Intelligence of Apes and Other Rational Beings

Intelligence of Apes and Other Rational Beings
Author: Duane M. Rumbaugh
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2008-10-01
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0300129351

What is animal intelligence? In what ways is it similar to human intelligence? Many behavioral scientists have realized that animals can be rational, can think in abstract symbols, can understand and react to human speech, and can learn through observation as well as conditioning many of the more complicated skills of life. Now Duane Rumbaugh and David Washburn probe the mysteries of the animal mind even further, identifying an advanced level of animal behavior—emergents—that reflects animals’ natural and active inclination to make sense of the world. Rumbaugh and Washburn unify all behavior into a framework they call Rational Behaviorism and present it as a new way to understand learning, intelligence, and rational behavior in both animals and humans. Drawing on years of research on issues of complex learning and intelligence in primates (notably rhesus monkeys, chimpanzees, and bonobos), Rumbaugh and Washburn provide delightful examples of animal ingenuity and persistence, showing that animals are capable of very creative solutions to novel challenges. The authors analyze learning processes and research methods, discuss the meaningful differences across the primate order, and point the way to further advances, enlivening theoretical material about primates with stories about their behavior and achievements.

Intelligence in Ape and Man (Psychology Revivals)

Intelligence in Ape and Man (Psychology Revivals)
Author: David Premack
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 387
Release: 2014-01-27
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1134671881

What is language and what is the nature of the intelligence that can acquire it? This volume, originally published in 1976, describes 10 years of research devoted to these questions. The author describes his programmatic research of decomposing language into atomic constituents, designing and applying training programs for teaching these to chimpanzees, and for teaching chimps major human ontological categories, as well as for interrogative, declarative, and imperative sentence forms. The volume details the progress from teaching apes simple predicates such as same–different, to more complex predicates such as if–then, and the success of the program led to the following questions directly related to intelligence: What made the training program effective? What is the cognitive equipment of the species which enables it to learn language? What does this tell us about human intelligence? The answers were suggested in terms of conceptual structure, representational capacity, memory and the ability to handle second-order relations. The results of this experimentation, which resulted in synonymy in some animals, shed light not only on the nature of language, but the nature of intelligence as well. One of the earliest ape language and intelligence studies, today this classic can be read and enjoyed again in its historical context.

The Mentality of Apes

The Mentality of Apes
Author: Wolfgang Kohler
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2018-10-11
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1351294946

Wolfgang Koehler demonstrated that chimpanzees could solve problems by applying insight. His research showed that the intellectual gap between humans and chimpanzees was much narrower than previously thought. The work was revolutionary when originally published in 1917 in German, but it was largely ignored for decades because it violated the conventional wisdom that animal behavior is simply the result of instinct or conditioning. However, Koehler's research showed this was not the case. He used four chimps in his experiments, Chica, Grande, Konsul, and Sultan. The experiments consisted of placing chimpanzees in an enclosed area and presenting them with a desired object that was out of reach. In one experiment, Koehler placed bananas outside Sultan's cage and two bamboo sticks inside his cage which needed to be put together to reach the bananas. Koehler demonstrated the solution to Sultan by putting his fingers into the end of one of the sticks. After some contemplation, Sultan put the two sticks together and was able to reach the bananas. As Jaan Valsiner shows in his introduction to this classic work, Koehler's analysis of the intelligence of apes marked a turning point in the psychology of thinking and the continuing struggle between behaviorism and cognitive psychology. Koehler achieved his two-fold aim: to determine the relationship between the intellectual capacity of higher primates and man, and to gain insight into the nature of intelligent acts.

Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?

Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?
Author: Frans de Waal
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2016-04-25
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0393246191

A New York Times bestseller: "A passionate and convincing case for the sophistication of nonhuman minds." —Alison Gopnik, The Atlantic Hailed as a classic, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? explores the oddities and complexities of animal cognition—in crows, dolphins, parrots, sheep, wasps, bats, chimpanzees, and bonobos—to reveal how smart animals really are, and how we’ve underestimated their abilities for too long. Did you know that octopuses use coconut shells as tools, that elephants classify humans by gender and language, and that there is a young male chimpanzee at Kyoto University whose flash memory puts that of humans to shame? Fascinating, entertaining, and deeply informed, de Waal’s landmark work will convince you to rethink everything you thought you knew about animal—and human—intelligence.

