Cognitive development across primates: Ethological considerations

Dorothy M. Fragaszy

University of Georgia, USA

Ethology, the study of behavior as a biological phenomenon, is defined not by problem area but rather by conceptual approach. The ethological program includes concern with ontogeny as well as mechanism, function, and evolution. Ethology aims for explanations that synthesize these four levels of explanation. An ethological approach requires a biological definition of cognition (Kamil 1998), and that is necessarily rather broad. Here, cognition is defined as knowledge processes, where knowledge is embodied, situated in a context, and manifest in behavior (Johnson 1987). Instead of viewing knowledge as a static mental entity, manipulations of which are reflected in behavior, knowledge is conceptualized as constituted in behavior through cycles of action and perception (Thelen and Smith 1994). Using this definition of cognition, cognitive development is evident in the appearance of new forms of behavior, and in changes in the processes that lead to behavioral change. Identifying 'purely' cognitive development, isolated from other aspects of development and independent of behavior, is an impossibility: cognition is bound up with behavior, and with the body. Nevertheless, using the comparative method, we may aim to identify motoric, perceptual, and contextual factors that are associated with differential behavioral developmental trajectories across species. Understanding the contributions of these factors to behavioral development across species constitutes one way of understanding cognitive development as a biological phenomenon. Primates share fundamental features of action and perception (stereoscopic vision, and ability to prehend objects and bring them to the mouth with the hands, for example). On the other hand, differences across species in perception, action, and developmental environment (particularly in the social domain) promote divergent development. An ethological understanding of cognitive development in primates that acknowledges (and honors) the diversity of lifestyles in the order requires attention to different issues than those that occupy most developmentalists concerned with human cognition. Nevertheless, this view of cognition can provide biological grounding for conceptions of, and can provoke new questions about, human cognitive development.

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Kamil, A. (1998). On the proper definition of cognitive ethology. In R. Balda, I Pepperberg, & A. Kamil. (Eds.), Animal cognition in nature: The convergence of psychology and biology in laboratory and field. New York: Academic Press.

Johnson, M. (1987). The body in the mind. The bodily basis of meaning, imagination, and reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Fragaszy, Dorothy M.

Psychology Department, University of Georgia

Athens, GA 30602, USA

doree@arches.uga.edu