Hostname: page-component-669899f699-swprf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-27T06:45:26.107Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Imaginative scrub-jays, causal rooks, and a liberal application of Occam's aftershave

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 May 2008

Nathan J. Emery  and
Nicola S. Clayton
Nathan J. Emery
Affiliation:
School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary College, University of London, London, E1 4NS, United Kingdom
Nicola S. Clayton
Affiliation:
Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB2 3EB, United Kingdom. [email protected]://www.sbcs.qmul.ac.uk/people/[email protected]/pages/staffweb/clayton/
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We address the claim that nonhuman animals do not represent unobservable states, based on studies of physical cognition by rooks and social cognition by scrub-jays. In both cases, the most parsimonious explanation for the results is counter to the reinterpretation hypothesis. We suggest that imagination and prospection can be investigated in animals and included in models of cognitive architecture.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 31 , Issue 2 , April 2008 , pp. 134 - 135
Copyright
Copyright ©Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Boesch, C. (2007) What makes us human (Homo sapiens)? The challenge of cognitive cross-species comparison. Journal of Comparative Psychology 121:227–40.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clayton, N. S., Dally, J. M. & Emery, N. J. (2007) Social cognition by food-caching corvids: The western scrub-jay as a natural psychologist. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 362:507–22.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Correia, S. P., Dickinson, A. & Clayton, N. S. (2007) Western scrub-jays anticipate future need states independently of their current motivational state. Current Biology 17:856–61.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Emery, N. J. (2004) Are corvids “feathered apes”? Cognitive evolution in crows, jays, rooks and jackdaws. In: Comparative analysis of minds, ed. Watanabe, S., pp. 181–213. Keio University Press.Google Scholar
Emery, N. J. & Clayton, N. S. (2001) Effects of experience and social context on prospective caching strategies by scrub-jays. Nature 414:443–46.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Emery, N. J. & Clayton, N. S. (2004a) Comparing the complex cognition of birds and primates. In: Comparative vertebrate cognition, ed. Rogers, L. J. & Kaplan, G. S., pp. 3–55. Kluwer Academic Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Emery, N. J. & Clayton, N. S. (in press) How to build a scrub-jay that reads minds. In: Origins of the social mind: Evolutionary and developmental views, ed. Itakura, S. & Fujita, K.. Springer.Google Scholar
Mulcahy, N. J. & Call, J. (2006a) Apes save tools for future use. Science 312:1038–1040.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Penn, D. C. & Povinelli, D. J. (2007b) On the lack of evidence that non-human animals possess anything remotely resembling a “theory of mind.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 362:731–44.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Raby, C. R., Alexis, D. M., Dickinson, A. & Clayton, N. S. (2007) Planning for the future by western scrub-jays. Nature 445:919–21.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Seed, A. M., Tebbich, S., Emery, N. J. & Clayton, N. S. (2006) Investigating physical cognition in rooks (Corvus frugilegus). Current Biology 16:697–701.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shanahan, M. P. (2006) A cognitive architecture that combines internal simulation with a global workspace. Consciousness and Cognition 15:433–49.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shanahan, M. P. & Baars, B. (2005) Applying global workspace theory to the frame problem. Cognition 98:157–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar