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The article analyses Olga Rosenkranzová’s book Lidská důstojnost – právně teoretická a filozofická perspektiva. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola & Immanuel Kant (Human dignity: legal- theoretical and philosophical perspective. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Immanuel Kant, Praha 2019). The author aptly shows how the concepts of the dignity of Giovanni Pico and Immanuel Kant were remodeled, deprived of their original context and perhaps made somewhat shallow when they found their way into jurisprudence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compared to existing classical approaches to semiotics which are dyadic (signifier/signified, F. de Saussure) and triadic (symbol/concept/object, Ch. S. Peirce), this theory can be characterized as tetradic ([sign/semion]//[object/noema]) and is the result of either doubling the dyadic approach along the semiotic/ordinary dimension or splitting the ‘concept’ of the triadic one into two (semiotic/ordinary). Other important features of this approach are (a) the distinction made between concepts (only functional pairs of extent and intent) and categories (as representations of expressions) and (b) the indication of the need for providing the mathematical passage from the duality between two sets (where one is a singleton) within systems of sets to category-theoretical monoids within systems of categories while waiting for the solution of this problem in the field of logic.

Natural language processing (NLP) is central to the communication with machines and among ourselves, and NLP research field has long sought to produce human‐quality language. Identification of informative criteria for measuring NLP‐produced language quality will support development of ever‐better NLP tools. The authors hypothesize that mentalizing network neural activity may be used to distinguish NLP‐produced language from human‐produced language, even for cases where human judges cannot subjectively distinguish the language source. Using the social chatbots Google Meena in English and Microsoft XiaoIce in Chinese to generate NLP‐produced language, behavioral tests which reveal that variance of personality perceived from chatbot chats is larger than for human chats are conducted, suggesting that chatbot language usage patterns are not stable. Using an identity rating task with functional magnetic resonance imaging, neuroimaging analyses which reveal distinct patterns of brain activity in the mentalizing network including the DMPFC and rTPJ in response to chatbot versus human chats that cannot be distinguished subjectively are conducted. This study illustrates a promising empirical basis for measuring the quality of NLP‐produced language: adding a judge's implicit perception as an additional criterion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Natural language processing (NLP) is central to the communication with machines and among ourselves, and NLP research field has long sought to produce human‐quality language. Identification of informative criteria for measuring NLP‐produced language quality will support development of ever‐better NLP tools. The authors hypothesize that mentalizing network neural activity may be used to distinguish NLP‐produced language from human‐produced language, even for cases where human judges cannot subjectively distinguish the language source. Using the social chatbots Google Meena in English and Microsoft XiaoIce in Chinese to generate NLP‐produced language, behavioral tests which reveal that variance of personality perceived from chatbot chats is larger than for human chats are conducted, suggesting that chatbot language usage patterns are not stable. Using an identity rating task with functional magnetic resonance imaging, neuroimaging analyses which reveal distinct patterns of brain activity in the mentalizing network including the DMPFC and rTPJ in response to chatbot versus human chats that cannot be distinguished subjectively are conducted. This study illustrates a promising empirical basis for measuring the quality of NLP‐produced language: adding a judge's implicit perception as an additional criterion.

Vocal learning is a complex acquired social behavior that has been found only in very few animals. The process of animal vocal learning requires the participation of sensorimotor function. By accepting external auditory input and cooperating with repeated vocal imitation practice, a stable pattern of vocal information output is eventually formed. In parallel evolutionary branches, humans and songbirds share striking similarities in vocal learning behavior. For example, their vocal learning processes involve auditory feedback, complex syntactic structures, and sensitive periods. At the same time, they have evolved the hierarchical structure of special forebrain regions related to vocal motor control and vocal learning, which are organized and closely associated to the auditory cortex. By comparing the location, function, genome, and transcriptome of vocal learning-related brain regions, it was confirmed that songbird singing and human language-related neural control pathways have certain analogy. These common characteristics make songbirds an ideal animal model for studying the neural mechanisms of vocal learning behavior. The neural process of human language learning may be explained through similar neural mechanisms, and it can provide important insights for the treatment of language disorders.

