How ecology, a field concerning interactions between organisms and
their surrounding environments, affects information processing and
decision making in nonhuman and human animals. This topic is
intrinsically interdisciplinary, joining ecology, psychology,
ethology, and neuroscience, among other domains.
Additional Requirements for Graduate Students: Graduate students will be required to write a research paper
related to the class materials, will lead discussions of
scientific and popular articles, and will be assigned 1-2
advanced problems on assignments and exams.
Athena Title
Animal Cognition
Undergraduate Prerequisite
(BIOL 1103 and BIOL 1104) or (BIOL 1108 and BIOL 1108L)
Graduate Prerequisite
[(BIOL 1103 or BIOL 1103E or BIOL 2103H) and (BIOL 1104 or BIOL 2104H)] or [(BIOL 1108 or BIOL 2108H) and (BIOL 1108L or BIOL 2108L)]
Semester Course Offered
Offered fall
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Student Learning Outcomes
Gain knowledge of how cognition contributes to understanding concepts in behavioral ecology, biology, and evolution
Understand how the physical and social environment shape cognition in different animals, including humans
Explain how and why diverse species are both the same and different cognitively
Apply critical thinking skills to the assessment of popular science articles
Topical Outline
Unit 1: Individual Cognition
A. Perception and Attention — How animals perceive their environments
• Psychophysics principles
• Signal detection theory
• Search and attention
B. Learning — How animals process information
• Definition of learning
• Pavlovian conditioning
• Operant conditioning
C. Memory — How animals store and retrieve information
• Conditions for memory
• Functions and properties of memory
• Mechanisms of storing information
Unit 2: Cognition within Groups
A. Communication — How animals transfer information
• Natural communication systems
• Animal and human communication
B. Social learning — How animals use information from others
• Definition of social learning
• Teaching
• Animal culture
C. Collective cognition — How animals process information as a group
• Definition of "collective cognition" — how collective cognition is different from individual cognition
• Conceptual models of collective cognition
• Collective intelligence
