The Value of Collaboration between Animal Cognition and Cognitive Science

Abstract

Collaborative efforts between researchers with different types of expertise are needed to demonstrate the fullest possible understanding of a given concept; that is, to determine the “known unknowns” of the concept, and to design appropriate experiments to discover and test the appropriate levels of cognitive processing that are required to master the concept. Designing experiments on which subjects can succeed by using simple heuristics rather than complex processing is definitely a good first step, as subjects that fail these tasks are unlikely to succeed on the more complex ones; however, only by designing tasks that cannot be solved in such a manner can we truly test and compare the competencies of our subjects, be they differently-aged humans or non-humans.