Did the boy bite the cat or was it the other way around? When processing a sentence with several objects, one has to establish 'who did what to whom'. When a sentence cannot be interpreted by recalling an image from memory, we rely on the special type of voluntary constructive imagination called Prefrontal synthesis (PFS). PFS is defined as the ability to juxtapose mental visuospatial objects at will. We hypothesised that PFS has fundamental importance for language acquisition. To test this hypothesis, we designed a PFS-targeting intervention and administered it to 6,454 children with language deficiencies (age 2 to 12 years). The results from the three-year-long study demonstrated that children who engaged with the PFS intervention showed 2.2-fold improvement in combinatorial language comprehension compared to children with similar initial evaluations. These findings suggest that language can be improved by training the PFS and exposes the importance of the visuospatial component of language. This manuscript reflects on the experimental findings from the point of view of human language evolution. When used as a proxy for evolutionary language acquisition, the study results suggest a dichotomy of language evolution, with its speech component and its visuospatial component developing in parallel. The study highlights the radical idea that evolutionary acquisition of language was driven primarily by improvements of voluntary imagination rather than by improvements in the speech apparatus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

TThrough a review of the main assumptions that support sociology, the relevance of an anti-protagorist perspective was analyzed. This implies talking about socio-human sciences, which study the institutional reality created by human beings from their language. It is an institutionalized and articulated reality through genetic and cultural coevolution. Based on the analysis of the premises and conclusions among the main authors of sociology, the central argument of this paper articulates the need for advancement in the construction of a social science anchored in anti-protagorism. It is concluded that a genocultural coevolutionary turn in sociology and socio human sciences improves our understanding of contemporary cultural problems. Examples include machismo and heterosexual patriarchy, behaviors accentuated in the dominant culture of the peasant world, as was evidenced in the Congress "Rights of Peasants". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a result of the identification of "identity" and "indistinguishability" and strong experimental evidence for the presence of the associated Bose-Einstein statistics in human cognition and language, we argued in previous work for an extension of the research domain of quantum cognition. In addition to quantum complex vector spaces and quantum probability models, we showed that quantization itself, with words as quanta, is relevant and potentially important to human cognition. In the present work, we build on this result, and introduce a powerful radiation quantization scheme for human cognition. We show that the lack of independence of the Bose-Einstein statistics compared to the Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics can be explained by the presence of a 'meaning dynamics," which causes words to be attracted to the same words. And so words clump together in the same states, a phenomenon well known for photons in the early years of quantum mechanics, leading to fierce disagreements between Planck and Einstein. Using a simple example, we introduce all the elements to get a better and detailed view of this "meaning dynamics," such as micro and macro states, and Maxwell-Boltzmann, Bose-Einstein and Fermi-Dirac numbers and weights, and compare this example and its graphs, with the radiation quantization scheme of a Winnie the Pooh story, also with its graphs. By connecting a concept directly to human experience, we show that entanglement is a necessity for preserving the "meaning dynamics" we identified, and it becomes clear in what way Fermi-Dirac addresses human memory. Within the human mind, as a crucial aspect of memory, in spaces with internal parameters, identical words can nevertheless be assigned different states and hence realize locally and contextually the necessary distinctiveness, structured by a Pauli exclusion principle, for human thought to thrive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a result of the identification of “identity” and “indistinguishability” and strong experimental evidence for the presence of the associated Bose-Einstein statistics in human cognition and language, we argued in previous work for an extension of the research domain of quantum cognition. In addition to quantum complex vector spaces and quantum probability models, we showed that quantization itself, with words as quanta, is relevant and potentially important to human cognition. In the present work, we build on this result, and introduce a powerful radiation quantization scheme for human cognition. We show that the lack of independence of the Bose-Einstein statistics compared to the Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics can be explained by the presence of a ‘meaning dynamics,” which causes words to be attracted to the same words. And so words clump together in the same states, a phenomenon well known for photons in the early years of quantum mechanics, leading to fierce disagreements between Planck and Einstein. Using a simple example, we introduce all the elements to get a better and detailed view of this “meaning dynamics,” such as micro and macro states, and Maxwell-Boltzmann, Bose-Einstein and Fermi-Dirac numbers and weights, and compare this example and its graphs, with the radiation quantization scheme of a Winnie the Pooh story, also with its graphs. By connecting a concept directly to human experience, we show that entanglement is a necessity for preserving the “meaning dynamics” we identified, and it becomes clear in what way Fermi-Dirac addresses human memory. Within the human mind, as a crucial aspect of memory, in spaces with internal parameters, identical words can nevertheless be assigned different states and hence realize locally and contextually the necessary distinctiveness, structured by a Pauli exclusion principle, for human thought to thrive.

