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For most of the twentieth century, the dominant approach to animal psychology was to use experiments on intelligence in animals to uncover simple processes (such as classical conditioning and operant conditioning) that might then account for the apparently more complex intellectual abilities of human beings. This reductionist philosophy was combined with a strongly behaviorist methodology, in which overt behavior was taken as the only valid data for the study of psychology, and in its more extreme forms (the radical behaviorism of B. F. Skinner and his experimental analysis of behavior) behavior was taken as the only topic of interest. In effect, the mental processes that we experience in ourselves were viewed as epiphenomena.
The success of cognitive psychology in addressing human mental processes, from the late 1950s on, led to a re-evaluation of the research paradigm, and researchers began to address animal mental processes from the opposite direction, by taking what is known about human mental processes and looking for evidence of comparable processes in other species. In a sense this was a return to the approach of Darwin'sCharles Robert Darwin ( February 12, 1809 April 19, 1882) was an English naturalist whose revolutionary theory laid the foundation for both the modern theory of evolution and the principle of common descent by proposing natural selection as a mechanism. protegé George RomanesA 19th century naturalist, George John Romanes ( 1848 1894), coined the term, and laid the foundation of, comparative psychology, and postulated a similarity of cognitive processes and mechanisms between humans and animals. Romanes's support of his claims, arguably the first comparative psychologist of the modern era. However, whereas Romanes relied heavily on anecdote and an anthropomorphic projection of human capacities onto other species, modern researchers in animal cognition are in most cases firmly behaviorist in methodology, even though they differ sharply from the behaviourist philosophy. There are some exceptions to the rule of behaviourist methodology, such as John Lilly and, some would argue, Donald GriffinDonald Redfield Griffin ( August 3, 1915 November 7, 2003) was an American professor of zoology at various universities who did seminal research in animal behavior, animal navigation, acoustic orientation and sensory biophysics. In 1938 he began studying, who have been prepared to take a strong position that other animals do have mindContrast with soul'. The mind is a subject about which very much theorizing, experimenting, and expostulating has occurred in philosophy (studied under the heading philosophy of mind), psychology, and religion (where, in theology, it is often considered as and that we should approach the study of their cognition accordingly. However their claims have not found wide acceptance in the scientific community, though they have attracted an enthusiastic following among lay people.
The development of animal cognition was also strongly influenced by:
This account of the history of the study of animal cognition is inevitably oversimplified. From Romanes on, there have always been comparative psychologists who have been more or less cognitively inclined: obviously examples are Wolfgang Köhler, famous for his studies of insight in chimpanzees, and Edward C. Tolman, who introduced into psychology, as an explanation of the behaviour of rats in mazes, two ideas that have been immensely influential in human cognitive psychology - the cognitive map and the idea of decision-making in risky choice according to expected value.