How do animals perceive the world, learn, remember, search for food or mates, communicate, and find their way around? Do any nonhuman animals count, imitate one another, use a language, or have a culture? What are the uses of cognition in nature and how might it have evolved? What is the current status of Darwin's claim that other species share the same "mental powers" as humans, but to different degrees?
In this completely revised second edition of Cognition, Evolution, and Behavior, Sara Shettleworth addresses these questions, among others, by integrating findings from psychology, behavioral ecology, and ethology in a unique and wide-ranging synthesis of theory and research on animal cognition, in the broadest sense--from species-specific adaptations of vision in fish and associative learning in rats to discussions of theory of mind in chimpanzees, dogs, and ravens. She reviews the latest research on topics such as episodic memory, metacognition, and cooperation and other-regarding behavior in animals, as well as recent theories about what makes human cognition unique.
In every part of this new edition, Shettleworth incorporates findings and theoretical approaches that have emerged since the first edition was published in 1998. The chapters are now organized into three sections: Fundamental Mechanisms (perception, learning, categorization, memory), Physical Cognition (space, time, number, physical causation), and Social Cognition (social knowledge, social learning, communication). Shettleworth has also added new chapters on evolution and the brain and on numerical cognition, and a new chapter on physical causation that integrates theories of instrumental behavior with discussions of foraging, planning, and tool using.
Industry Reviews
"Sara Shettleworth has accomplished a truly impressive synthesis of an enormous body of research on a wide variety of animal species. I can think of no other work that so successfully and thoughtfully integrates research in both experimental psychology and behavioral ecology, and that so comprehensively describes the exciting new field of animal cognition. Her book is essential to anyone interested the evolution of animal minds and the mechanisms that guide
animal thought." --Dorothy Cheney, University of Pennsylvania
"In the decade since the first edition was published, the field of comparative cognition has seen an expansive increase and diversification (Shettleworth, 2009*). Many advances have been made, and many new ideas have become influential. The revisions in this new edition represent an enormous undertaking, masterfully capturing the excitement of the past decade. Whether in spatial cognition or communication, the chapters remain both comprehensive and integrative,
with additions highlighting significant and interesting developments in diverse topics. The range of issues discussed is staggering and attests to a highly skilful and balanced overview of what has
become a complex and interdisciplinary field. The new edition is an improvement on an already great scholarly work, with much to say to diverse fields including comparative cognition, neuroethology, and behavioral ecology. It will be highly cited."
--Ken Cheng, Macquarie University
*Behavioural Processes 80:210-217
"Rigorous analyses of field and laboratory findings lie at the heart of this readable yet insightful examination of the uses and abuses of evolutionary theory and ecology in the study of animal cognition. Shettleworth's thought-provoking, up-to-date, interdisciplinary overview is essential reading for anyone with an interest in understanding the relationship between animal and human psychology."
--Bennett Galef, McMaster University
"If you are curious about animal behaviour, whether as an undergraduate or a graduate student or a researcher, then you absolutely must read this remarkable book. It is extraordinarily well written, erudite, yet simple, beautifully illustrated and perhaps more importantly, comprehensive and really up-to-date. Shettleworth has been a major influence in animal behaviour. As her earlier book, this one will no doubt contribute strongly to the ongoing paradigm shift
in behaviour from all ecology to animal cognition: information gathering and processing and their effects on decision. Said simply, Shettleworth is a major artisan of putting 'behaviour' back into
animal behaviour. It is a must read!"
--Luc-Alain Giraldeau, University of Québec at Montréal
"Sara Shettleworth has achieved an amazing synthesis of all the classical themes within behavioural sciences. This second edition is thoroughly up to date: over half the references have been published in the decade since the first edition, and they reflect all major advances in the rapidly changing fields of comparative cognition, learning theory and behavioural ecology. I will recommend this book to all my students, both undergraduates and graduates. And I
will study it carefully myself." --Alex Kacelnik, Oxford University
"[This book is] written clearly and coherently, and will be accessible to students and scientists in many fields. Everyone interested in animal cognition should have this book. I can't wait to get a copy and then use it to teach an animal cognition course."--Alan Kamil, University of Nebraska
"This new edition is remarkably up to date, and the changes from the first faithfully reflect the new advances in the field. There is no serious competitor."
--Nicholas Mackintosh, Cambridge University
"We were huge fans of the first edition of this book. We are therefore delighted that the first edition is no longer the best available overview of comparative psychology: This second edition is. It is a magisterial overview of comparative psychology. If everyone in this field (and not just students) would stop working for a day and read this book, a great deal of senseless debate about animal minds would be avoided. Once a year, there should be an official
"Shettleworth Day" for everybody in in comparative psychology to set aside their daily routines and meditate on the implications of this book for their own research."
--Derek C. Penn & Daniel J. Povinelli, University of Louisiana
"Shettleworth's second edition provides considerable synthesis and a greater theoretical amalgamation with other disciplines, such as child development, cognitive science and neuroscience. The result is a detailed, nuanced and biologically informed view of how and why the cognitive capacities of various species can be the same yet different."--Nature