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This paper explores the idealistic elements in modern semiotic studies, with particular recourse to Jakob von Uexküll's concept of Umwelt. It firstly addresses Uexküll's affinities with and indebtedness to Kant's philosophy, pointing out that Uexküll took Kant's transcendental idealism as a metaphilosophical method to bring forth his own non-mechanistic, constructivist description of an organism's relationship with its environment and other organisms. Secondly, the paper refines the Uexküllian concept of Umwelt to differentiate the functionally constructed Umwelten of non-human animals from the linguistically and symbolically constructed Umwelten of humans, with the focus on the peculiarity of human language. This is followed by a discussion of the semiotic properties of the human body and its semiotic and symbolic interactions with natural and cultural environments. In the final section, the paper touches on the speculative question of whether an artificial intelligence has an Umwelt. Arguing that the interpreting, meaning-generating capability of a subject plays a significant role in constituting its Umwelt, this paper emphasizes again the idealistic elements that the concept of Umwelt contains within itself. Echoing previous discussions across biosemiotics and anthroposemiotics, the paper aims to contribute to shaping a new understanding of the time-honoured philosophical concept of idealism through the lens of modern semiotic studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-control is a prerequisite for complex cognitive processes such as cooperation and planning. As such, comparative studies of self-control may help elucidate the evolutionary origin of these capacities. A variety of methods have been developed to test for self-control in non-human primates that include some variation of foregoing an immediate reward in order to gain a more favorable reward. We used a token exchange paradigm to test for self-control in capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella). Animals were trained that particular tokens could be exchanged for food items worth different values. To test for self-control, a monkey was provided with a token that was associated with a lower-value food. When the monkey exchanged the token, the experimenter provided the monkey with a choice between the lower-value food item associated with the token or another token that was associated with a higher-value food. If the monkey chose the token, they could then exchange it for the higher-value food. Of seven monkeys trained to exchange tokens, five demonstrated that they attributed value to the tokens by differentially selecting tokens for higher-value foods over tokens for lower-value foods. When provided with a choice between a food item or a token for a higher-value food, two monkeys selected the token significantly more than expected by chance. The ability of capuchin monkeys to forego an immediate food reward and select a token that could then be traded for a more preferred food demonstrated some degree of self-control. Thus, results suggest a token exchange paradigm could be a successful technique for assessing self-control in this New World species.//

Once considered only a human behavior, reports of tool use by a variety of animals have accumulated. Likewise, various definitions of tool use have also amassed. Although some researchers argue that understanding the evolutionary drivers of tool use is more important than identifying and describing these behaviors, the central issue of defining what constitutes tool use has not been fully addressed. Here we analyze prominent definitions of tool use and review the application of these definitions in scientific and educational literature. We demonstrate that many behaviors recently described as tool use do not meet criteria for prevalent definitions, while other neglected behaviors may constitute a form of tool use. These examples show how the use of inconsistent definitions of tool use in research can result in different conclusions from the same observations. Our aim is to demonstrate that a universally acceptable definition of tool use based on traditional, evolutionary, and operational understanding of behavior is needed. The rationale is that this review will stimulate the consistent and explicit use of specific terminology in tool use research. This would help define specific examples of each natural observation from a common measuring stick, allowing better comparative studies and classification of these unique behaviors.//

