This is an original, important and stimulating book, which attempts a Hegelian synthesis of Piagetian constructivism and Fodorian modularity in terms of the author's own model of ‘representational ...

Beyond Modularity: A Developmental Perspective on Cognitive Science

In this provocative book, Barwise and Perry tackle the slippery subject of \"meaning, \" a subject that has long vexed linguists, language philosophers, and logicians.

/pdf/situations-and-attitudes-57f065zg2d.pdf

Situations and Attitudes.

Numerical models indicate that collective animal behavior may emerge from simple local rules of interaction among the individuals. However, very little is known about the nature of such interaction, so that models and theories mostly rely on aprioristic assumptions. By reconstructing the three-dimensional positions of individual birds in airborne flocks of a few thousand members, we show that the interaction does not depend on the metric distance, as most current models and theories assume, but rather on the topological distance. In fact, we discovered that each bird interacts on average with a fixed number of neighbors (six to seven), rather than with all neighbors within a fixed metric distance. We argue that a topological interaction is indispensable to maintain a flock's cohesion against the large density changes caused by external perturbations, typically predation. We support this hypothesis by numerical simulations, showing that a topological interaction grants significantly higher cohesion of the aggregation compared with a standard metric one.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/105/4/1232.full.pdf

Interaction ruling animal collective behavior depends on topological rather than metric distance: Evidence from a field study

Varieties of numerical abilities.

Prologue PART 1: The Need for a Theory of Cognitive Evolution Mental Architecture as an Emergent Phenomenon Culture as Evidence for Cognitive Structure The Organization of This Book PART 2:

Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition

Numerical competence is one of the many aspects of animal cognition that have enjoyed a resurgence of interest during the past decade. Evidence for numerical abilities in animals has followed a tortuous path to respectability, however, from Clever Hans, the counting horse, to modern experimental studies. Recent surveys of the literaturereveal theoretical as well as definitional confusion arising from inconsistent terminology for numerical processes and procedures. The term “counting” has been applied to situations having little to do with its meaning in the human literature. We propose a consistent vocabulary and theoretical framework for evaluating numerical competence. Relative numerousness judgments, subitizing, counting, and estimation may be the essential processes by which animals perform numerical discriminations. Ordinality, cardinality, and transitivity also play an important role in these processes. Our schema is applied to a variety of recent experimental situations. Some evidence of transfer is essential in demonstrating higher-order ability such as counting or “sense of number.” Those instances of numerical competence in which all viable alternatives to counting (e.g., subitizing) have been precluded, but no evidence of transfer has been demonstrated might be described as “protocounting.” To show that animals are capable of “true” counting future research will have to demonstrate generality across situations.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0140525X00053437

Numerical competence in animals: Definitional issues, current evidence, and a new research agenda.

Although Piagetian theory proposes that the ability to make transitive inferences is confined to humans above age 7, recent evidence has suggested that this logical ability may be more broad based. In nonverbal tests, transitive inference has been demonstrated in preschool children and 2 species of nonhuman primates. In these experiments, I demonstrate evidence of transitive inference in rats (Rattus norvegicus). I used an ordered series of 5 olfactory stimuli (A E and A > F). The possibility that logical transitivity may reflect a form of spatial paralogic rather than formal deductions from a syllogistic-verbal system is discussed.

Transitive inference in rats (Rattus norvegicus).

Counting behavior in animals: A critical evaluation.

Operant-Pavlovian interactions

1. Acknowledgements 2. The inevitable bond 3. Interactions, relationships and bonds: the conceptual basis for scientist-animal relations 4. Studies of rodent-human interactions in animal psychology 5. The covalent animal: on bonds and their boundaries in behavioral research 6. The phenomenon of attachment in human-nonhuman relationships 7. Humanity's 'best friend': the origins of our inevitable bond with dogs 8. The use of dog-human interaction as a reward in instrumental conditioning and its impact on dogs' cardiac regulation 9. Behavioral arousal and its effect on the experimental animal and the experimenter 10. Practice makes predictable: repeated sampling differentially affects behavioral and physiological responses 11. Improved handling of experimental rhesus monkeys 12. Social interaction as a condition for learning in avian species: a synthesis of the disciplines of ethology and psychology 13. Pongid pedagogy: the contribution of human-chimpanzee interactions to the study of ape cognition 14. The role of social bonds in motivating chimpanzee cognition 15. Minimizing an inevitable bond: the study of automated avoidance in rats 16. Underestimating the octopus 17. The scientist and the snake: relationships with reptiles 18. Fear of humans and its consequences for the domestic pig 19. The effect of the researcher on the behavior of poultry 20. Early human-animal relationships and temperament differences among domestic dairy goats 21. The effect of the researcher on the behavior of horses 22. Imprinting and other aspects of pinniped-human interactions 23. Humans as predators: observational studies and the risk of pseudo-habituation 24. Human-bear bonding in research on black bear behavior 25. Scientist-animal bonding: some philosophical reflections.

Hank Davis

Papers

Numerical competence in animals: Definitional issues, current evidence, and a new research agenda.

Transitive inference in rats (Rattus norvegicus).

Counting behavior in animals: A critical evaluation.

Operant-Pavlovian interactions

The Inevitable bond : examining scientist-animal interactions