PSYC 355 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Anthropomorphism, Distant Relatives, Mexican Jay
13 Oct 2018
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What is comparative about comparative cognition: history. Shettleworth (2009): the evolution of comparative cognition: is the snark still a boojum: we"ve changed a bit, added some diversity to the field. Individual comparisons/differences within a species: we need to consider this, e. g. chimps living/developing with humans have different experiences than those in the wild, their development might also be different. Clark"s nutcracker: stores food in up to 10,000 different locations, recovers a year later. It will be wrong to think their spatial memory skills are exactly the same: they have different spatial memory skills. More specifically, we predicted that clark"s nutcrackers and pinyon jays have spatial memory abilities that are superior to those of scrub jays and mexican jays. Findings to support this hypothesis will strongly support the suggestion that spatial memory ability is another trait in the adaptive arsenal employed by species to enhance their fitness. (balda & kamil)
