Cognitive Processes 417and human cognition. Furthermore, there is ample reason for
believing that at least in some cases similar processes are in
operation over a broad range of animal species. The prime
example of this is the sort of associative learning examined in
Pavlovian and instrumental conditioning.
It is probably the case that most (if not all) experimental
psychology and perhaps most social scientists accept evolu-
tion. This being so, Symons (1987) wrote a paper entitled “If
we’re Darwinians, what’s the fuss about?” The fuss, accord-
ing to Symons, is about this: “Perhaps the central issue of
psychology is whether the mechanisms of the mind are few,
general and simple, on the one hand, or numerous, specific
and complex on the other” (p. 126). As indicated previously,
and speaking generally, many experimental psychologists
tend toward the former assumptions whereas many evolu-
tionary biologists and psychologist tend toward the latter,
and some incline toward the view that the modules are in
communication with each other (Mithen, 1996). To employ
metaphors, experimental psychologists might compare the
mind to a general-purpose computer, whereas evolutionary
biologists and psychologists often compare the mind to a
Swiss army knife, a general-purpose tool having a diversity
of different functions.
Evolution and Cognition: Implications
At one time, unlike now, animal and human learning and
cognition were seen as highly related (see, e.g., McGeoch &
Irion, 1952). Workers in the two areas shared a variety of im-
portant assumptions and considered, very probably, that
choosing animals or humans for study involved little more
than a strategic decision. If an attitude of common purpose
was once the rule of the day, then it appears to be no more. On
the one hand, many workers in human learning and cognition
do not appear to regard animal learning and cognition as es-
pecially relevant to their concerns. It may be that many work-
ers in human learning and cognition see the intellectual gap
between our species and others to be very wide, so wide as to
be one of kind and not of degree. According to this view, an-
imal cognition has little to offer human cognition.
Interestingly, and perhaps ironically, many workers in an-
imal learning and cognition may hold a contrary opinion, that
is, that humans and animals differ cognitively, but only in de-
gree. This inference seems to make sense when one examines
some of the concerns popular in the study of animal cogni-
tion. As we have seen, workers in animal cognition are inter-
ested in determining the extent to which animals possess
language, can use numerical information, imitate others, and
so on. What these concerns have in common, of course, is
that they are things that are done by humans and done very
well. Needless to say, perhaps, these are legitimate problems,
ones well worth studying.
The attitudes of workers in animal and human cognition
may stem from the same source: an incorrect understanding
of how evolution shapes cognitive adaptations. Both camps
appear to accept some version of a continuity view,that as we
go from so-called “lower” to “higher” animals, intellectual
capacity increases. Workers in human learning and cognition,
as indicated, appear to believe for whatever reason (e.g., that
intermediate species became extinct) that human intellectual
capacity, at least in some significant respects, differs from
that of animals in kind and therefore that animal cognition
may be ignored. Workers in animal learning and cognition
also accept some version of the continuity view but appear to
believe, generally speaking, that intellectual development of
various sorts has progressed far enough in animals to make
them useful objects of study. If the foregoing analysis is cor-
rect, then new more useful approaches to learning and cogni-
tion are being ignored by both animal and human workers.
There are certain implications that follow from an evolu-
tionary approach embracing both discontinuity and conti-
nuity of intellectual development over species, which may
well result in a closer, if not close, reuniting of animal and
human learning and cognition. On the one hand, although
there may well be some capacities unique to humans (e.g., the
capacity for language), there are undoubtedly others that are
widely shared over species and that, accordingly, should ben-
efit from a comparative approach. A prime example here is
spatial learning. As we saw, spatial learning is well developed
in many species, and in some species (including our own),
males seem better at spatial learning than females. This dif-
ference seems related to the different demands placed on
males and females in the environment in which they evolved.
Thus, animals that had to move about a good deal, that had
to go from place to place to find food or mates or to escape
danger, would be expected to be better at spatial learning than
animals that had fewer such demands. Note the difference
between the emphasis here and that previously described as
shared by many workers in human and animal cognition: The
emphasis is not on the degree of correspondence between
the cognitive capacity of humans versus other animals, but
on the relation between particular animals and the specific
demands of the environment in which those animals evolved.
That is, to better understand the degree or kind of cognitive
capacity an animal might possess, a first step might well in-
volve a better acquaintance with the problems that animals
faced in the environment in which it evolved.
In Pavlovian conditioning, as indicated, a tone may be
presented a few seconds prior to food, and the relation
between these events may be learned as indicated by the