Many studies document the domestic dogs’ responsiveness to human gestures. Reports of success on human guided tasks have led to evolutionary hypotheses that set dogs’ skills apart from other species, including other canids, in terms of their social cognition and comprehension of human communicative stimuli. However, until recently the range of other species tested and the availability of studies using equivalent testing methods between different species and groups have been limited, making it difficult to interpret cross-species comparisons. Here we demonstrate that human-socialized wolves are not only capable of responding to points made with the arm and hand, but are sensitive to a wide range of human gestures when given the opportunity to utilize such gestures in an object-choice task. Claims that domestic dogs are unique in their ability to respond to diverse novel stimuli may be in part due to the absence of data for the same range of gestures in other species. We also provide the first evidence that human-socialized coyotes have the capacity to utilize a human point to locate a target; further demonstrating that domestication is not a prerequisite for canid responsiveness to human actions, and that socialization and life experience are likely more important predictors of success

Exaggerated sex swellings characterized by increased size of skin surrounding the anogenital region occur in female chimpanzees in response to ovarian hormone fluctuations and are associated with increased likelihood of ovulation and female receptivity. The swellings generate heightened sexual interest from males and evoke increased male competitive behavior. To determine potential attractiveness of specific visual characteristics of these signals to males, a free choice task using push-button methodology that allowed subjects to choose one stimulus in a pair by pressing a button corresponding to the stimulus choice was developed. Initially, preferences for specific food items were first determined based on animals’ selection of actual items, followed by selection of same items from photographs and subsequently selection of preferred food utilizing push-button responses to photographs. We found that when allowed to choose between photographs of sex swellings, novel objects, and other body parts, male chimpanzees preferred images of both sex swellings and other body parts over images of objects, and showed a significant preference for sex swellings over other body parts. However, chimpanzees showed no preference in sex swelling color or symmetry. Only one subject displayed a preference for normal sized swellings rather than enlarged swellings. Overall these results suggest that when considered individually, visual characteristics alone are not sufficient to provoke preference responding.

Since 1985, a well-studied community of free ranging Atlantic spotted dolphins, Stenella frontalis, and bottlenose dolphins, Tursiops truncatus, has been observed underwater in the Bahamas. Over this period, the dolphins have become habituated to human swimmers. Long-term underwater observations revealed that some of these dolphins engaged in play behavior using man-made and natural objects in the presence of humans, and allowed humans to interact with them during play. We investigated the dolphins’ play behaviors in response to a more formal two-way communication interface from 1997-2000. Spotted dolphins were exposed to an underwater keyboard in which visual and acoustic symbols represented the objects the dolphins were observed playing with. Objects could be obtained and played with by indicating the appropriate associated symbol. Pointing and triadic gaze between human participants was used to model the system in the presence of dolphins. Our results indicated that human use of the system encouraged the dolphins to attend to activity at the keyboard. Female juveniles, especially six main individuals, were the main players. Dolphins increased their normal levels of associations with certain conspecifics during exposure sessions and also took dominant roles during sessions in the presence of certain conspecifics. Dolphin age class, sex, and levels of synchronization with humans all contributed to the success and level of engagement during exposure sessions between humans and dolphins.

Previous sexual conditioning studies with male Japanese quail have shown that adding taxidermic female head and neck cues to a conditioned stimulus (CS) facilitates conditioned sexual responding. The present experiment examined CS-US similarity as a possible mechanism for this facilitation. During sexual conditioning trials, artificially colored CSs with or without taxidermic female head cues were paired with copulatory access to artificially colored female quail (the unconditioned stimulus or US) to form similar and dissimilar CS-US combinations. As in previous experiments the presence of taxidermic female cues on the CS enhanced conditioned copulatory responding. Additionally, more conditioned copulatory responding developed when the CS and US colors were similar compared to when they were different. The results indicate that similarity between the CS and US strengthens the sexual conditioning of male quail, and similarity in color is more important than similarity in shape. The results also suggest that CS-US similarity may be one factor responsible for the facilitated conditioned responding that occurs when female cues are added to a CS object. The behavior systems approach is used to interpret the findings.

