Psychology 1351. Animal Cognition
Instructor: Irene Pepperberg
Semester: Spring 2008
Blogger: rad1687
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Psychology 1351. Animal Cognition
This blog was inspired by Psychology 1351. Animal Cognition by Irene Pepperberg

Introduction to Animal Cognition
January 31st, 2008
Hello everyone and welcome to my animal cognition blog! This is my first entry so I will take just a moment to speak about the class, the teacher, and a little about myself. The class, is described by the Harvard Registrar's office as "... an introduction to the study of animal cognition and...
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Insect Cognition: Part 1
February 14th, 2008
Hello again! In class today, we began to discuss the possibilities and the limitations of intelligence and cognition in the insect world. It would seem that creatures with as few neural cells as insects would be severely limited in the amount of information they could process and recall, but the results...
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Insect Cognition: Part 2
February 19th, 2008
Hello there! In today’s entry, I will be discussing the last of our readings on the cognitive abilities of insects. In my last blog, I focused primarily on the trial and error learning used in the aggressive mimicry of the Portia spider and the presence of an impressive cognitive mapping ability...
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Number Concepts: Part 1
February 21st, 2008
My blog today will explore the concepts of numbers and counting in the animal kingdom. Until recently, the possibility of animals comprehending numbers had been completely dismissed. A quotation from Aristotle’s Metaphysica even remarks, “Numbers are intellectual witnesses that belong only to...
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Number Concepts: Part 2
February 26th, 2008
Hello there! Hopefully as we continue our discussion of numbers in the animal world, you will recall from my last blog the difficulties that researchers face in exhibiting numerical competency in animals. The research subjects have often times found ways to perform the number based tasks presented...
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No Class Today
February 28th, 2008
Professor Pepperberg was giving a guest lecture at the University of Wisconsin today. Sorry! Here is a sad article on the death of her star parrot, Alex, to keep you busy until next time!
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Number Concept: Part 3
March 4th, 2008
Hello all! Today’s blog will continue on analysis of numbers and animals. In class we discussed one paper that delved further into the search for and evaluation of numerical competency in rhesus monkeys. The paper compares the system for ordering numbers in both the monkeys and humans. Jessica...
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Number Concepts: Part 4
March 6th, 2008
Welcome back! In class today, we wrapped up our discussion of number competency and animals. If you remember back to my past several blogs, you should recall our examination of several papers that showed the ability of chimpanzees, rhesus monkeys, and parrots to manipulate and understand numbers. ...
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Episodic-Like Memory
March 11th, 2008
Hello everyone!  Today in lecture, we discussed the presence of episodic like memory in animals.  Wikipedia defines episodic memory as the memory of events, times, places, associated emotions, and other conception-based knowledge in relation to an experience. Semantic memory and episodic memory together...
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Insightful Behaviors: 1
March 13th, 2008
Hello again! In class today, we began our discussion of insightful behavior in animals. The term insight is complex and refers to decisions made based on visualizations and thoughts, not experiences. For a behavior to be considered insightful, the animals must be making a choice based on theory. ...
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Insightful Behaviors: 2
March 18th, 2008
Hello all! Today we will continue our examination of insightful behavior in the animal kingdom! If you remember my last blog, we looked into some pretty crafty ravens and their recognition of a relationship between food and string. These string based tests will continue today as we look at tests involving...
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Social Learning
April 3rd, 2008
Josep Call’s and Michael Tomasello’s article, Production and Comprehension of Referential Pointing by Orangutans (Pongo pygmaseus), tests the social learning capabilities of two great apes. To determine the extent to which the pointing was understood by the animals, versus merely a conditioned response,...
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