Annotation
Please note, the lectures are given in Czech language. English version of the course can be requested in advance if there are at least 5 students. Lecture presents a current view on cognitive aspects of animal behaviour. Cognitive ethology integrates various approaches to the study of mechanisms involved in acquisition, processing, storing, and using the information from the environment, with an emphasize on ecological and evolutionary context of cognitive mechanisms. Lecture is intended for MSc students of zoology.
Syllabus
1) What is cognitive ethology? Definition of the discipline, its aims, methods and questions addressed.
2) Perception, sensory specialisation, signal detection theory.
3) Learning, habituation, imprinting, associative learning, classical and operant conditioning, insight learning, adaptive specialisation, learning as phenotypic plasticity.
4) Recognition, discrimination, and classification, generalisation and peak shift, abstraction.
5) Memory, coding, storing, and retrieving of information, working and reference memory, short-term and long-term memory, episodic memory.
6) Spatial orientation, landmarks, routes, and cognitive maps, navigation.
7) Social learning, innovations, tool using, observation learning, traditions.
8) Design and recognition of signals, coevolution of signals and recognition mechanisms.
9) Neural Networks and the study of cognitive processes.
10) Examples and case studies: spatial memory in birds, long-distance navigation in animals, vocalisation in birds – development and learning, reaction of predators to warning signals of prey, foraging innovations in birds, optimal foraging and cognition.
Literature
Balda R. P., Pepperberg I.M. & Kamil A.C. (eds) 1998: Animal Cognition in Nature: The Convergence of Psychology and Biology in Laboratory and Field, Academic Press, San Diego.
Dukas R. (ed.) 1998: Cognitive Ecology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London.
Enquist M. & Ghirlanda S. 2005: Neural Networks and Animal Behaviour. Princeton University press.
Heyes C. & Huber L. 2000: The Evolution of Cognition. MIT Press, Cambridge
Mackintosh N. J. (ed.) 1994: Animal Learning and Cognition. Academic Press, San Diego.
Lieberman D. A. 2000: Learning, Behaviour, and Cognition. Wadsworth. Belmont.
Ruxton GD, Sherratt TN, Speed MP. 2004. Avoiding Attack. Oxford University Press. New York.
Shettleworth S. J. 1998: Cognition, Evolution, and Behaviour. Oxford University Press, New York.