Analogical cognition: an insight into word meaning

Analogical cognition, extensively researched by Dedre Gentner and her colleagues over the past thirty five years, has been described as the core of human cognition, and it characterizes our use of many words. This research provides significant insight into the nature of word meaning, but it has been ignored by linguists and philosophers of language. I discuss some of the implications of the research for our account of word meaning. In particular, I argue that the research points to, and helps account for, a key explanatory role that linguistic meaning must play. The research also shows how words contribute to thought as opposed to merely being a means of conveying thought

Do Great Grey Owls Comprehend Means–end Relationships?

Cognitive abilities of the Great Grey Owl (Strix nebulosa) were tested with a means–end problem. Owls were presented the single baited string task and the string discrimination task. Our results suggest that owls failed to comprehend the physics underlying the object relationships involved in the tasks presente

Do Great Grey Owls Comprehend Means–end Relationships?

Cognitive abilities of the Great Grey Owl (Strix nebulosa) were tested with a means–end problem. Owls were presented the single baited string task and the string discrimination task. Our results suggest that owls failed to comprehend the physics underlying the object relationships involved in the tasks presente

Observational Learning in a Glaucous-winged Gull Natural Colony

The ability of the Glaucous-winged Gull (Larus glaucescens) to observationally learn has been investigated in their natural habitat, in a gull’s colony located on Toporkov Island (Comandorsky State Nature Reserve, Far East, Russia). The experiment was carried out in the gull’s breeding period, when each bird’s pair in the colony occupies and protects vigilantly their small nesting sites surrounded by those of neighboring pairs. The gulls chosen to be demonstrators were trained to solve two different tasks both of which were not part of the species’ behavioral repertoire. The first task was obtaining a bait placed by an experimenter into an opaque box within the bird's visual field ; the second one was choosing a red box from a set of four identically-looking boxes differing only incolor. In contrast to the demonstrator gulls, which needed considerably training, most observers (the gulls nesting side-by-side with the demonstrators) performed the same tasks correctly in the first trial.Thus, gulls have proven to be capable of successful learning to solve simple choice tasks by observing what their conspecifics are doing. Observational learning can be a way to distribute individual experience among the gulls in a colony. The ability to observationally learn quickly maybe one of the factors underlying a higher adaptive potential of these birds

Observational Learning in a Glaucous-winged Gull Natural Colony

The ability of the Glaucous-winged Gull (Larus glaucescens) to observationally learn has been investigated in their natural habitat, in a gull’s colony located on Toporkov Island (Comandorsky State Nature Reserve, Far East, Russia). The experiment was carried out in the gull’s breeding period, when each bird’s pair in the colony occupies and protects vigilantly their small nesting sites surrounded by those of neighboring pairs. The gulls chosen to be demonstrators were trained to solve two different tasks both of which were not part of the species’ behavioral repertoire. The first task was obtaining a bait placed by an experimenter into an opaque box within the bird's visual field ; the second one was choosing a red box from a set of four identically-looking boxes differing only incolor. In contrast to the demonstrator gulls, which needed considerably training, most observers (the gulls nesting side-by-side with the demonstrators) performed the same tasks correctly in the first trial.Thus, gulls have proven to be capable of successful learning to solve simple choice tasks by observing what their conspecifics are doing. Observational learning can be a way to distribute individual experience among the gulls in a colony. The ability to observationally learn quickly maybe one of the factors underlying a higher adaptive potential of these birds

Assessing the uniqueness of language: Animal grammatical abilities take center stage

Questions related to the uniqueness of language can only be addressed properly by referring to sound knowledge of the relevant cognitive abilities of nonhuman animals. A key question concerns the nature and extent of animal rule-learning abilities. I discuss two approaches used to assess these abilities. One is comparing the structures of animal vocalizations to linguistic ones, and another is addressing the grammatical rule- and pattern-learning abilities of animals through experiments using artificial grammars. Neither of these approaches has so far provided unambiguous evidence of advanced animal abilities. However, when we consider how animal vocalizations are analyzed, the types of stimuli and tasks that are used in artificial grammar learning experiments, the limited number of species examined, and the groups to which these belong, I argue that the currently available evidence is insufficient to arrive at firm conclusions concerning the limitations of animal grammatical abilities. As a consequence, the gap between human linguistic rule-learning abilities and those of nonhuman animals may be smaller and less clear than is currently assumed. This means that it is still an open question whether a difference in the rule-learning and rule abstraction abilities between animals and humans played the key role in the evolution of language