoning and higher cognition. - Provides a comparative perspective considering animal cognition and its relevance to human reasoning - Includes developmental and lifespan considerations throughout the book - Discusses technological development and its role in reasoning, both currently and in the future - Considers perspectives from not only neuroscience, but cognitive psychology, philosophy, development, and animal behavior for a multidisciplinary treatment - Contains highlight boxes featuring additional details on methods, historical descriptions and experimental tasks

Download or read book Consciousness Transitions written by Hans Liljenström and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2011-10-13 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It was not long ago when the consciousness was not considered a problem for science. However, this has now changed and the problem of consciousness is considered the greatest challenge to science. In the last decade, a great number of books and articles have been published in the field, but very few have focused on the how consciousness evolves and develops, and what characterizes the transitions between different conscious states, in animals and humans. This book addresses these questions. Renowned researchers from different fields of science (including neurobiology, evolutionary biology, ethology, cognitive science, computational neuroscience and philosophy) contribute with their results and theories in this book, making it a unique collection of the state-of-the-art of this young field of consciousness studies. First book on the topic Focus on different levels of consciousness, including: Evolutionary, developmental, and functional Highly interdisciplinary

Download or read book The Missing Link in Cognition written by Herbert S. Terrace and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-01-20 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are humans unique in having self-reflective consciousness? Or can precursors to this central form of human consciousness be found in non-human species? The Missing Link in Cognition brings together a diverse group of researchers who have been investigating this question from a variety of perspectives, including the extent to which non-human primates, and, indeed, young children, have consciousness, a sense of self, thought process, metacognitions, and representations. Some of the participants--Kitcher, Higgins, Nelson, and Tulving--argue that these types of cognitive abilities are uniquely human, whereas others--Call, Hampton, Kinsbourne, Menzel, Metcalfe, Schwartz, Smith, and Terrace--are convinced that at least the precursors to self-reflective consciousness exist in non-human primates.Their debate focuses primarily on the underpinnings of consciousness. Some of the participants believe that consciousness depends on representational thought and on the mental manipulation of such representations. Is representational thought enough to ensure consciousness, or does one need more? If one needs more, exactly what is needed? Is reflection upon the representations, that is, metacognition, the link? Does a realization of the contingencies, that is, "knowing that," in Gilbert Ryle's terminology, ensure that a person or an animal is conscious? Is true episodic memory needed for consciousness, and if so, do any animals have it? Is it possible to have episodic memory or, indeed, any self-reflective processing, without language?Other participants believe that consciousness is inextricably intertwined with a sense of self or self-awareness. From where does this sense of self or self-awareness arise? Some of the participants believe that it develops only through the use of language and the narrative form. If it does develop in this way, what about claims of a sense of self or self-awareness in non-human animals? Others believe that the autobiographical record implied by episodic memory is fundamental. To what extent must non-human animals have the linguistic, metacognitive, and/or representational abilities to develop a sense of self or self-awareness? These and other related concerns are crucial in this volume's lively debate over the nature of the missing cognitive link, and whether gorillas, chimps, or other species might be more like humans than many have supposed.