Social learning is an important aspect of dolphin social life and dolphin behavioral development. Inaddition to vocal social learning, dolphins discover behaviors for foraging, play, and socialinteractions by observing other members of their social group. But dolphins neither indiscriminately observe nor mindlessly mimic other dolphins. To the contrary, dolphin calves are quite selective intheir choices of who to observe and/or imitate. Calves are most likely to learn foraging behaviorsfrom their mothers, but they are more likely to watch and reproduce the play behaviors of othercalves than the play behaviors of adult dolphins (including their mothers). But not all calves are equally likely to be good models. Instead, calves are more likely to observe and mimic the behaviorsof other calves that are producing either novel behaviors or more complex forms of behaviors that the observing calf already knows. As a result, there is a general tendency for calves to watch and learn from calves that are older than they are. But differences in age are only part of the story. In fact,dolphin personality may be more important than dolphin age in determining the efficacy of a model.

The endowment effect is the tendency to, seemingly irrationally, immediately value a possessed item more than the opportunity to acquire the identical item when one does not already possess it. Although endowment effects are reported in chimpanzees (Brosnan, Jones, Lambeth, Mareno,Richardson, & Shapiro, 2007) and capuchin monkeys (Lakshminarayanan, Chen, & Santos, 2008), both species share social traits with humans that make convergence as likely an evolutionary mechanism as homology. Orangutans (Pongo spp.) provide a unique insight into the evolution of the endowment effect, along with other apparently irrational behaviors, because their less frequent socialinteractions and relatively more solitary social organization distinguishes them from the more gregarious apes, allowing a test of evolutionary homology. In the present study, we used pairs of both food and non-food objects, as in an earlier test on chimpanzees (Brosnan et al., 2007). We established the apes’ preferences in forced -choice tasks, then tested whether they showed an endowment effect inan exchange task, in which subjects were given one of the objects, followed by the option to exchange it for the other. Here, we report the first evidence of the endowment effect in a relatively less social primate, the orangutan. This indicates that this behavior may have evolved as a homology within the primates, rather than being due to convergent social pressures. These findings provide stronger evidence for the hypothesis that at least one bias, the endowment effect, may be common in primates and, potentially, other species.

In this experiment, orangutans’ ability to use social versus non -social cues on an object-choice task was examined. In addition, the role of spatial proximity was investigated, by matching the distance between the cue and the target object across both social and non-social conditions. Subjects took significantly fewer trials to learn to use social cues (a finger touching the target object and an experimenter’s face hovering above the target object) than non -social cues (paper markers). There was no statistical difference between their performance with cues that were physically contiguous with the target object and those that were distal spatially, regardless of whether the cue was social ornon-social in nature. Evidence for spontaneous cue use was strongest for the social-contiguous condition (a finger touching the target object). These results suggest that spatial proximity alone cannot explain apes’ performance on these types of tasks. Although subjects may have difficulty deriving information from human-based gestures, they still appear to be more attuned to these cues than to abstract physical markers that are matched in terms of spatial relationship and reliability.

The evolutional pathway of communication sounds (i.e., whistles) in odontocetes is reviewed using recent acoustic and phylogenetic studies. The common ancestor of Ziphiidae, Inioidea, and Delphinoidea acquired the ability to whistle in the early Oligocene. Subsequently, Pontoporiidae, Phocoenidae, and the genus Cephalorhynchus lost the ability to whistle and evolved narrow-band high-frequency (NBHF) clicks. I hypothesize that sexual selection based on acoustic signaling contributed to the evolution of whistle. However, group size cannot be excluded as the reason for whistle emergence. The event of whistle loss and replacement with NBHF clicks occurred on three independent occasions after killer whale divergence, through the reconstruction of sound-producing organs. Species with whistle loss may use alternative methods to compensate for whistle information, such as tactile communication. Further research on acoustic communication by Ziphiidae, Inioidea, Monodontidae, and the genus Cephalorhynchus is essential to clarify the evolutional pathway of odontocete whistles.//

