400 Animal Memory and Cognition
conventional behavioristic approach to animal behavior—for
example, how animals manage to get from one place to an-
other (spatial learning). It was also concerned in considerable
part with either augmenting, or in some cases replacing (see,
e.g., Hulse & Dorsky, 1977), interpretations that stress asso-
ciations between stimuli and responses with more cognitively
slanted views. For example, in learning to go from one spatial
location to another, do animals form a representation or map
of the environment à la Tolman’s cognitive map? Finally, it
was concerned with investigation in animals’ problems often
investigated in people, for example, concept learning, list
learning, numerical abilities, and so on.
Although the previously described approach to animal
cognition has produced much in the way of useful data and
theory, it can be said to be incomplete in some important re-
spects. For one, the approach tended to emphasize behaviors
acquired on the basis of an individual animal’s experience.
Accordingly, it tended to ignore interesting behaviors shared
by most (if not all) members of a particular species that
appear to have relatively little in common in the way of a
learning component. As we shall see, many such behaviors
are controlled by internal mind-brain states normally associ-
ated with behaviors that are commonly classified as cogni-
tive. In considering such species-characteristic behaviors, it
would be well to keep in mind that all behaviors are the result
of an interaction of environmental and genetic components.
Progress in understanding animal cognition, if not cognition
generally, may have much to gain by better understanding the
processes controlling the behavior of sonar (for example)
using bats, dancing bees, and bower-building birds, to men-
tion only a few species that display interesting species-
specific behaviors.
Other movements arising outside orthodox psychology
have contributed substantially to our understanding of animal
behavior and cognition. These include ethology, cognitive
ethology, and evolutionary biology and psychology.Ethol-
ogy,at its inception in the 1930s, was initially concerned with
investigating the so-called “species-typical behavior” of ani-
mals in their normal environments in the wild. As ethology
developed, it subsequently came to embrace laboratory stud-
ies as well, at least in some instances. An example of an initial
concern in ethology would include filial imprinting in, say,
ducklings, in which baby ducklings learn to follow their par-
ents and parents learn to recognize their own progeny (e.g.,
Hoffman, 1978). As an example of the subsequent laboratory
concern, we could mention lab studies of song acquisition in
various species of birds (e.g., Marler, 1987; Marler & Peters,
1989). Both sorts of studies have contributed to our under-
standing of animal behavior. For example, the imprint-
ing studies indicate that receptivity to certain classes of
events has a developmental basis. The song-learning studies
indicate, among other things, that some bird species can more
easily learn the songs of their own species than those of some
other species.
Cognitive ethology,influenced considerably by the work
of the biologist Donald Griffin (1992), who pioneered work
on echolocation in bats, emphasized (contrary to behavior-
ism) animal consciousness, awareness, and intentions. For
example, when a plover leads a fox away from its nest and
eggs by dragging a wing on the ground and then flies away
vigorously when the fox is some distance from the nest, does
the bird knowingly intend to deceive the fox? According to
Griffin (1992), in stark disagreement with Skinner, a proper
understanding of animal behavior necessarily entails inquir-
ing into questions of subjective awareness. Consider the bat
myotis. While cruising for food at night it emits ultrasonic vo-
calizations in particular directions. At cruising speed it emits
about 10 clicks/s. On detecting an insect the bat homes in on
its prey, raising its clicking rate to as many as 200 clicks/s. As
the bat emits pulses at such high rates and considerable in-
tensity, it in effect turns off its ears as the sound goes out—
otherwise its ears would be injured. The bat’s ear muscles
relax at the cessation of outputting the pulses so as to be sen-
sitive to the returning echo. This process of send signal (tense
muscles) and receive signal (relax muscles) can go as high as
50 cycles/s. A bat can determine the distance of its prey as
well as its direction of movement, and can distinguish its own
cries from those of its numerous hunting companions. Some
insects have developed the capacity to take evasive action
when detected by the bats, by going into dives and the like,
yet they are often captured nevertheless. Clearly, the sonar
system of some bats is extremely complicated, involving pre-
cise information processing on a split-second basis (see, e.g.,
Dawkins, 1996). As in the case of the plover, cognitive ethol-
ogists want to know how much of the complex information
processing of the bat is under conscious, intentional control.
As many have indicated, however, it may not be possible to
determine what is going on in the mind of another species.
Ecologistsare concerned with determining the interrela-
tionship between an organism and its environment, often
integrating experimental psychology with evolutionary biol-
ogy to do so. An ecologist might investigate whether two
closely related bird species have similar or different patterns
of behaviors ranging from mating to food storage. In inves-
tigating such problems, ecologists pay close attention to
such processes as perception, learning, and cognition, and in
these respects have much in common with experimental
psychologists.
Evolutionary biologists and psychologists are distin-
guished from some others concerned with animal cognition,
most prominently by their particular conception of the mind-
brain mechanisms controlling behavior. Their view is that the