Associative models of instrumental learning: a response to Dupuis and Dawson.

Miller and Shettleworth (2007) used an associative model of instrumental choice to explain a confusing pattern of results in the geometry learning literature. Dupuis and Dawson (in press) identified a structural flaw in the Miller-Shettleworth (MS) model and suggested replacing it with an operant perceptron model which can correctly reproduce some experimental results that the MS model does not. Here we demonstrate that the error in the MS model can be easily corrected without altering any of the model's predictions by making it stochastic rather than deterministic.

Do animals have insight, and what is insight anyway?

We cannot test animals for insight's distinctive phenomenology, the "aha" experience, but we can study the processes underlying insightful behaviour, classically described by Köhler as sudden solution of a problem after an impasse. The central question in the study of insightful behaviour in any species is whether it is the product of a distinctive cognitive process, insight. Although some claims for insight in animals confuse it with other problem-solving processes, contemporary research on string pulling and other physical problems, primarily with birds, has uncovered new examples of insightful behaviour and shed light on the role of experience in producing it.

Modularity, comparative cognition and human uniqueness.

Darwin's claim 'that the difference in mind between man and the higher animals … is certainly one of degree and not of kind' is at the core of the comparative study of cognition. Recent research provides unprecedented support for Darwin's claim as well as new reasons to question it, stimulating new theories of human cognitive uniqueness. This article compares and evaluates approaches to such theories.