Bengalese finches are the domesticated strain of the wild white-rumped munias. Bengalese finches had been domesticated for over 250 years from the wild strain white-rumped munias and during this period the courtship song became phonologically and syntactically complex. The purpose of this study is to understand proximate and ultimate causes for song complexity in Bengalese finches. Field observation of white-rumped munias in Taiwan suggests that populations of munias show a gradient of song syntactical complexity: when the population has more sympatric species, the population showed less syntactical complexity, suggesting that syntactical complexity does not develop under the pressure for species recognition. Laboratory study of cross-fostering between the two strains revealed that white-rumped munias are more specialized in accurately learning own-strain phonology while Bengalese finches learned equally but less accurately learned phonology of both strains suggesting that Bengalese finches lost species-specific bias to accurately learn own phonology. By a nest-building assay, we found that females work more when stimulated with complex songs but not with simple songs. Taken these evidences together, we suggest that phonological and syntactical complexity in Bengalese finch songs evolved first because domestication freed them from pressure for species recognition based on song characteristics and then sexual selection advanced the complexity. This is enabled by longer song learning period in Bengalese finches. Neural and molecular studies also support the notion that Bengalese finches keep more song plasticity as adult. In conclusion, song complexity in Bengalese finches provides a unique opportunity for integrative study of animal communication.

The study of human and animal behavior in psychology is almost always framed at either the associative or the cognitive level of explanation. Despite continued debate between proponents of each approach, we appear to be no closer to a consensus view than we were when the debate began in earnest in the 1960 s. Could it be that the two levels of explanation are irreconcilable? Or is it possible that both frameworks are useful, though incompatible? Perhaps these frameworks merely account for the same behaviors but at different levels of explanation, as characterized by hardware-software or genotype-phenotype analogies. This special issue provides a venue for contemporary scientists involved in this debate to express their views, and follows from a Focus Session of the same title held at the 2010 meeting of the Winter Conference in Animal Learning & Behavior.

Impulsivity is a trait that has received much attention in humans, but in dogs impulsivity is illdefined, and previous studies have tended to focus on aggression, rather than its more pervasive effect on behavior. The objective of this study was to develop a valid psychometric assessment tool of impulsivity in dogs. An owner report questionnaire was constructed using items generated by a survey of experts. Five hundred and seventy one dog owners returned the questionnaire and data were subjected to principal components analysis, revealing a three-factor structure: Factor 1: Behavioral Regulation, Factor 2: Aggression & Response to Novelty, and Factor 3: Responsiveness. The resulting Dog Impulsivity Assessment Scale comprised of 18 items demonstrated evidence of reliability and validity.

This study examined turn taking by adult and infant cross-fostered chimpanzees in one-on-one signed conversations with a human. The study identified turns as alternating, overlapping, or simultaneousand explored the timing of overlapping turn initiations in detail for both age groups. Adult chimpanzee turn taking was furthermore examined in two conditions; in the first condition the human responded to the chimpanzees with scripted probes and in the second condition the human signed freely. Results showed that the adult chimpanzees engaged in more alternating turns in the scripted condition and more overlapping turns in unscripted condition. In the interactions of the unscripted condition, the adult chimpanzees and the human partner initiated overlapping turns with nearly equal frequency, and the chimpanzees were likely to initiate overlap as the partner completed a turn. In comparable unscripted interactions, the infant chimpanzees initiated significantly more overlap thantheir partners and initiated overlap randomly throughout the partner’s sign. Results suggest that turntaking in the chimpanzees developed with experience.

One particular concern of the 2010 Winter Conference on Animal Learning and Behaviour was the degree to which the behaviours of human and nonhuman animals might be interpreted as the result ofthe same cognitive mechanisms. Here, we examine three examples in rats (causal-reasoning, sensitivity to the absence of stimuli, and the relationship between effort and reward) where higher ordermental processes might be invoked as explanations of the observed behaviour. In each case we argue that alternative accounts, based on “lower” mental processes, are also consistent with the observed data. On the basis of the principle of parsimony, enshrined as a grounding assumption of comparative psychology in C. Lloyd Morgan’s Canon, the existence of such alternative accounts means that the available evidence does not licence the conclusion that non-human animals display evidence of human-like cognitive processes in these areas.