'Language' and Intelligence in Monkeys and Apes

'Language' and Intelligence in Monkeys and Apes
Author: Sue Taylor Parker
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 622
Release: 1994-01-28
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9780521459693

This is the first collection of articles completely and explicitly devoted to the new field of 'comparative developmental evolutionary psychology' - that is, to studies of primate abilities based on frameworks drawn from developmental psychology and evolutionary biology. These frameworks include Piagetian and neo-Piagetian models as well as psycholinguistic ones. The articles in this collection - originating in Japan, Spain, Italy, France, Canada and the United States - represent a variety of backgrounds in human and nonhuman primate research, including psycholinguistics, developmental psychology, cultural and physical anthropology, ethology, and comparative psychology. The book focuses on such areas as the nature of culture, intelligence, language, and imitation; the differences among species in mental abilities and developmental patterns; and the evolution of life histories and of mental abilities and their neurological bases. The species studied include the African grey parrot, cebus and macaque monkeys, gorillas, orangutans, and both common and pygmy chimpanzees.

Reaching Into Thought

Reaching Into Thought
Author: Anne E. Russon
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 484
Release: 1998-11-26
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9780521644969

This book investigates current field and theoretical information on great ape cognition.

Apes, Language, and the Human Mind

Apes, Language, and the Human Mind
Author: Sue Savage-Rumbaugh
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 255
Release: 1998-06-18
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0198026978

Current primate research has yielded stunning results that not only threaten our underlying assumptions about the cognitive and communicative abilities of nonhuman primates, but also bring into question what it means to be human. At the forefront of this research, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh recently has achieved a scientific breakthrough of impressive proportions. Her work with Kanzi, a laboratory-reared bonobo, has led to Kanzi's acquisition of linguistic and cognitive skills similar to those of a two and a half year-old human child. Apes, Language, and the Human Mind skillfully combines a fascinating narrative of the Kanzi research with incisive critical analysis of the research's broader linguistic, psychological, and anthropological implications. The first part of the book provides a detailed, personal account of Kanzi's infancy, youth, and upbringing, while the second part addresses the theoretical, conceptual, and methodological issues raised by the Kanzi research. The authors discuss the challenge to the foundations of modern cognitive science presented by the Kanzi research; the methods by which we represent and evaluate the abilities of both primates and humans; and the implications which ape language research has for the study of the evolution of human language. Sure to be controversial, this exciting new volume offers a radical revision of the sciences of language and mind, and will be important reading for all those working in the fields of primatology, anthropology, linguistics, philosophy of mind, and cognitive and developmental psychology.

The Mentality of Apes

The Mentality of Apes
Author: Wolfgang Köhler
Publisher:
Total Pages: 378
Release: 1925
Genre: Animal intelligence
ISBN:

"This book contains the results of my studies in the intelligence of Apes at the Anthropoid Station in Tenerife from the years 1913-1917. The original, which appeared in 1917, has been out of print for some time. I have taken this opportunity of making a few changes in the critical and explanatory sections, and have added as an Appendix some general considerations on the Psychology of Chimpanzees. With various recent books and essays on the subject I shall have an opportunity of dealing in a further contribution to the subject not yet completed"--Preface.

Intelligence in Ape and Man

Intelligence in Ape and Man
Author: David Premack
Publisher:
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2013
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9781315883656

What is language and what is the nature of the intelligence that can acquire it? This volume, originally published in 1976, describes 10 years of research devoted to these questions. The author describes his programmatic research of decomposing language into atomic constituents, designing and applying training programs for teaching these to chimpanzees, and for teaching chimps major human ontological categories, as well as for interrogative, declarative, and imperative sentence forms. The volume details the progress from teaching apes simple predicates such as same-different, to more complex predicates such as if-then, and the success of the program led to the following questions directly related to intelligence: What made the training program effective? What is the cognitive equipment of the species which enables it to learn language? What does this tell us about human intelligence? The answers were suggested in terms of conceptual structure, representational capacity, memory and the ability to handle second-order relations. The results of this experimentation, which resulted in synonymy in some animals, shed light not only on the nature of language, but the nature of intelligence as well. One of the earliest ape language and intelligence studies, today this classic can be read and enjoyed again in its historical context.

Inside the Animal Mind

Inside the Animal Mind
Author: George Page
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2001-08-02
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0767909313

In the bestselling tradition of When Elephants Weep and Dogs Don't Lie About Love, Inside the Animal Mind is a groundbreaking exploration of the nature and depth of animal intelligence. While in the past scientists have refused to acknowledge that animals have anything like human intelligence, a growing body of research reveals otherwise. We’ve discovered ants that use leaves as tools to cross bodies of water, woodpecker finches that hold twigs in their beaks to dig for grubs, and bonobo apes that can use sticks to knock down fruit or pole-vault over water. Not only do animals use tools–some also display an ability to learn and problem-solve. Based on the latest scientific and anecdotal evidence culled from animal experts in the labs and the field, Inside the Animal Mind is an engrossing look at animal intelligence, cognitive ability, problem solving, and emotion. George Page, originator and host of the long-running PBS series Nature, offers us an informed, entertaining, and humanistic investigation of the minds of predators and scavengers, birds and primates, rodents and other species. Illustrated with twenty-four black-and-white photographs, the book is the companion to the three-part, hour-long show of the same name, hosted by Page.