Primate Intelligence

13 Primate Intelligence

Handbook of Paleoanthropology ◽

10.1007/978-3-540-33761-4_41 ◽

2007 ◽

pp. 1273-1293

Author(s):

Richard W. Byrne

Keyword(s):

Primate Intelligence

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Handbook of Paleoanthropology ◽

10.1007/978-3-642-39979-4_41 ◽

2014 ◽

pp. 1721-1740 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Richard W. Byrne

Keyword(s):

Primate Intelligence

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Social and Technical Forms of Primate Intelligence

Tree of Origin ◽

10.2307/j.ctv1p6hp1j.9 ◽

2002 ◽

pp. 145-172

Author(s):

Richard W. Byrne

Keyword(s):

Primate Intelligence

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Exploring Primate Social Cognition: Some Critical Remarks1)

Behaviour ◽

10.1163/156853990x00699 ◽

1990 ◽

Vol 112 (1-2) ◽

pp. 84-98 ◽

Cited By ~ 28

Author(s):

Verena Dasser ◽

Paul Hoyningen-Huene ◽

Hans Kummer

Keyword(s):

Social Cognition ◽

Social Contexts ◽

Social Knowledge ◽

Social Origin ◽

Behavioral Interaction ◽

The Social ◽

Empirical Tests ◽

Context Specific ◽

Adaptive Specializations ◽

Primate Intelligence

AbstractThe paper expresses the authors' views on the growing interest in primate social cognition, particularly among descriptive primate ethologists. Its characteristics are the hope to extract cognitive interpretations from field anecdotes, the free use of intentional language, and the untested and so far untestable idea that primate intelligence was selected in social contexts. We believe that 1) To understand how the animal itself represents the structure of its group or its habitat is perhaps the most ethological ethology there is and well worth pursuing. The study of social cognition, in particular, has long been neglected. 2) However, it requires of ethologists that they learn from established cognitive science and integrate its categories with their own. This is an interdisciplinary enterprise. 3) A traditional inductive study begins with anecdotes, which then are translated into hypotheses, which in turn are subjected to empirical tests including experiments. Sociobiology began to publish hypotheses without tests; the social cognition move now goes on to publish anecdotes without hypotheses, with a strong penchant for anthropomorphic interpretations in terms of social manipulation. This is little more than applying human prejudice. Phylogenetic and cognitive insights will come from testing alternative levels of organization in an animal's social knowledge about the same behavioral interaction. The experiment is the largely unavoidable method. Examples are given. 4) The speculation of the social origin of primate intelligence is tentatively interpreted in two possible directions. A version based on ROZIN's (1976) view that generalized mammal intelligence evolved from context-specific "Adaptive Specializations" seems the more accessible to ethological thinking and method.

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