The standard methodology of comparative psychology has long relied upon a distinction between cognition and ‘mere association’; cognitive explanations of nonhuman animals behaviors are only regarded as legitimate if associative explanations for these behaviors have been painstakingly ruled out. Over the last ten years, however, a crisis has broken out over the distinction, with researchers increasingly unsure how to apply it in practice. In particular, a recent generation of psychological models appear to satisfy existing criteria for both cognition and association. Salvaging the standard methodology of comparative psychology will thus require significant conceptual redeployment . In this article, I trace the historical development of the distinction in comparative psychology,distinguishing two styles of approach. The first style tries to make out the distinction in terms of the properties of psychological models, for example by focusing on criteria like the presence of rules & propositions vs. links & nodes. The second style of approach attempts to operationalize the distinction by use of specific experimental tests for cognition performed on actual animals. I argue that neither style of criteria is self-sufficient, and both must cooperate in an iterative empirical investigation into the nature of animal minds if the distinction is to be reformed.

The interface of learning and cognition applied to the study of animal behavior represents a target for significant progress if conceptual barriers can be reduced. Is animal behavior exclusively a product of learning or cognition, or are both implicated? Are special (i.e., new) methods required to study cognition or will the enterprise be accomplished by using well-established methods from learning? What types of hypotheses need to be tested to dissociate cognition from learning, and may these hypotheses be profitably tested? This article addresses the above questions by focusing on conceptual, methodological, and hypothesis-testing perspectives for navigating the interface between learning and cognition. Examples from contemporary research are used to develop some suggestions for best practices. The development of a rodent model of episodic memory is used as a case study tofeature the validation of an animal model of cognition.

Evidence from serial pattern learning research has been used to support the controversial claim that rats detect, encode, and use abstract rules. To understand why the evidence indicates that rats’ “rules”are abstract, we examine the basis of “pattern structure” in sequential tasks, how rats respond to pattern structure in highly-organized sequences, the role of “rules” in rats’ representation of patterned sequences, and the notion that rats’ “rules” differ from generalization. We show that “pattern structure” reflects systematic abstractions from stimuli that can be described by abstract relationships,that rats are flexible in representing sequential patterns, that rats use “rules” along with other forms of representation concurrently in serial pattern learning, and that associative/generalization models do not always predict rats’ “rule-governed” behavior. Both behavioral and neurobiological evidence suggest that “rules” are not simply emergent properties of associative networks, that instead rule abstraction and associative processes are mediated by separate concurrently active systems in serial pattern learning. It is not known how “rules” are instantiated in the nervous system, and a key problem at a more molar level of analysis is what determines the output of multiple concurrently active cognitive systems in serial pattern learning.

Individual differences in learning capacity are evident in humans and most other animals. Traditionally, such differences are described in terms of variations along a relatively small number of psychological dimensions corresponding to behavioral traits. Here, an alternative approach is considered in which individual differences in learning capacity are characterized by spatially sorting behavioral patterns. To illustrate this approach, a two-dimensional self-organizing feature map wasused to analyze patterns in the performances of intact and cortically-lesioned rats engaged in multiple learning tasks. After training, the spatial structure of the map revealed systematic variations inlearning across rats that were related to the degree of brain damage. Individual nodes within the map described prototypical performance profiles that corresponded closely to patterns of learning seen in individual rats, including individuals with idiosyncratic profiles. Techniques that automatically identify modal patterns of performance during learning may provide new insights into the processes that determine what an individual organism can learn.

Group living may confer an advantage on prey animals if individuals help maximise protection from predation. Some evidence suggests that age and sex differences may signify role divisions infight/flight responses. We examined whether captive common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus), a group-living primate species, might also show sex and age differences in response to predators and presented predator-based visual and auditory stimuli, individually and simultaneously. No significantsex or age differences emerged in any of the behaviour recorded. However, we found strong evidence that there were individual differences in flight/fight responses depending on the stimulus presented. Inpresenting a taxidermic model of a carnivore visually, five (of the 12) marmosets showed behaviour suggesting cautiousness, whereas five other marmosets displayed risk-taking behaviour (scored asclose proximity to stimulus, mobbing vocalisations and short latency to approach and vocalise). Importantly, cautious and risk-taking individuals did not behave consistently in these roles but changed when presented with the auditory stimulus or the visual and auditory stimuli combined.These results suggest that there may be individual differences in assessing sensory cues and levels offear fulness and risk-taking may vary accordingly. Whether or not such differences confer anadvantage on group living species, it is an entirely new finding that the type of sensory stimulation affects and alters behaviour to a significant extent within an individual and within the same group of primates.//

In 2009, there was a paper session at the annual meeting of the Southeastern Psychological Association entitled “Animal Minds: Sea Lions and Voles and Bears (and Dolphins and Monkeys), Oh My!” The goal of this session was to present a broad perspective on current research in animal cognition, and in particular to present to the SEPA audience some of the variety of species and tasks that are being used in comparative cognition research today. Beyond accomplishing this goal, however, the session revealed something else that provided the basis for the current special issue. //

Seven chimpanzees had participated in cognitive tasks from the time they were approximately 18 months to approximately 16 years of age when the data presented here was analyzed. Testing covered a wide range of tasks, which we categorized broadly as measuring their understanding of aspects of either their social or physical environments. Therefore, we could test whether individuals who excelled on ‘social’ tasks, also excelled on ‘physical’ tests. We also categorized our measures as ones of acquisition, criterion, retention or transfer of skill. Thus, we could determine whether individuals who mastered tasks quickly were also those who performed, remembered and generalized tasks most accurately. We were interested in whether there were consistent patterns in cognitive skills across tasks and measures. Results of our analyses indicate that, as with humans, chimpanzees vary in their performance across some measures, although some differences in cognitive skill between individuals are also consistent across measures and tasks. The results have implications for questions concerning domain generality or specificity of cognitive skills in another primate species.//

Humans’ performance on most cognitive tasks are commonly regulated by an underlying latent variable (i.e., “general” intelligence), and the expression of this latent modulator of cognitive performance varies across individuals. While “intelligence” in humans is easily recognized, a precise definition of this trait has proven elusive, and has impeded efforts to compare the emergence of thi strait across species. Here we describe our efforts to characterize this cognitive trait in genetically heterogeneous laboratory mice. Using batteries of as many as eight learning tasks and various principal component analysis regimens, we have found a robust general factor that accounts fornearly 40% of the variance of individual animals across all tasks. This “” is not attributable to variations in stress reactivity or exploratory tendencies. However, like human intelligence, this general factor covaries with the efficacy of selective attention and working memory capacity. Importantly, we also find that general learning abilities covary with animals’ performance on novel tests of reasoning. In total, this work indicates that learning abilities, attentional control, andthe capacity for reasoning, features that constitute both colloquial and formal definitions of human intelligence, are commonly regulated in individual genetically heterogeneous mice. These results suggest an evolutionary conservation of the qualitative and quantitative properties of intelligence, and indicate that like humans, sub-human animals express individual differences in this trait.//

This article presents the Paradigmatic and Syntagmatic Analysis (PSA), a scientific approach/ method for qualitative analysis of human language data. Created in Applied Linguistics, this inductive-deductive product fills gaps in well-known approaches and methods called Ethnography and Grounded theory. It enables one to answer research questions and generate data-driven theory, considering the data totality and their specificities, with analytical synthesis and without reproduction, mirroring and paraphrasing of data. It consists of two main phases, in the first - the paradigmatic one -, by vertically examining the data and creating classifications, which, in the end, are arranged harmonically in hypernyms and their hyponyms under a given dimension. In the second phase - the syntagmatic one - the researcher makes the assertions (answers to the research questions), using the classifications elaborated in the first phase and taking into account the epistemological and ontological power that the language exerts. As an approach/method, this scientific path is based on dialogical intersubjectivation and emancipatory ethical principles.

Personality research has begun to take hold in the animal kingdom as psychologists turn to animal models to investigate various aspects of personality. Similarly, behavioral ecologists and related fields have begun to explore the idea that individual variation in behavior is more than just noise around an average for a given population or group of interest. As a result, many have begun to turn to personality-related questions to explain individual differences in animal behavior. Collectively, psychologists, ecologists and related fields have created a boom in animal personality-related research. This interest has expanded to a variety of fish species, with many studies focused on an important axis of behavior in humans: the shy-bold axis. Unfortunately, there has been very little consideration for the methodology employed. We review both the experimental and statistical methodology found in a body of research on fish species, for which personality-related research has been conducted. Our aim is to shed light on many important considerations that are often overlooked in order to facilitate research concerned with the reliability and validity of the many methods used.